How to choose a marketing agency in Estonia (and the questions to ask first)

To choose a marketing agency in Estonia, decide what kind of help you actually need, then put every candidate through the same short list of questions before you sign. The questions matter more than the pitch deck: who does the work, who owns the ad accounts and the data, how ad spend is billed, what you'll see every month, and what you keep when you leave. A good agency answers all of them plainly and in writing. A weak one gets vague exactly there.

Estonia is a small market, and plenty of owners find their agency through a recommendation. That's a fine start. It just isn't a substitute for the questions below.

What kinds of marketing partners are there?

A "marketing agency" can mean anything from a 40-person full-service house to one person with a laptop. Before comparing prices, figure out which kind you're comparing.

These aren't exclusive. A common setup is an AI agent or a freelancer for everyday work plus a specialist for one bigger project. If you're not sure what an AI marketing agent does in practice, we wrote a plain explanation.

Which questions should you ask a marketing agency before signing?

Ask these ten, and ask for the answers in the proposal or the contract, not only in the meeting.

1. Who will actually do the work? Names and roles. Is it the person in the room, a junior colleague, or a subcontractor abroad?
2. Who owns the ad accounts, the pixel, the analytics and the data? The answer should be: you do. The agency gets access as a partner.
3. How is ad spend billed? Does Meta or Google charge your card directly, or does the agency pay and re-invoice you? If they re-invoice, is there a mark-up, and is it shown on the invoice?
4. What's the minimum term and the notice period? How many months are you committed, and how much notice do you give to leave?
5. What will you report, and how often? Which numbers, in which format, weekly or monthly? Will you see cost per lead or sale, or only reach and clicks?
6. Can I see the raw numbers any time? Not a PDF once a month. Your own login to your own ad accounts.
7. What happens to creatives, copy, landing pages and the website when we part? Do you keep the files and the rights to use them? Is the landing page on your domain or theirs?
8. What does the first month look like? A concrete plan: what gets set up, what gets launched, when you'll see the first numbers.
9. What are you not good at? A good agency knows where its edges are. "Everything" is not an answer.
10. Can I talk to a current client? Not a case study on their website. A person.

For SEO specifically, Google's own page Do you need an SEO? has a good list of questions to ask and warnings to heed.

Why should you own your ad accounts?

You should own your ad accounts because the history in them is an asset you paid for. Months of pixel data, audiences and results make the next campaign cheaper to learn. If the account belongs to the agency, all of that stays with them when you leave, and you start from zero.

In Meta, this is concrete. If an ad account is created inside the agency's business portfolio, Meta's help pages say it becomes a permanent part of that portfolio and can't be transferred. The right setup is the reverse: the ad account lives in your business portfolio, and you give the agency partner access to it. They can do all the work; only you can hand the account to someone else. The same principle applies to Google Ads, Google Analytics, Search Console, your domain and your website hosting.

If you already work with an agency, check this today. Open Meta Business Suite settings and see which business portfolio your ad account sits in.

What are the red flags when choosing an agency?

Walk away, or at least slow down, if you see any of these.

• Guaranteed rankings or returns. Nobody controls Google's results or Meta's auction. Google says in plain words that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. A guaranteed ROAS is the same promise in a different font.
• The agency owns your accounts. Or can't tell you clearly who does.
• Reporting only vanity metrics. Reach, impressions, likes and "engagement" with no line for leads, sales or cost per result.
• No access to raw numbers. You only see what's in their monthly deck.
• Ad spend mixed into one fee. "€1,500 a month including ads" hides how much actually reaches Meta or Google.
• Long lock-in for untested work. A 12-month minimum before anyone has shown a single result.
• They can't explain their own work. If you ask why an ad was paused and the answer is jargon, the jargon is the answer.

It's also worth two minutes to look up the company in the Estonian Business Register: how long it has existed, who is behind it, and whether its annual reports are filed.

How do agency pricing models compare?

Agencies charge in four basic ways. None is always better; each shifts risk and incentives differently.

• Monthly retainer. A fixed fee for an agreed scope. Predictable for both sides and good for ongoing work. The risk: the scope drifts and you pay the same for less. Fix it by writing down what the fee covers.
• Project fee. A fixed price for a defined result, like a website, a launch or a brand identity. Clear, and easy to compare. The risk: everything outside the brief becomes an extra.
• Percentage of ad spend. The agency's fee grows with your budget. Simple, and it scales with the work to some degree. The risk: the agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not spending more is wise.
• Performance-based. The fee depends on leads, sales or another outcome. Sounds ideal. In practice it needs very clean tracking, an honest definition of what counts, and it tends to push agencies towards cheap volume over good customers.

Whichever model you choose, ask for ad spend and agency fee as separate lines. That's the only way to know what you're paying for the work.

How Pilgud works

We'd rather you put us through the same questions, so here are our answers upfront. Pilgud is a Tallinn company with two ways to work.

• You own your accounts. Ad accounts, pixel, analytics and pages stay in your name; we work with partner access.
• Ad spend is paid to the channels directly from your own payment method, and we never mark it up. Our fee is a separate line.
• Prices are public. Starting prices for our human team are on our marketing agency's services page: single services such as Meta ads from €290 a month or a landing page from €590, with no minimum term; bigger packages and guerrilla are quoted per project.
• The agent is the cheaper start. Pilgud Agent reads your website, studies competitors' ads, writes ad copy, makes image and video ads and builds Meta and Google campaigns that stay paused until you approve them with a click.

We're a small senior team, not a 40-person house, and that's deliberate. If you have questions we haven't answered here, the FAQ covers more, or write to us.