11 Creative Interview Questions to Help You Find the Perfect Content Agency

It’s time for you to find a content agency. Where do you even begin to start? In the same place you would when trying to fill any skills gap on your team—by finding a group of qualified candidates and putting them through a solid interview process. 

But hiring an agency for strategic content development isn’t exactly the same as hiring an employee or freelancer. You could ask them what kind of animal they’d be, but that wouldn’t help you determine if this agency will be the team that will help you achieve your content goals. You need to pull together some creative questions to make sure this agency will collaborate on your strategic content vision, reach your target audience, and fit in with your overall culture. 

The good news: We’ve put together some of the best questions that will not only help you prepare for an interview, they’ll also help you feel confident you’ll truly be able to find the right partner. 

Check out our list below of some of the top questions we recommend. 

1. Who is your ideal client?

A good baseline question to help you understand the expertise of the content agency. While it’s important to hire for skill and experience, you also want to know that the agency you’re hiring wants to work with a company like yours. Will this project help launch the start of a truly effective and collaborative partnership?

2. Pitch our company to me as if I were buying our product/service.

How badly does this content agency want your business? You want to know they’ve done their homework before they come into the interview. This question shows they can gather a baseline understanding of your product and craft an initial message about it. Make sure they’ve been willing to put in the effort before the interview to show you they want to work with you.  

3. Tell us about your onboarding process.

Communication is essential for any relationship. David Lewis of DemandGen International says asking about the onboarding process can help you understand both the agency’s level of experience and how they plan to engage with you and your goals. 

4. Describe a situation when you took a risk professionally. What was the outcome?

Do the risks they take ultimately benefit their clients? Can you live with these kind of risks?

5. Tell me about a time when you had to win someone over to your way of thinking. How did you accomplish this? What was the outcome?

Going outside your company means you’ll have people who see things differently than you do. This doesn’t have to be a problem or a source of contention. In fact, it can be a real asset for your company … as long as the content agency knows how to effectively work with you to resolve differences in vision or opinion. 

6. How do you leverage data to refine your content?

Alena Bester, head of digital content marketing at her company, describes how the agency they were working with created content that was the perfect fit for her goals and product. But when the initial data came back it showed the content fell flat with the target market. Make sure the agency you’re going to be working with is willing to use data to retrain assumptions and ensure they’re measuring the content against stated goals before you’re well down the road with them. 

7. Tell me about the relationships you've had with the people you've worked with.

Use this question as a baseline to understand how the agency feels about former clients and how they describe them. You’ll be able to gain insight on what the agency feels is a good working relationship after the project is over. 

8. Describe a situation where you worked effectively to accomplish a goal on time and within budget. What was your role? What did you learn?

Understanding how they’ve solved other clients’ problems can give you insight into how they’ll approach your goals and may even give you an idea of how to refine your process. 

9. What project would you consider your most significant career accomplishment to date?

Author Lou Adler spent 10 years researching effective interview questions and he said this was the best one. What successes are important to this agency? Their clients’ or their own? 

10. How will you help us meet our specific needs and goals? 

Kenny Eicher, from The CSI Group, says beware an agency that tells you all your problems before you’ve had a chance to elaborate on them. It’s critical early on in a relationship with a content agency to know they will be willing to listen to you. 

11. What sets your agency apart from others we are considering?

Always a classic end to an interview. Whether you’re hiring the team to create thought leadership content or for corporate blogging, this is an effective way to encourage them to sum up their strengths and how they’ll work with you. 

This post was originally published on the Comma Copywriters blog.

Thinking about hiring a content agency? Now you can focus on what you do best and let Team Comma writers create well-researched and fluff free content for your company. Schedule a free 20-minute consultation, and let’s get started on the interview process!