How to Choose a Marketing Agency for Your Firm
Choosing a marketing agency comes down to three things: whether they understand your sector, who will actually be doing the work, and whether their way of working suits your firm. Ruche is a retainer-based marketing agency built specifically for law firms and professional services firms, with a director personally involved in every account.
Get those three things right and the rest, pricing, contracts, reporting, tends to follow. Get them wrong, and you’ll likely be having this same conversation again within the year.
Picking an agency can feel like a bit of a leap of faith. Every website says roughly the same thing: strategic, results-driven, a genuine partner. It’s really hard to tell what any of that actually means until you’re a few months in and either delighted or regretting it.
Below are the questions worth asking before you sign anything, and what we think good answers sound like.
What should you actually look for in a marketing agency?
Look past the pitch and focus on fit. Does the agency understand your sector? Will senior people stay involved once the contract’s signed? Does their way of working, retainer or project by project, match what you actually need? A slick case study is easy to produce. Consistent delivery month after month is harder, and that’s what you’re really buying.
How do you know if an agency understands your sector?
Ask what else they work on. An agency that splits its time between law firms, restaurants and e-commerce brands will give you generalist advice dressed up as strategy. A specialist agency for law firms and professional services firms already understands your compliance constraints, your client base and what actually moves the needle for firms like yours, without you having to explain it from scratch.
Should you choose an agency or a freelance consultant?
It depends how much you need done and how much of it you want to manage yourself. A freelance consultant can work well for a single, well-defined project, but you’re relying on one person’s time and skillset for everything. An agency gives you a full team covering strategy, content, design and delivery, without you having to coordinate several freelancers and hope they talk to each other.
If you’re also weighing up whether to outsource at all versus building in-house, it’s worth working through that question first. The answer changes what you should be asking any agency or freelancer you speak to.
How do you find out who'll actually be doing the work?
Ask directly, and ask again once you’ve signed. Some agencies sell you time with senior people during the pitch, then hand your account to whoever’s free once the contract’s live. At Ruche, one of our two directors, Rachel Craig or Karen Macwee, is your account manager from day one and stays hands-on with the work, not just the sales meeting.
What questions should you ask before signing anything?
A short list, but worth working through properly:
- Who exactly will be working on our account, and how senior are they?
- What’s included in the fee, and what counts as an extra?
- How is success measured, and how often will we hear about it?
- What happens if it isn’t working after three months?
Any agency worth appointing should have clear, straightforward answers to all four.
How much should you expect to pay?
It varies with scope, but as a guide, a genuinely full-service retainer tends to start from a few hundred pounds a month and scale with what’s included. Be wary of quotes that seem unusually low. Someone still has to do the work, and if the price doesn’t reflect that, the quality usually doesn’t either. We’ve written more on what a realistic marketing budget looks like for a law firm if you want to dig into the numbers.
Does Ruche work as an agency or a consultant?
Both, depending on what you need. Every marketing retainer with Ruche is led personally by one of our directors, who acts as your main point of contact and stays involved throughout, not just at the pitch stage. If you’d rather test the fit on a single project first, get in touch and we can talk through what would work best.
Talk to us
Get in touch and we’ll talk it through properly. No pressure, no jargon, just an honest conversation about what your firm actually needs.
Award Winners for Four Years Running
- 2023 to 2026
SME News Business Elite Awards
- Content Marketing Agency of the Year Manchester 2026
- Best Legal & Professional Services Content Marketing Agency 2025
- Content Marketing Agency of the Year North West 2024
- Best Content Marketing Agency Manchester 2023
