If Your Agency Still Talks About "Digital Strategy," It's Time To Find A Better Partner
Five questions to find the agency partner that helps you achieve your revenue and customer objectives in a Post-AI world.
"Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for human intelligence; it is a tool to amplify human creativity and ingenuity." - Fei-Fei Li
The phrase "digital strategy" isn't just outdated - it's a red flag that your agency partner doesn't understand what winning looks like in 2025. Digital isn't a strategy anymore; it's like having an “electricity strategy”. You shouldn’t be paying $1,500-2,500 a month for someone to explain why you need a website that works on mobile phones.
You need a partner who can build systems (it’s not complicated - but it needs new skills) that help you move faster than your competition, capture opportunities as they emerge, and scale without burning through your budget, and leaving you with uncertain $ impact.
The Five Questions That Reveal Your Partner's True Capabilities
The next time you're evaluating an agency partner, these five questions will quickly separate the ones who can help you win from the ones who will just consume your budget. Their answers will tell you whether they're building the future or just talking about it.
1. "How do you automate decision-making?"
If they say "we monitor KPIs and provide recommendations," that's not a winning system - that's expensive consulting. Winning requires systems that make decisions automatically: reallocating budget between channels, adjusting bids based on predicted performance, and optimizing campaigns without waiting for human input.
The right answer sounds like: "Our system automatically reallocates your $5K monthly ad spend between channels every six hours based on predicted performance. Last month, it shifted budget from Facebook to Google three days before our other clients caught the trend."
2. "Show me an AI workflow you built - not a report."
Reports are what agencies create when they don't have real systems to show you. If your potential partner is still generating weekly “report dashboard”, they're not equipped to help you win. You need to see actual workflows - the bots, agents, and automated systems that run 24/7 without human intervention.
The winning agencies can screen-share their actual tools during your meeting, showing you systems that are making decisions right now, while you're talking.
3. "Where do humans still matter in your process?"
This question reveals whether they understand the difference between strategic work and operational work. Agencies that help you win have automated everything that can be automated, reserving human intelligence for what actually moves the needle: creative breakthroughs, strategic pivots, market insights, and high-stakes decisions that require intuition.
If humans (aka interns) are still manually adjusting ad spend, creating performance reports, or doing basic optimizations, you're paying premium rates for work that machines do better.
4. "How do you test autonomous systems?"
Static A/B tests made sense when decisions happened monthly. But winning requires continuous optimization and systems that improve themselves. Your agency partner should be running multivariate tests that adapt in real-time, learning from every interaction and getting smarter without human training.
If they're still talking about "test-and-learn" methodologies with monthly reviews, they're not built for the speed that winning requires.
5. "What's your fastest feedback loop?"
If it's longer than 24 hours, they can't help you win. Markets move fast, opportunities emerge and disappear quickly, and competitive advantages come from acting on information before it becomes common knowledge.
Winning agencies measure feedback loops in hours, not days. Their systems adjust spending every few hours, optimize creative in real-time, and identify opportunities as they emerge.
The Real Impact: Before vs. After AI Automation
The difference between agencies stuck in "digital strategy" mode and those building intelligent systems isn't just philosophical - it shows up directly in your results. Here's what the performance gap actually looks like across key metrics:
This isn't about replacing human creativity or strategic thinking. The best agency partners use automation to eliminate busy work so they can focus entirely on the strategic and creative challenges that actually drive growth. When they're not stuck building monthly reports, they can spend their time solving the problems that separate winners from everyone else.
What to Look For
If your current agency can't demonstrate these capabilities with live systems and working demos, you need a partner who can. The businesses that win aren't the ones with the most sophisticated digital strategies - they're the ones with the best systems for turning plans into results.
The right agency partner doesn't just execute your digital strategy. They build the systems that make strategy obsolete by creating competitive advantages that adapt and improve automatically.