"How do I choose a marketing agency?" is the most expensive question in marketing, literally. Picking the wrong partner costs a Dutch SMB €40,000 to €120,000 over twelve months before the relationship is ended: agency fees, internal hours, and the loss of momentum (R3 Worldwide, 2025). And the unfair part: it's rarely about the people on the other side of the table.
A multi-year analysis by Setupad found that 70% of agency partnerships end within 18 months, and in 62% of cases the root cause is "scope or expectations mismatch", not quality, not creativity, not price (Setupad, 2024). In other words: agencies are picked badly, not run badly. This guide exists to flip that statistic. Written by a Rotterdam-based agency that sits on both sides of that table every week.
Key Takeaways
- Choosing a marketing agency in the Netherlands takes an average of 6 to 10 weeks from shortlist to signed contract. Anyone moving faster is usually picking wrong (Sortlist Data Hub, 2025)
- 70% of agency relationships fail within 18 months; 62% of those failures trace back to scope mismatch, not the people involved (Setupad, 2024)
- 75% of mid-market companies work with at least one external agency in 2025 (HubSpot State of Marketing, 2025), yet only 38% describe themselves as "satisfied" with the relationship
- The three most underestimated steps: writing a scope document before the pitch, reference calls with former clients, and a 90-day exit clause in the contract
- A solid selection process runs 7 stages, takes 6–10 weeks, and never ends with "we just had a good click" as the only reason
What Does "The Right Marketing Agency" Actually Mean?
The right marketing agency isn't the one with the prettiest portfolio or the highest review score. It's the one whose core capabilities, operating model and pricing structure match the stage, scale and complexity of your business. An award-winning creative shop serving €1,000/month startups is a mediocre match for a mid-market scale-up running complex B2B funnels at €15,000/month, not because the agency is bad, but because the system behind it wasn't built for your problem.
This sounds obvious. In practice, companies pick on the wrong signals. A Sortlist study of 1,200 European agency buyers found 54% cited "a good click in the first meeting" as the deciding factor, and that same group reported being twice as likely to be unhappy eighteen months later compared to buyers who used harder selection criteria (Sortlist Data Hub, 2025). Chemistry is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.
The four dimensions that are actually predictive: capability match (can they do the thing you're hiring them for), scale match (are they used to your volume and complexity), process match (does their way of working fit your organisation), and commercial match (does the pricing structure line up with your budget reality). This guide walks through all four systematically.
The 7-Stage Selection Framework
A good agency selection runs through seven stages and takes 6 to 10 weeks, not one meeting and a handshake. This is the framework we wish we'd read before starting sixtynine, and the one we now give to clients who ask us "how do we choose?" after a first call.
Stage 1: Define Scope & Budget (Week 1)
Before you write down a single agency name: write down what you actually need. This is the document that would have prevented 90% of failed selections. Answer: which concrete problem must be solved within 12 months, what budget do you have available (including internal time), which channels are in scope and which aren't, and who inside your company is the decision-maker. Without this document you're pitching against thin air, and the agencies that are good at selling thin air will win those pitches.
Stage 2: Build the Longlist (Week 2)
Compile 8 to 12 agencies from three sources: (1) direct referrals from your network, (2) agency directories such as Sortlist, Clutch and the Dutch Digital Agencies member list, and (3) agencies you've already found through their own content. Filter immediately on one hard criterion: do they have clients at your scale and in your sector? An agency that only serves enterprise or only serves startups drops off the list.
Stage 3: Cut to a Shortlist (Week 3)
Reduce to 3 to 5 agencies based on public information: portfolio depth, case studies with actual numbers (not just visuals), team structure, and their own marketing. That last one is a strong proxy: an agency that can't run its own brand, website and content won't run yours either. No recent case studies with measurable outcomes on their own blog in the last six months? That's a flag.
Stage 4: Intro Calls + Written Brief (Week 4–5)
Schedule a 45–60 minute introductory call with each shortlisted agency. After the call, send a structured 2–3 page brief covering your scope, budget range, KPIs and timeline. Expect agencies to come back with follow-up questions. If they jump straight to a price proposal without asking anything, you've learned they're selling rather than understanding. That's your first real filter.
Stage 5: Proposals + Pitches (Week 6–7)
Ask 2 to 3 agencies for a formal proposal covering approach, team, planning and pricing structure. Be explicit: no free creative pitches. An agency that delivers speculative design or strategy to win the deal will recover that investment through twelve months of mild over-billing, or through sloppy work because the margin is gone. The Dutch Digital Agencies association recommends either limiting pitches to strategic approach or paying a pitch fee (DDA Pitch Guidelines, 2024).
Stage 6: Reference Checks (Week 8)
The step 83% of companies skip and the one we've found is the #1 predictor of partnership success (Sortlist, 2025). Ask each shortlisted agency for two references: one current client (to judge current quality) and one former client (to learn how they handle the end of a relationship). An agency that refuses to provide a former-client reference is telling you something important. Speak to references for 30 minutes one-on-one, by video where possible, not just email.
Stage 7: Contract + Kickoff (Week 9–10)
Negotiate not just price, but scope, reporting cadence and exit conditions. Insist on: a 90-day review moment with explicit go/no-go criteria, a notice period of 1–3 months (not the standard 6+), and ownership of assets (creative, ad accounts, analytics, data). For deep numbers and per-service margins, see our guide on what marketing actually costs in the Netherlands.
10 Questions to Ask Every Agency on Your Shortlist
These ten questions aren't an interrogation. They're designed so that in 60 minutes you can tell whether an agency can reflect on its own work. By far the strongest predictor of long-term success. The shape of the answer often matters more than the answer itself.
| # | Question | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which client problem did you solve worst over the past year, and what did you learn from it? | Capacity for reflection. An agency with no example is either rehearsing perfect sales lines or doesn't have serious clients. |
| 2 | Who on your team will work on our account day-to-day, and how many years of experience do they have? | Resourcing reality. Senior wins pitches; junior does the work. If the gap is too wide, you get mediocre output. |
| 3 | How many clients does your strategy lead currently have in their portfolio? | Bandwidth. Above 8 active clients per strategist, quality drops sharply. |
| 4 | What would an honest audit of our current marketing look like, and what do you see that isn't working? | Technical sharpness. Anyone who stays vague here, or pivots to "what do you think yourselves?", doesn't have an opinion. |
| 5 | Which tools will we use, and who pays for them, us or you? | The ownership conversation. An agency that runs ad accounts or analytics under its own name has you in a weak position at exit. |
| 6 | How do you handle a month where the numbers come in below target? | Crisis readiness. The difference between a professional and a salesperson lives in this answer. |
| 7 | Which channels or services are you explicitly not strong at? | Self-awareness. "We can do everything" is always false. An agency that can't name three weaknesses either doesn't know itself or is hiding. |
| 8 | What's your average client tenure, and how long have your three longest relationships been running? | Retention. Under 18 months average is a red flag. Above 3 years for top-3 clients is a green light. |
| 9 | Which KPIs would you set for us in the first 90 days, and why those? | Strategic thinking. Concrete, justified KPIs based on your business model = strong. "We measure everything" = weak. |
| 10 | What does ending the partnership look like, and what do we take with us if we stop after 12 months? | Maturity. An agency that gets uncomfortable here is planning for lock-in, not for your success. |
Ask these in the same order with every shortlisted agency. Write the answers down. The pattern (who stays sharp, who drifts into vagueness) becomes obvious after the third conversation.
Red Flags: 8 Signals to Watch For
Some signals look harmless in isolation but, combined or under pressure, reliably predict that a partnership will derail. These are the eight we see most often in client handovers from other agencies onto sixtynine.
1. Free creative pitches. An agency that produces a concept presentation without a brief or a fee is funding its pitch investment from your future invoices. That isn't always bad, but know what you're buying.
2. The senior pitches, the junior delivers. During Stage 4, ask explicitly who's going to work on your account every day. If that person doesn't show up to the second meeting, you have your answer.
3. No measurable numbers in case studies. Visuals and storytelling usually hide the fact that the outcome wasn't measurable. Push for concrete metrics, and don't accept "confidential" as a routine reply.
4. Account ownership stays with the agency. Google Ads, Meta Business, GA4, your domain, your brand name in registries. These all belong in your name. Agencies that "conveniently" keep them under their own login know exactly what they're doing.
5. The agency's own marketing is dead. No active blog, no LinkedIn cadence, no recent case studies. An agency that can't run its own funnel won't run yours either.
6. No 90-day review in the contract. An agency that says "just trust us" without agreeing on concrete go/no-go moments is asking for a blank cheque.
7. Immediate product recommendation without discovery. "You need Google Ads" in the first meeting = salesperson, not strategist. A good agency only knows what you actually need after discovery.
8. Vague pricing or no written proposal. "We'll work it out" is not a pricing model. Fixed fee, hourly rate × scope, or retainer + extras: one of those three needs to be on paper explicitly.
Full-Service vs Specialist Agency: Which One Fits You?
The biggest structural decision in your selection isn't which agency. It's what type of agency. A full-service shop delivers breadth (strategy + creative + content + ads + dev), a specialist delivers depth (SEO only, paid media only, branding only). The right fit depends on four factors.
| Factor | Choose full-service | Choose specialist |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | €5,000+/month | Below €5,000/month or project budgets |
| Problem type | Multiple channels, integration across brand/site/ads | One defined channel or question |
| Internal capacity | No or limited in-house marketing | Strong in-house team that owns coordination |
| Time horizon | 12+ months, ongoing partnership | Project-based or seasonal |
The practical split we see most often: up to €2,000/month a freelancer or specialist works best. Between €2,000 and €5,000/month it gets awkward: a specialist lacks breadth, a full-service is expensive at that scale. From €5,000/month onwards, full-service can deliver an honest return. Above €15,000/month a hybrid model (in-house lead + agency for specialisms) becomes interesting. For the full comparison with numbers, see our piece on marketing agency vs freelancer vs in-house.
What Does Picking an Agency Actually Cost?
The cost of the selection process itself is almost always underestimated. Beyond agency fees, the bigger line is your internal time, and that runs to 40–60 hours of management time across 6–10 weeks for a serious process. At a typical loaded hourly rate of €75–€125 for managers and founders, that's €3,000 to €7,500 of internal cost before a single agency invoice lands.
Then comes the partnership itself. A typical full-service engagement in the Netherlands for SMBs runs €3,000 to €15,000 per month, with one-off onboarding fees of €2,500 to €10,000. All quoted excluding 21% BTW (Dutch VAT), and almost always billed in EUR, even for English-speaking founders running EU entities. The full breakdown with per-service benchmarks lives in our pillar guide: The Real Cost of Marketing in the Netherlands.
The real question isn't "what does it cost". It's "what does picking wrong cost". On an average SMB marketing budget of €100,000/year, a scope mismatch that ends the partnership after 9 months means roughly €75,000 in direct agency fees, plus the opportunity cost of nine months not spent compounding with the right partner. Putting another week into selection is mathematically always the right move.
How Do You Evaluate an Agency Portfolio?
A portfolio is almost never an honest representation of the agency. It's a collection of their best work across multiple years, often made by team members who've since moved on. It's still useful, but only when you ask the right questions alongside it.
Look at what's there, but also at what's missing. A portfolio that only shows visual highlights (no process, no iterations, no failures) tells you the agency probably doesn't go deep on performance marketing or conversion work. Agencies that only show branding tend to be weak on funnel optimisation. Agencies that only show dashboards and numbers tend to be weak on brand. Both are valid specialisms; just don't confuse them with full-service.
Ask three questions about every case study they show you. One: who on the current team worked on this? Two: what concrete, measurable result was achieved, in numbers, not adjectives? Three: is this client still a client, and if not, why not? Those three answers together reveal whether the case study is representative of what the agency delivers today.
Watch the scale match. A case study from a €5M ARR scale-up tells you very little about how the agency performs for a €500K SMB. The systems, lead times and team allocations are fundamentally different. Ask specifically for clients at your scale: at least three, not one outlier.
The First 90 Days: What to Expect After Signing
Selection doesn't end at contract. The first 90 days decide whether the partnership will work, and that isn't a feeling. It's operational. A good agency has a structured 30-day onboarding, a baseline measurement at 60 days, and a real performance review at 90 days. We wrote a dedicated piece on this: the first 90 days with a new marketing agency.
The short version: in the first 30 days you want to see an audit of your current marketing, by day 60 a measurement baseline with dashboards live, and by day 90 the first concrete output (a campaign, content, or website iteration) plus an open evaluation conversation. Miss one of those three and, regardless of how good the people are, the relationship is already drifting off course.
Working with a Dutch Agency as a Non-Dutch Founder
If English is your working language and you're scaling a company headquartered in the Netherlands (or running EU operations from an Amsterdam or Rotterdam HQ), a few extra questions belong on your shortlist. The Dutch market is unusually bilingual (most senior agency people speak fluent business English), but the depth of cultural and copywriting nuance varies a lot.
Confirm the working language before scoping. All client-facing meetings, written deliverables, Slack channels and reports should default to English if that's your working language. Ask explicitly: "Will our day-to-day point of contact send everything in English by default?" Avoid agencies where English is "available on request". In practice, internal artifacts (briefs, planning docs) stay Dutch, and you'll always be a step behind your own campaign.
Decide upfront which channels need native Dutch copy. SEO content, Google Ads copy, landing page hero copy and email subject lines targeting Dutch consumers must be written by a native Dutch copywriter, not translated. B2B content for an international audience can stay English. A good agency will raise this question on their own; if you're the one bringing it up, that's already a small signal about how much they think in the buyer's market.
BTW (Dutch VAT), invoicing, and ownership. Dutch agency invoices include 21% BTW. If you're invoicing through a Dutch BV, you reclaim it; if you're an EU customer outside NL with a valid VAT number, expect a reverse-charge invoice (BTW verlegd). Confirm the entity structure before signing. Asset ownership (Google Ads accounts, Meta Business Manager, GA4 properties, domain registrations) must be under your company name. This is doubly important for non-Dutch founders, because recovering accounts later requires Dutch-language support flows that you'd rather not navigate at exit.
GDPR / AVG awareness. Dutch agencies operate under the EU GDPR (locally called AVG). For any agency touching customer data, retargeting pixels, or email automation, ask for their data processing agreement (verwerkersovereenkomst) before kickoff. A serious shop has a templated one ready; if they don't know what you're asking for, that's a deal-breaker.
How We Approach This at sixtynine
At sixtynine.agency we work by three principles drawn directly from the red flags above. One: no free creative pitches. We do invest time in a structured intro conversation and a written proposal: that costs you nothing and gives you a clear read on whether we're a fit. Two: senior pitches and senior delivers. The co-founder at the table (Elie or Emre) is also on the delivery team. There's no separate sales layer sitting above a delivery layer. Three: a 90-day review is in every contract by default, with explicit go/no-go criteria.
We're a full-service agency, with the nuance that we work strategy-first and keep development in-house (Next.js + Directus). Our sweet spot is SMBs and scale-ups with €5,000 to €25,000 in monthly marketing budget, based in Rotterdam but working across the Netherlands and with international founders who run EU operations from here. For our deeper take on how we work: read our marketing philosophy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to choose a marketing agency in the Netherlands?
A careful selection process in the Netherlands takes 6 to 10 weeks on average, from scope document to signed contract (Sortlist Data Hub, 2025). Faster than 6 weeks usually means one of the seven stages got skipped, which is statistically the #1 predictor of an early breakup. Plan for two months from the moment you start looking seriously.
What's the single most important question to ask an agency?
"Which client problem did you solve worst over the past year, and what did you learn from it?" This question tests reflection, honesty and maturity in one shot. An agency that gives a concrete, unhurried answer (without immediately switching to sales mode) has the mindset you need for a healthy 12+ month partnership.
Do I need a local agency (Rotterdam, Amsterdam) or can I work remote?
You don't always need local, but more often than people expect. For B2B work and projects that require deep sector knowledge (government, healthcare, professional services), a Dutch agency almost always outperforms a cheaper offshore alternative. For pure performance marketing with measurable KPIs, location matters less. Rotterdam in particular has an above-average density of good agencies, and if rapid in-person collaboration matters, physical proximity carries real weight.
What's a normal notice period for a marketing agency in the Netherlands?
In the Netherlands, 1 to 3 months' notice is the SMB market standard. Agencies that systematically demand 6 or 12 months of notice for ongoing services almost always do so for lock-in reasons, not operational ones. Negotiate this. A healthy agency doesn't lose sleep over a short notice period, because they assume their work speaks for itself.
Should I pay a pitch fee to take agencies seriously?
For extensive creative pitches (concept presentations, 30+ page strategy decks) a pitch fee is reasonable and increasingly common, in line with the DDA Pitch Guidelines (2024). For an intro call and a strategic written proposal (no creative work), that should be free. A useful rule: if you're asking for thinking time, it can be free; if you're asking for creative output, it deserves to be paid.
Conclusion: Selection is a Discipline, Not a Gut Call
Choosing a marketing agency is a strategic decision you make maybe four or five times in a career. The process is clear, it takes 6 to 10 weeks, and if you run it carefully you avoid the fate of the 70% who go shopping again within 18 months. Worth the effort, given that the gap between a good and a bad selection runs into six figures of euros, not three.
The one-sentence version of this guide: write your scope first, choose on system match instead of chemistry, and build an honest exit route in from day one. Do that, and you don't just pick the right agency. You stop yourself from asking the same question all over again twelve months from now.
Want a second opinion on an agency you're considering, or a sounding board on your own selection process? Book a no-strings 30-minute call. No sales pitch, just an honest read on what suits your stage, even if that turns out not to be sixtynine.