5 questions to ask a UK social commerce agency before you sign

What to take away

Why provenance checks come before a pitch meeting

A pitch meeting is a sales environment. The agency controls the room, the deck and the pace. Vetting questions move the conversation onto ground you control: public records, named referees and written terms.

UK buyers have an advantage most markets lack. Company information is public, advertising claims are regulated and consumer law gives you remedies. Use that before you sign anything.

Provenance matters more in social commerce than in most marketing hires. An agency typically gets access to your ad accounts, product catalogue, payment integrations and customer data. If it disappears, changes hands or subcontracts the work, your storefront goes with it.

Ask the five questions below in order. Each one is cheap to answer honestly and awkward to answer dishonestly. That asymmetry is the point.

If you want a wider frame for reading the answers, our guide to provenance, incentives and outcome maths sets out how reviews and case studies should be weighed against each other.

Question one: what do Companies House records show about the agency

Ask for the registered company name and number at the start of the conversation. Not the trading name on the website. The registered name.

Then search Companies House records yourself. It takes two minutes and it is free. You are checking identity and filings, not creditworthiness.

What to look for

A pattern of late filings is not proof of bad work. It is a signal about administration. Agencies that file late often invoice late, report late and hand over assets late.

Watch for a mismatch between the entity you are contracting with and the entity that holds the platform certifications. If the pitch team belongs to one company and the contract sits with another, ask why in writing.

The three-entity check

If all three match, move on. If any one differs, get an explanation before the second meeting.

A dormant company with an active website is a common arrangement among lead-generation intermediaries. It is not automatically a problem, but it changes who is liable if the work goes wrong.

Our wider subcontractors to a proven exit walkthrough covers how to extend this check to freelancers and white-label partners the agency plans to use.

Question two: which client references can be contacted directly

Ask for three referees from the last eighteen months. Ask for contact details you can use without the agency in the room.

An agency that offers only a logo wall, or referees who must be reached through the account director, has not answered the question. Logos are marketing assets. Referees are evidence.

What a useful reference call covers

Ask each referee the same questions and note the answers. Divergence between three accounts of the same agency is more informative than any single rave review.

Prefer referees who have left. A former client has no incentive to flatter, and their account of the exit tells you what yours will look like.

Reference call checklist

If the agency cannot supply three contactable referees, treat that as a material finding rather than a scheduling problem.

Question three: how is claim wording evidenced and approved

Social commerce pitches are full of numbers: revenue lifted, return on ad spend doubled, followers tripled. Ask what sits behind each figure.

Claim wording evidence means the raw source: a platform dashboard export, an analytics screenshot with dates, an order report, or a ruling that resolved a dispute. If the number cannot be traced to a source, do not repeat it in your own board papers.

The wording itself carries legal weight. In the UK, advertising claims are judged under the CAP Code, and the ASA publishes ASA sanctions against advertisers and agencies that breach it. An agency with a sanctions history is a compliance risk you inherit.

Consumer protection and competition law sit with the Competition and Markets Authority, which also publishes consumer protection guidance for businesses covering online sales practices. Read it before you approve any claim about price, urgency or availability.

Worked example: a claim that fails the test

An agency proposes a case study headline: "Cut cost per acquisition by 60% in ninety days." You ask for the source.

What you need to see: the account, the date range, the spend and conversions before and after, and what else changed in that window, such as a discount or a seasonal peak. If the 60% came from a two-week burst during a sale, the headline is not a forecast for your account.

What you should approve instead: "In a fourteen-day promotional window in November, with a 30% discount running, cost per acquisition fell from the client's baseline." Boring, accurate and defensible.

Influencer and creator content needs its own wording check. Disclosure must be clear, prominent and early, and the agency should be able to show you the approved wording for every paid post. Our pre-launch checklist for posts covers the disclosure points UK brands most often miss.

Questions to put in writing

Question four: who owns the accounts, data and creative on exit

This is the question that decides how painful leaving will be. Ask it before the contract is drafted, not at renewal.

Ownership should be settled on five asset classes: ad accounts, pixels and tracking, product catalogues and feeds, creative files, and customer data. Each needs a named owner and a stated handover format.

The default positions to avoid

Any of these can be fixed at signature. Almost none can be fixed cheaply afterwards.

Exit terms to agree in writing

UK GDPR sits with the Information Commissioner's Office, and customer data is the asset most often mishandled at exit. If the agency cannot describe where your customer data lives and how it is deleted, that is your answer.

Ask for the exit clause as a standalone document you can read without the rest of the contract. If it only exists as a paragraph inside a wider services agreement, ask for it to be extracted and explained.

For a structured way to compare providers on this dimension, see our method for using route ownership and repeatable proof when scoring shortlisted agencies.

Question five: what happens when a platform or rule changes mid-contract

Social commerce runs on platforms that change terms, fees, features and enforcement without much notice. A contract that assumes stable conditions is a contract that will be renegotiated badly.

Ask the agency to describe a specific change from the past year and what it did. Vague answers about agility are not evidence. You want the sequence: how they found out, who they told, what they changed and when.

The scenarios worth testing

For each, ask what the agency does in the first seventy-two hours, who contacts you, and whether that work is inside the retainer or billed separately.

Change-response steps to require

Regulatory change is not hypothetical. The Online Safety Act 2023 places duties on user-to-user platforms regulated by Ofcom, and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 reshapes consumer enforcement. Both affect how social selling is run in the UK.

If you want to see how providers are tested on this kind of responsiveness, our notes on how to test providers properly explain the scoring approach.

Scoring the answers and setting a decision record

Score each question out of five and keep the sheet. A simple total is enough, provided the notes explain the reasoning.

Treat any score below three as a stop, not a caution. Two weak answers across different questions usually point to the same underlying problem: thin administration.

The decision record

Write one page and date it. Record who asked each question, what was supplied, what was missing and who signed off. Store the Companies House search, the reference notes and the exit clause with it.

This record does three things. It gives you a defence if the engagement goes wrong. It gives a new marketing lead the reasoning behind the choice. And it makes renewal a comparison against a baseline rather than a memory test.

Re-run the checks at renewal. Company status, directors, referees and platform terms all change. A vetting pass from two years ago is history, not assurance.

Common questions