Hiring marketing help is where a lot of authors get burned, partly because the field has almost no barrier to entry and partly because the results are harder to see than a cover or an edit. Knowing how to hire a book marketer comes down to telling the people who do the work from the people who are good at the sales call. A polished website and a confident pitch prove very little. The questions below cut through both, and they are the same ones I would want a client to ask me.
What exactly is included, and what is not?
“Book marketing” means wildly different things to different providers. One person’s package is social captions, another’s is ads management, another’s is a launch strategy and nothing hands-on. Ask for the deliverables in writing: what you receive, how often, and where the line is between their job and yours. If the scope is fuzzy on the call, it will be fuzzy in the invoice. That is where resentment on both sides starts.
Can you show me comparable work and how you measured it?
Ask for examples in your genre and, more importantly, ask how they judged whether it worked. A marketer who only talks about likes and impressions is measuring the easy things. Someone who talks about newsletter signups, also-boughts, review counts, or sales rank is measuring what moves a book. You are not looking for a guarantee of results, which nobody honest will give. You are looking for someone who knows what a result even is.
What do you need from me to do this well?
Good marketing is a partnership. The best providers pull you in rather than taking your book and working in silence. A strong marketer will tell you what they need from you: your blurb, your buy links, your ARC list if you have one, access to your accounts, and a realistic sense of your time. Someone who says they need nothing from you is either doing very little or about to speak for your brand without understanding it.
Do you understand my genre and my readers?
Romance readers, thriller readers, and literary readers are found in different places and moved by different things, and a tactic that works in one lane falls flat in another. Ask how they would reach your specific readers, and listen for genre-specific answers rather than a generic content calendar. A marketer who cannot describe your reader cannot find them.
What happens if it is not working?
This is the question most authors are too polite to ask. It is also the most revealing. A professional has a plan for the campaign that underperforms: what they check first, what they change, and how they will tell you. Someone who cannot imagine the campaign underperforming has either not run many, or will go quiet the moment one does. You want the person who has already thought about the bad month.
How do you charge, and what does the commitment look like?
Get the money clear before you commit: retainer or project fee, what a typical engagement length is, and how notice and cancellation work. Marketing rarely produces results in two weeks, so some minimum commitment is reasonable, but you should know exactly what you are agreeing to. A clear, plainly explained contract is itself a good sign about how the working relationship will run.
The pattern underneath the questions
Across every one of these, the tell is the same: someone who does the work can answer in specifics, and someone who sells the work answers in adjectives. This is the third of the three big hires most authors make, and the questions rhyme with the other two. My guides to what to ask before you hire a cover designer and what to ask before you hire an editor use the same test, and indie vs traditional vs small press covers how much marketing each path leaves on your shoulders.
If you would rather start with what you can do yourself before you hire anyone, my breakdown of Facebook ads vs Amazon ads for authors and my guide to building an ARC team are two good places to begin.