How to tell if your marketing agency is working

Start with results, not activity

Most agency updates are easy to skim and easy to feel good about. There were posts, there were impressions, there were hours logged against your account. All of that is activity, and activity isn't the same as a result. The question that actually matters for your business is simpler: are you getting more of the customers you want, at a cost that makes sense, because of the work you're paying for?

Before you can judge an agency, you have to name the result you hired them for. For most service businesses that's qualified enquiries: the calls, forms and messages from people who could realistically become customers. Agree that definition up front, in plain words, and everything else on the report becomes context for it rather than a substitute for it.

Keep one honest caveat in mind. Marketing rarely acts alone. Your prices, your response time, the season and word of mouth all move the numbers too. That's a reason to look at trends over months and to talk through what changed, not a reason to accept a report that never mentions enquiries at all.

What a useful monthly report includes

A good report is short, honest and written for you rather than for another marketer. It should let you answer three questions in a couple of minutes: what happened, what it cost, and what's next. If you finish a report knowing how many posts went out but not whether enquiries went up, the report is measuring the wrong thing.

You don't need a fifty-page dashboard. One clear page a busy owner can read, backed by access to the real accounts, beats a thick report full of charts nobody opens.

• Enquiries, not just clicks. How many genuine enquiries came in, and ideally how many looked like a good fit. Clicks and impressions can sit alongside this, but they're the supporting cast.
• What each enquiry cost. Total spend divided by enquiries gives a cost per enquiry you can compare month to month, and against what a customer is worth to you.
• Where they came from. A simple split by channel, for example Google, Meta ads or referrals, so you can see what's pulling its weight.
• What changed and why. The two or three things the agency actually did this month, and what moved as a result. This is where you learn whether they understand your account.
• What's planned next. A short list of what they'll try next month and what they expect from it, so next month's report has something to check against.
• A way to see the source numbers. You should be able to log in to your own ad and analytics accounts and see the same figures, not just a slide the agency made.

Keep readingMeasure enquiries, not just clicks

Vanity metrics vs numbers you can act on

A vanity metric is one that reliably goes up and rarely helps you make a decision. Impressions, reach, follower counts and likes are the usual suspects. They aren't worthless as background, but on their own they don't tell you whether the phone is ringing. If a number can look great in a month where you won no new work, treat it as context, not proof.

The numbers you can act on connect effort to money. The core set is small: qualified enquiries, cost per enquiry, and, where you can track it, how many enquiries turn into paying customers and what they're worth. Those let you answer the only question that funds the next campaign, which is whether the work brings back more than it costs.

Here's an illustrative example, with round numbers to show the shape rather than a promise. Say you spend $2,000 in a month and get 20 enquiries. That's $100 an enquiry. If four of those become customers and an average job is worth $3,000, the work returned $12,000 in sales for $2,000 in spend. Now the impression count is just interesting background, and the enquiry and job numbers are what tell you to keep going. Run the same sum in a month with two enquiries and no jobs, and you'll know to ask harder questions.

Give the work a fair chance

New marketing needs a runway before its numbers mean much. Paid campaigns go through an early period where the platform is still learning who to show your ads to, and results bounce around before they settle. Search work compounds slowly, so a page published this month may not earn its enquiries for a few. Judging either in the first fortnight tells you almost nothing.

Set a fair window with milestones instead of open-ended patience. Agree what good progress looks like at, say, 30, 60 and 90 days, and what you'd expect to see by the end of a quarter. That gives the work room to mature while still holding it to account. Seasonality matters too: a quiet January for a pool builder isn't the same signal as a quiet January for a tax agent.

Attribution is the last piece of honesty here. No tool perfectly links every sale back to the ad or search that started it, so treat the reported source of an enquiry as a good estimate rather than gospel. A grounded agency will tell you where the numbers are solid and where they're educated guesses.

Keep readingHow the Meta ads learning phase works

Signs that should worry you

Some warning signs are about performance, and those often fix themselves with time or a better campaign. Others are about how the agency operates, and those deserve a direct conversation. The clearest ones:

One red flag on its own might just need a conversation. Several together, especially guarantees plus secrecy plus no account access, is a pattern, and a reason to check who owns your accounts and plan your options.

• Guaranteed results. Be wary of anyone promising a set number of leads or a specific ranking. For SEO, Google is blunt that "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" and says to "Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings." The same caution applies to bold promises on any channel.
• Claims they can't back up. Under Australian Consumer Law, any claim a business makes "must be accurate, truthful and based on reasonable grounds," and "A business must be able to prove any claim they advertise." If an agency can't show the basis for a big promise, that's your answer.
• Secrecy about the work. Google's own advice is to "Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do." You don't need to follow every technical step, but you're entitled to a plain explanation of what you're paying for.
• No access to your own accounts. If you can't log in to the ad account, analytics or business profile that carry your history, you don't really control your marketing. That's worth fixing before it becomes a problem.
• Reports that never mention enquiries. Months of impressions and activity with no line for actual leads usually means the leads aren't there to report.
• No answer to what changed. A capable agency can tell you what it did and why in plain words. Vague, shifting explanations are a sign the account isn't being actively managed.

Run a short, regular review

You don't need a formal audit to stay on top of an agency. A short, regular review does most of the work. Once a month, come with the outcome you agreed on and walk through a handful of questions. Keep it to fifteen minutes and make it a habit, not an ambush.

A good agency welcomes this. Clear questions and an agreed definition of success make their job easier too, because everyone is aiming at the same result. If a review like this consistently gets defensiveness instead of answers, that tells you as much as any chart.

• How many genuine enquiries did we get, and how does that compare to last month?
• What did each enquiry cost, and how does that sit against what a customer is worth to us?
• What did you change this month, and what happened because of it?
• What are you trying next, and what do you expect from it?
• Where are these numbers solid, and where are they estimates?