Selection criteria for agencies in Argentina

Picking an agency here is not about the prettiest portfolio. It is about whether they can move your needle in a tightly defined market, with the resources you actually have.

Service specialization and depth

Generalists are comfortable saying yes to everything. That’s fine if you want noise. If your go-to-market is complex, insist on depth.

• Ask for a recent, detailed playbook for the service you need. Not a slide deck, an actual step-by-step plan they used.
• Look for repeatable assets: email sequences, ICP playbooks, ABM account lists, creative tests. If they rebuilt the wheel every time, they will do the same to you.
• Test depth with one tough question: how would they reduce cost-per-opportunity by 25 percent in 90 days? Their answer tells you whether they remix tactics or actually optimize funnels.

Industry and buyer‑persona fit

An agency that "does B2B" is not the same as an agency that knows your buyers.

• Demand examples of campaigns targeted at the same buyer persona and similar procurement cycles.
• If your buyers are technical and long-sale-cycle, skip agencies whose case studies are mostly transactional SMB work.
• Real-world sign: they can map a 6-18 month customer journey and identify the three objection points that kill deals.

Team structure and seniority

Senior people should own the strategy. Junior people should do the work.

• Check the org chart. Who is the account lead and how many hours do they commit weekly?
• Ask for CVs of people who will do the core work, not just bios of the VP who will visit quarterly.
• Watch for pipeline staffing gaps. Agencies sell senior time in proposals but deliver juniors. Get fixed commitments for critical roles.

Technology and integrations

An agency that cannot integrate with your stack will create double work or broken data.

• Require a list of the exact tools they’ve integrated with your CRM, marketing automation, analytics, and ad accounts.
• Validate by asking how they'd reconcile leads flagged differently by marketing and sales. If they say "we’ll export CSVs", move on.
• If APIs are involved, ask for an integration owner and an estimated hours budget for setup.

Data protection and compliance

Argentina has specific data protection norms and regional privacy expectations. This matters more than people realize.

• Ask for evidence of data handling policies, data residency options, and how they purge contractor access when engagements end.
• Get their incident response playbook. Not an NDA line, a short sequence: detect, notify, isolate, remediate.
• If you operate across LatAm, verify multilingual privacy workflows and consent capture flows.

Transparency and contract terms

The contract will define whether your relationship becomes frictionless or toxic.

• Seek itemized scopes and time commitments. Vague "ad hoc" clauses are a future billing dispute.
• Require a simple exit clause: 30 days and a reasonable wind-down. If they push for long notice with big penalties, that is a negotiation trap.
• Ask for a monthly performance review tied to deliverables, not only activity.

Service models and pricing

Stop expecting one pricing model to fix everything. Each model forces behavior.

Retainer vs project vs performance

Pick the model that aligns incentives with what you care about.

• Retainer: good for sustained demand-gen, optimization, and content production. It buys stability but can create complacency if outputs are not tightly defined.
• Project: best for discrete builds like website, migration, or a campaign launch. Scope creep is the enemy. Define milestones and acceptance criteria.
• Performance: pay-per-lead or pay-per-opportunity forces accountability. It works only when quality and funnel conversion definitions are ironed out up front.

Typical cost drivers

Know what will make the invoice jump.

• Complexity of integrations and custom tracking.
• Creative production volume and revisions.
• Seniority of people assigned.
• Frequency and depth of reporting.
• Third-party ad spend and software licenses.

A short, sharp scenario: a mid-market SaaS with 3 personas, localized Spanish content, and a 6-month sales cycle will pay more than a single-person startup targeting SMBs in one vertical. The drivers are obvious when you map them.

How to budget for scope

Budget to outcomes, not hours.

• Start with a quarterly budget that ties line items to expected outputs: X webinars, Y MQLs, Z pipeline value.
• Include a contingency of 15 to 25 percent for discovery and technical unknowns.
• For year plans, break spending into pilots, scaling, and experimentation buckets.

Pricing clauses to negotiate

Contracts hide most issues.

• Fixed scope with a change-order process. No wiggle.
• Cap on monthly hours at role level. Prevent senior time leakage.
• Performance credits. If KPIs miss by a defined margin, apply a discount or extra services until targets stabilize.
• Clear definition of what constitutes a "lead" or "opportunity".

Agency evaluation and RFP

RFPs are not just procurement theater. Done right, they set expectations early.

Scoring rubric and weightings

Make the scoring simple and decision-focused.

• Weightings example: Expertise 30 percent, Team & Availability 20 percent, Processes & Technology 20 percent, Price 15 percent, References 15 percent.
• Convert qualitative answers into numeric scores with evidence requirements. Don’t score high for vague promises.

RFP sections to include

Ask for what you will actually use.

• Short context summary and non-negotiables.
• Three tactical asks: e.g., one 90-day plan, one 12-month growth plan, one A/B test program.
• Team CVs, sample WO/statement of work, and two technical integration descriptions.
• Price table: retainer, project, and performance options.

Technical and culture interview questions

Technical and cultural fit rarely align. Test both. Technical:

• How would you instrument cross-device attribution for our funnel?
• Describe an instance where a campaign failed and how you diagnosed it.

Culture:

• How do you handle honest disagreements with a client's head of sales?
• Show us a normal day for the account lead.

Reference and case‑study validation

References are where smoke clears.

• Call references and ask for specifics: what didn't work, what cost extra, did they hit the ROI promised.
• Ask for access to raw metrics when possible, not polished slides.
• If a case study looks perfect, probe the messy parts. Real work has trade-offs.

Red flags and deal‑breakers

Few things are immediate deal killers.

• No access to team CVs or unwillingness to commit senior time.
• Vague measurement approach or reliance on vanity metrics.
• Refusal to share integration details or security documentation.
• High turnover or multiple projects run by an unstaffed team.

Onboarding and collaboration

First 90 days set the tempo. Most relationships fail here because of sloppy handoffs.

30‑60‑90 day kickoff agenda

Create a tight kickoff and stick to it.

• Days 1 to 14: technical audit, data schema mapping, initial creative brief, and quick wins list.
• Days 15 to 45: launch prioritized campaigns, set up dashboards, and run the first optimization cycle.
• Days 46 to 90: scale winning tactics, begin account-based outreach or nurture sequencing, and formalize monthly governance.

Roles, governance, and cadence

Clarity prevents invisible work.

• Define RACI for deliverables. Who approves creative? Who owns lead enrichment?
• Weekly tactical syncs, monthly strategy reviews, and quarterly business reviews.
• No more than two people authorized to sign off on scope changes.

Knowledge transfer checklist

Don't expect memory to be enough.

• Product playbooks, ICP documents, past campaign reports, CRM fields and rules, sample sales objections, and creative assets.
• Insist the client provides a single source of truth folder with permissions and clear owner.

Approval workflows and SLAs

Delays kill momentum.

• Approvals: 48 hours for creative, 72 hours for strategy proposals, 5 business days for major scope changes.
• SLAs for response times on technical tickets and emergency ad account issues.
• If approvals miss SLA, a documented escalation path kicks in.

Change control process

Change is inevitable. Control it.

• Define a change-request template with impact on timeline and cost.
• Small changes auto-approved up to a threshold. Bigger ones require sign-off and a rebaseline.

Measurement, reporting, ROI

Measurement is rarely the limiting factor. Clarity and discipline are.

Channel‑specific KPIs

Match KPIs to channel purpose, not vanity.

• Paid search: cost per opportunity, not clicks.
• Content: leads influenced and content-assisted pipeline.
• LinkedIn/paid social: accounts engaged and pipeline created.
• Email: deliverability, reply rate for outbound, and SQL conversion.

Attribution and baseline setup

Stop arguing about last touch. Build a practical baseline.

• Establish a 90-day baseline with conversion windows aligned to sales cycles.
• Use a weighted attribution model tailored to your funnel: give more weight to discovery and bottom-funnel actions.
• Agree on one source of truth for revenue attribution. Reconcile monthly.

Dashboard templates and cadence

Reports should prompt action.

• Weekly dashboard: top 5 leading indicators and one risk flag.
• Monthly: channel performance, quality of leads by sales feedback, cost per opportunity.
• Quarterly: cohort pipeline velocity and LTV assumptions.

Optimization and test plan

Tests should be bets, not busywork.

• Maintain a prioritized test backlog with expected impact and required sample size.
• Limit concurrent tests per funnel stage to two. Too many tests create noise.
• If a test fails, document why and which hypothesis was wrong.

Pilot engagements and scaling

Run pilots like experiments, not glorified proposals.

Designing a 30–90 day pilot

Keep pilots narrow and measurable.

• Define a single primary KPI and two secondary supporting metrics.
• Limit scope: one persona, one channel, and one hypothesis.
• Include a time-boxed discovery sprint to fix tracking and creative blocks.

Success criteria and go/no‑go

Be ruthless about go/no-go decisions.

• Success criteria example: generate X qualified opportunities at Y cost and show a conversion rate to pipeline of Z percent.
• Go/no-go gates at 30 and 90 days with predefined actions: scale, pivot, or stop.

How to price a pilot

Make pilots unattractive as free trials.

• Charge enough to get commitment: nominal retainer plus a performance kicker.
• Offer credit toward a full contract if pilot meets success criteria.
• No work should be "free" because you will get free work accepted and then ghosted.

Transition plan to full scope

Don't assume scaling is automatic.

• Create a 60-day transition checklist: staffing ramp, budget increases, expanded creative plans, and tech hardening.
• Lock incremental pricing tiers before scaling. Avoid vague "we'll discuss" conversations when spend grows.
• Plan a joint kickoff for scale phase to align teams and update governance.