Hiring a performance marketer is one of the highest-leverage decisions a D2C brand can make. The right person can 3x your revenue. The wrong one can burn ₹5–10 lakh in ad spend before you realise the mistake.
After working with brands across D2C, healthcare, and services in India, here are the 8 questions I would ask if I were a brand owner evaluating a performance marketer — including what a good answer looks like and what should raise a red flag.
1. Can you show me accounts you have managed in my category?
Performance marketing is heavily context-dependent. Someone who crushed it for a fashion brand may struggle with a health supplement or a B2B SaaS product. The audience psychology, funnel length, and creative approach are completely different.
Good answer: Specific examples with metrics — ROAS, CPA, spend scale — in a category similar to yours. Ideally with screenshots or Loom walkthroughs of actual dashboards.
Red flag: Generic case studies with no numbers, or numbers without context (“We achieved 5x ROAS” — on ₹500/day? ₹50,000/day? Matters enormously).
2. What does your onboarding process look like?
How a marketer onboards you tells you everything about how organised they are. A structured onboarding — pixel audit, tracking setup verification, competitor research, 90-day strategy document — means they have done this before and have a repeatable process.
Good answer: A clear checklist or document they share. Questions about your business goals, unit economics, average order value, and target customer before touching the ad account.
Red flag: “We will start running ads right away.” Running ads before understanding your margins and funnel is how money gets wasted in the first 30 days.
3. How do you handle a campaign that is not performing?
Every campaign hits rough patches. What separates good performance marketers from average ones is their diagnostic process when things go wrong. Do they have a systematic way to identify the problem — creative fatigue, audience saturation, landing page issue, tracking discrepancy — or do they just guess?
Good answer: A specific framework. “I first check if the issue is at the creative level, the audience level, or the landing page level, then I look at…” Specificity is a good sign.
Red flag: “We will test new creatives.” Testing without diagnosis is just burning more money.
4. How do you track attribution, especially with iOS privacy changes?
Meta’s pixel has been significantly limited since iOS 14.5. Any serious performance marketer should know about Conversions API (CAPI), server-side tracking, and how to reconcile Meta-reported ROAS with actual Shopify/website revenue. If they have never heard of CAPI, that is a serious gap in 2026.
Good answer: They mention CAPI setup, UTM parameters, GA4 cross-referencing, and have a clear view on which numbers to trust and why.
Red flag: They quote only Meta-reported ROAS without mentioning the gap between reported and actual conversions.
5. What is your reporting cadence and what does a report look like?
You should never have to chase your marketer for updates. Monthly reporting is not enough — if something is broken in week 1, you want to know in week 1, not at the end of the month. Ask to see a sample report.
Good answer: Weekly reports minimum, with clear metrics (CPA, ROAS, CTR, spend), commentary on what is working and what is being changed, and a clear next-week plan.
Red flag: No sample report available, or reports that just show raw numbers with no interpretation or action plan.
6. Do you manage creative, or do we need to provide it?
Creative is 70–80% of Meta Ads performance. A performance marketer who cannot give you clear creative briefs — or who takes whatever you give them and runs it without input — is leaving enormous value on the table. Even if they do not produce creative themselves, they should be directing it.
Good answer: A clear creative process — hooks, formats, angles — even if they do not produce the videos or images themselves. They should be telling your creative team what to make.
Red flag: “Send us your creatives and we will run them.” Passive creative approach almost always leads to stagnant performance.
7. What is your fee structure and what does it include?
Performance marketing pricing in India varies widely — from ₹15,000/month retainers to 10% of ad spend to hybrid models. What matters more than the number is what is included: strategy, creative briefing, weekly reporting, landing page feedback, and how many campaigns and platforms are covered.
Good answer: Transparent scope of work with a clear list of deliverables. Understands the difference between retainer and performance-based models and can explain why they charge the way they do.
Red flag: Vague scope, or fees that seem very low (under ₹10,000/month for active campaign management usually means either inexperience or a volume agency where your account gets minimal attention).
8. Can I speak to one of your current clients?
This is the single most reliable signal. Any confident, competent performance marketer will have at least one client willing to vouch for them. If they hesitate or cannot provide a reference, that tells you something.
Good answer: Yes, immediately. Bonus if they proactively offer before you ask.
Red flag: “Our clients prefer to remain confidential.” Everyone. All of them.
The Bottom Line
Hiring the wrong performance marketer does not just cost you their fee — it costs you the ad spend they mismanage, the months of lost momentum, and the opportunity cost of what a good marketer could have done in that time. Take the evaluation seriously.
If you are currently evaluating performance marketers for your D2C brand and want a no-pressure conversation, I am happy to walk you through my process, show you sample reports, and connect you with current clients.
Evaluating performance marketers for your brand?
Book a free 30-minute call. I will answer all 8 of these questions live, show you sample reports from active accounts, and give you an honest assessment of whether we are a fit.
