Most agency relationships do not end because of one bad month. They end because a pattern went unaddressed for long enough that the client stopped expecting it to change.
Three patterns show up almost every time.
1. Reporting that never reaches revenue
The first sign is reporting that only talks about clicks, impressions, and reach - with no line connecting spend to revenue.
Those numbers are not wrong, they are just upstream of anything that matters. Reach went up is a statement about the ad platform. It is not a statement about the business, and an agency that cannot connect the two is either not measuring or would rather not show you.
2. No test has been proposed in months
The second is an agency that never proposes a test. If every monthly call sounds the same, nothing is actually being optimized.
Optimisation is a sequence of things tried, kept or discarded. If nobody can tell you what was tested last month and what it showed, the account is being maintained rather than improved - and maintenance is not what you are paying a percentage of spend for.
- Ask what was tested in the last 60 days
- Ask what the result was and what changed because of it
- Ask what is being tested next and why that one
Three questions, and the answers tell you almost everything.
3. Accountability that always points elsewhere
The third is accountability that always points elsewhere - the market, the offer, the season - never the strategy itself.
Sometimes it genuinely is the offer or the season. But a partner who is right about that will have said so before the results came in, and will have proposed something to do about it. The version that only appears afterwards, as an explanation, is not analysis.
A good partner tells you the offer is the problem in month one. A bad one tells you in month nine, when it is also the reason the results are poor.
What it usually means
If two or more of these sound familiar, it's usually not a budget problem. It's a partner problem - and increasing the spend against the same pattern tends to produce a larger version of the same result.
Frequently asked questions
- How long should I give a new agency before judging?
- Long enough to see a test cycle, which for most accounts is two to three months. But you can judge the working relationship much sooner: whether they ask about your margins, whether they propose tests, and whether reporting reaches revenue are all visible in the first month.
- What if the results are bad but the reporting is honest?
- That is a very different situation, and often worth staying in. An agency telling you clearly what is not working and what they intend to do about it is doing the job; the problem in this article is the absence of that, not the presence of a bad month.
- Should I switch agencies or bring it in-house?
- It depends on whether you can hire the specific skill you are missing and keep it busy. Paid media and creative testing need constant attention; if there is not enough work to occupy someone full-time, that skill decays in-house.
- What should I ask before signing with a new agency?
- What they would test first and why, how they will connect spend to revenue, and what they would need from you to do it. An agency that cannot answer the third question has not thought about how the reporting will actually work.
Notes from the team running paid media, funnels, and growth systems for Platino Sol clients every day.