What to ask your agency about defining success metrics

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on defining success metrics, these questions are worth asking early.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Agree the numbers before the work starts. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Pick metrics you can actually influence. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

What this looks like day to day

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about defining success metrics before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Agree the numbers before the work starts — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.