How to Choose a Marketing Agency in Des Moines: 9 Questions to Ask Before You Sign (2026)

If you own a business in the Des Moines metro and you've started looking for marketing help, you've probably noticed that every agency says roughly the same thing. More traffic. Better rankings. A stronger brand. Then the proposal shows up and you can't tell what you're actually paying for, or how you'd know if it worked.

This guide is the checklist we'd want a friend to use. It covers what a local business should expect from a Des Moines marketing agency in 2026, the nine questions that separate the good ones from the expensive ones, and the red flags worth walking away from. We're a Des Moines marketing agency ourselves, based in West Des Moines, so our own answers are in here too. Hold us to the same list.

Start with the outcome, not the services

Most agency conversations start with a menu: a website, SEO, ads, social media, maybe video. That's backwards. The menu is the tools. What you want is the result: more calls, more booked jobs, more customers walking in.

So before you talk to anyone, write down three numbers:

1. How many calls, form fills, or bookings you get in a normal month.
2. How many of those turn into paying work.
3. What one new customer is worth to you over a year.

Those numbers do two things. They tell you what a fair marketing budget looks like, and they give you a baseline. An agency that can't be measured against your baseline is asking you to judge it on feel.

What a marketing agency should actually do for a local business

For most service businesses in Central Iowa (contractors, dentists, detailers, law offices, HVAC, landscapers), marketing comes down to three jobs.

Get found. When someone in Ankeny or Urbandale searches for what you do, you need to show up on Google, on Google Maps, and increasingly in AI answers from tools like ChatGPT. We wrote a full guide on how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT because that last one is changing fast.

Get chosen. Once they find you, they compare you. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97 percent of consumers read online reviews when choosing a local business. Your reviews, your photos, and the first few seconds on your website decide whether they call you or the next name on the list.

Get booked. This is the job most agencies skip. A lead that nobody answers is worth nothing. A 411 Locals study of small businesses found that 62 percent of their phone calls went unanswered. And timing matters: the MIT and InsideSales lead response study found that leads contacted within five minutes were about 21 times more likely to qualify than leads contacted after thirty.

An agency that only works on the first job will send you clicks. An agency that works on all three sends you customers. That's the whole difference, and it's the first thing to check.

The 9 questions to ask any Des Moines marketing agency

Take these into every sales call, including ours.

1. "How will we measure whether this is working?"

The answer should be calls, leads, and booked jobs, counted against your baseline. If the answer is impressions, reach, or "brand awareness," you're paying for activity, not results. Ask to see a sample of the report you'd get each month.

2. "What happens when a lead comes in at 9 p.m.?"

This one question tells you more than the whole pitch deck. Good answers involve an instant text back when you miss a call, an automatic reply to form submissions, and online booking so people can schedule themselves. "It sends you an email" means nobody is following up until you see it.

3. "Who owns the website, the ad accounts, and the Google Business Profile?"

You should. Ad accounts should be in your name, on your card, so the history stays with you if you leave. Your Google Business Profile should list you as the owner. If an agency holds these hostage, leaving gets very expensive.

4. "Is the price fixed, and what's the minimum commitment?"

Some agencies lock you into a 12-month contract before you've seen a single result. Others quote a range and bill whatever it ends up being. Look for a published price and a short minimum. A few months is reasonable, because search and reviews take time to build. A year up front, before anything is proven, puts all the risk on you.

5. "Do you mark up ad spend?"

If you run Google or Facebook ads, ask whether the agency takes a cut of what you spend. Some charge a percentage of spend on top of their fee, which means they earn more when you spend more, whether or not it's working. A flat management fee with spend paid directly to Google and Meta keeps the incentives honest.

6. "Can I see work you've done for a business like mine?"

Not a logo wall. A real site, a real search result, a real owner you could call. Be fair here: a newer agency may only have a few clients. What matters is whether the results they show are specific and checkable. Ours is the A-1 Auto Detailing case study: a Pleasant Hill detailer who went from page 2 of Google to #1 for "Pleasant Hill auto detailing," with a 5.0 rating from 180+ reviews. You can search it yourself.

7. "Who will I actually talk to?"

At large agencies you'll often meet a senior strategist on the sales call and an account manager after you sign. Ask by name who does the work and who answers when something breaks. A local owner you can meet for coffee in Valley Junction is worth more than a ticket queue.

8. "What do you guarantee, in writing?"

Nobody can honestly guarantee a #1 ranking, and you should walk away from anyone who does. Google doesn't sell those. But an agency can stand behind the result you care about. Ask what happens if things aren't better after the first few months. If the answer is "you keep paying," that's useful to know.

9. "What will this cost me per month, all in?"

Add it all up: the setup fee, the monthly fee, ad spend, add-ons, and anything billed hourly. Then compare it to the value of one new customer from your notes above. If two or three new customers a month would pay for the whole thing, the math works. If you'd need twenty, it doesn't.

Red flags to walk away from

• Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google's results.
• No price until a "discovery call" and a second "proposal call." That usually means the price depends on what they think you'll pay.
• Long contracts with no exit. Especially before any results.
• Reports full of numbers you can't connect to revenue. Impressions don't pay your crew.
• Accounts in the agency's name. Your website, domain, ad accounts, and Google profile should all belong to you.
• One-size-fits-all packages. A roofing company and a dental office need different pages, different searches, and a different first impression.

How Axeon answers these questions

Since we asked you to use this list on everyone, here are our answers.

We measure calls, leads, and booked jobs. Every plan includes a monthly calls and leads report. Our prices are published on the pricing page: every plan is $99 to start, then Essentials at $149/month, AxeonCORE at $299/month, or AxeonGROWTH at $999/month plus ad spend (the GROWTH setup is $1,500 because it covers an on-site video shoot). There's a 3-month minimum, then it's month to month.

Ad spend goes on your own card into your own ad account, with no markup. You own your site and your accounts.

On AxeonCORE and AxeonGROWTH, a missed call gets an instant text back, new leads get an instant call-back and automatic follow-up by text and email, and every lead lands in one list you can see. The full system is laid out on our growth engine page. If you mainly need a better website first, start with our Des Moines web design page.

And the guarantee, in writing, on AxeonCORE and AxeonGROWTH: more calls and leads in your first 90 days than you were getting before, or we keep working for free until you do. We set the baseline together on the kickoff call and track it from day one.

The bottom line

The right marketing agency for a Des Moines business is the one that can tell you, in plain numbers, how many more customers you're getting, and that owns the whole path from the first search to the booked job. Ask all nine questions. Compare the answers side by side. Pick the one that's easiest to hold accountable.

If you'd like our answers applied to your business, book a free call. Every call comes with a custom homepage mockup and a report on how your business shows up on Google and in AI answers, and both are yours to keep whether or not you hire us.