Agency Accountability

How do I know if my marketing agency is actually working?

You get a monthly report full of green arrows and you still cannot tell whether the money is working. That is not your failure to understand the numbers. It is usually a reporting choice — metrics selected because they move, rather than because they matter.

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The tell

Six questions that settle it

Ask these in your next call. The answers, and the discomfort, tell you most of what you need.

▸What did a signed client cost us last month? Not cost per lead, cost per client. An agency that cannot answer this is not measuring the thing you are paying for.
▸Which channel produced our best clients? Best, not most. If every channel gets equal credit in the report, the attribution is last-click and it is crediting the wrong thing.
▸What did you stop doing this quarter? Good agencies kill things that do not work. An agency that only ever adds line items is optimising its own revenue, not yours.
▸What would you do if our budget were halved? The honest answer names the one or two things actually working. Vagueness here means nobody knows.
▸Show me a prospect's path from first click to signed. If nobody can trace one real example end to end, the funnel is not instrumented and the reporting is decoration.
▸What do AI assistants say about us? Ask ChatGPT who the best firm in your city is. If your agency has never checked, they are not measuring a channel your prospects already use.
The pattern

Reports that measure the wrong things

Certain metrics rise reliably while revenue does not. Their presence at the top of a report is itself information.

01

Impressions and reach

Almost always rising, almost never meaningful. Impressions are the cheapest number to grow and the least connected to revenue.

02

Traffic without conversion

More visitors to a page that does not convert makes the problem larger, not smaller. Traffic growth alongside flat enquiries is a diagnosis, not a win.

03

Leads without qualification

A lead count that excludes whether leads were any good measures volume of noise. Ask what percentage became clients.

Answers

Common questions

?How do I know if my marketing agency is working? Ask what a signed client cost last month, which channel produced your best clients, and what they stopped doing this quarter. An agency producing results answers immediately. An agency producing reports will redirect to traffic and impressions.
?Should I fire my marketing agency? Usually the more useful question is whether the problem is execution or the strategy underneath it. Agencies are generally built to execute a channel they already sell, so if the brief is wrong, replacing the agency reproduces the problem with new logos.
?What metrics actually matter? Cost per acquired customer by channel, the percentage of leads that convert, and revenue attributable to each channel. Impressions, reach, traffic and raw lead counts can all rise while revenue falls.
?Is it normal to not understand my marketing reports? It is extremely common, and it is usually a reporting design problem rather than a comprehension problem. A report you cannot act on has failed regardless of how it is presented.
Go deeper

Related reading

→My marketing agency isn't delivering results
→Internet marketing consultant
→Why isn't my advertising working?

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