The short answer
Judge an agency on three things: whether the business measure you agreed is moving, whether they can explain clearly what they changed and why, and whether you can see the work and the accounts yourself. Allow fair time — weeks for paid advertising, months for SEO — but expect clear, honest reporting from the first month.
In this guide
Most owners know something feels wrong before they can say what. The reports arrive, the calls happen, but enquiries don’t seem to change. Before deciding whether the agency is the problem, get clear on what you agreed and what you’re actually seeing.
Go back to what you agreed
A fair judgement needs a starting point. Find the goal, the measures and the baseline from when the work began. If they were never agreed, agree them now, in writing: which numbers matter, where they come from, and what good looks like in three and six months.
If you can’t find a baseline, use your own records — enquiries by month, sales, and what you spent — for the period before the agency started.
Five questions to ask
- What did you change last month, and why? A good agency answers specifically: “We paused these keywords because they produced no enquiries, and moved the budget here.”
- What’s working, and what isn’t? Anyone who reports only good news isn’t looking hard enough.
- What’s the plan for the next 90 days? You should hear priorities, not a list of routine tasks.
- Can I see it in the account? You should be able to log in to your own ad accounts and analytics and find what they describe.
- What do you need from us? Delays on your side — approvals, content, access — are a common reason for slow results. Better to hear it than to guess.
Read reports for results, not activity
| Mostly activity | Closer to results |
|---|---|
| Impressions, reach, followers | Enquiries, bookings or sales by channel |
| Rankings for chosen keywords | Visits and enquiries from search |
| Posts published, emails sent | Replies, clicks and sales from those posts and emails |
| Click-through rate | Cost per enquiry and cost per customer |
Activity metrics aren’t useless — they help diagnose problems — but they can all rise while sales stay flat. Ask for results metrics alongside them. What to measure in your marketing explains how to set them up.
Allow fair timescales
These are rough expectations, not guarantees, and they vary by market and competition:
| Channel | Early signs | Fair point to judge results |
|---|---|---|
| Paid search | Within the first few weeks | After enough clicks to compare cost per enquiry — often two to three months |
| Paid social | Within the first few weeks, while creative is tested | After several rounds of creative testing |
| SEO | Technical fixes and new pages in the first months | Usually six months or more |
| From the first sends | After a few months of regular sending | |
| Website changes | Within weeks of launch | Once enough visitors have seen the changed pages |
What shouldn’t take time is clarity. From the first month you should get a clear account of what was done, what was spent and what happened.
Is it the agency, or something else?
Poor results aren’t always the agency’s fault. Before you change supplier, rule out:
- The website — traffic arrives but visitors don’t enquire. See why a website gets visitors but no enquiries.
- Follow-up — enquiries arrive but aren’t answered quickly or well.
- Tracking — enquiries happen but aren’t recorded, so results look worse than they are.
- The offer or price — people look, compare and choose someone else.
- The market — seasonal dips, a new competitor, or falling demand.
Why your marketing isn’t bringing in enough enquiries walks through this chain step by step.
Raising it with the agency
Be specific. Share the numbers you’re watching and ask for a written plan to move them over a fixed period — often 60 to 90 days — with the measures you’ll use to judge it. A good agency will welcome the clarity. One that can’t produce a plan has told you what you need to know.
Leaving cleanly
If you decide to move on:
- Check your notice period and give notice in writing
- Confirm you have administrator access to every account in your business’s name
- Ask for copies of creative, copy, reports and any files you paid for
- Remove their access only after a handover, and change any passwords that were shared
How to choose a marketing agency covers how to avoid the same problems with the next one.
What to do next
- Find or agree the goal, the measures and the baseline you’ll judge against.
- Ask the five questions above and note which answers were specific.
- Log in to your own ad accounts and analytics and check you can see what’s being reported.
- Rule out the website, follow-up and tracking before blaming the agency.
Apply this to your business
Check your agency’s results
Share the latest report, or describe what you’re getting and what you’re paying. askBizly gives you a balanced verdict — what looks right, what’s unclear and what needs attention — and the specific questions to put to your agency.
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