Thinking of Changing Your Marketing Agency? Think Again
Why you need to look internally before changing your marketing agency
Agency spend is up 45% year-on-year. Your sales team claims they’re not getting enough qualified opportunities. The agency presents monthly reports showing improved metrics. Your first instinct: find a better agency.
I see this a lot. MDs ready to fire their agency when the real issue isn’t the agency at all.
Before you start interviewing new agencies, the most important question isn’t “What’s wrong with our agency?” It’s “Do we actually understand our own sales pipeline? And closely followed by, have we aligned that with the agency and given them a good enough brief?”
The issue isn’t that agencies are trying to mislead you, or do a bad job, quite the opposite I suspect. Most agencies genuinely want to deliver results. The problem is that most do not understand sales and without clear direction about what business success looks like, they default to measuring what they know how to measure.
The Real Problem
Most businesses change agencies when they should be examining their own sales process first.
Recently, I worked with an MD convinced by his sales team that his agency was the problem. His agency presented improving engagement metrics and cited “increased competition driving costs.” Sales pointed to longer conversion cycles and questioned prospect quality. Neither measured what connected agency activity to business revenue.
Traffic was up, costs were rising, but sales weren’t improving. He was preparing to tender the account when I encouraged him to look at what happened after someone contacted the business.
The issue wasn’t traffic quality. It was that nobody had mapped what “qualified opportunity” actually meant or tracked how marketing inquiries moved through their sales process.
It turned out the agency was optimising their marketing efforts around keywords and products which were not appropriate, and when an inquiry came in, the receptionist was “qualifying” every inquiry, inbound phone and email, before passing it to sales. You can imagine how that went. The agency had likely been generating good inquiries, who knows.
He could see the numbers weren’t adding up. But rather than blaming the agency, I encouraged him to get specific: did he need an agency at all, and if so, what did he actually want them to deliver?
This led to an overhaul of the sales process, simplifying it and a marketing cost saving and redirection of his existing agency. The result was a refocused and re-invigorated agency, due to better teamwork and shared goals. We don’t have time to cover all of it in this piece – I’ll write about it in a separate article.
Neither side was wrong. They were just operating with different definitions of success.
The Google Problem
Google has done a remarkable job educating marketers. They understand that numbers matter. They can click a button and generate sophisticated reports. They speak fluent analytics.
The challenge is that Google’s educational programme naturally focuses on what Google can measure. When businesses don’t specify what they want to track, agencies fill the gap with the data they have.
Your agency arrives with certifications, best practices, and attribution models, tools they genuinely believe will help your business. They can generate impressive reports instantly and have been trained to optimise based on these metrics.
When you ask about business results, they respond with platform performance because that’s the framework they know: “Cost-per-click is down 15%, quality score is improving.” When you ask how that translates to sales, they explain what they can measure: “upper funnel influence” and attribution models.
They explain sophisticated customer journey mapping because they’re trying to connect their data to your business outcomes. They discuss upper funnel awareness driving bottom funnel conversions because that’s the logical framework they’ve learned.
The issue isn’t intent, it’s that meanwhile, your sales opportunities may be deteriorating. I have written another article all about Intent here
Why Agencies Focus on Platform Metrics
Google deserves credit: they’ve made measurement accessible to an entire profession. Agencies can generate sophisticated reports and optimise campaigns based on data rather than guesswork.
The challenge is that most businesses haven’t defined what success looks like beyond “more sales.” So agencies fill this measurement gap with the sophisticated tools and frameworks they know, all of which happen to be designed around what Google can measure.
When traffic increases don’t generate more enquiries, agencies naturally look to the next logical step in their framework: “Your website needs optimising.” There’s often truth in this diagnosis, many websites genuinely aren’t optimised for conversion.
But it also reflects the limitation of working within platform-focused frameworks rather than business-focused measurement. The question “are we driving the right traffic in the first place?” requires different data than what most agencies are set up to provide.
This creates the perfect deflection mechanism: when traffic increases don’t generate more enquiries, agencies can point to conversion problems rather than traffic quality. The question “are we driving the right traffic in the first place?” requires different data than what most agencies are set up to provide.
The Warning Signs
Google certification as credibility Monthly presentations emphasise the agency’s Google Partner status and adherence to “best practices”, all developed by Google to drive Google’s revenue.
Platform metrics dominate reporting Reports focus on impressions, clicks, and website sessions while providing vague connections to actual sales opportunities.
Circular justification for spend increases When costs rise, the explanation involves Google’s algorithm changes or increased competition, never questions about whether the approach drives business results.
The website optimisation suggestion When you point out that increased traffic isn’t generating more enquiries: “Your website needs optimising for conversions.” There’s usually truth in this, many websites genuinely aren’t optimised. But it also reflects the limitation of working within platform-focused frameworks.
What Gets Ignored
Most agencies can’t tell you:
- How many agency-generated inquiries result in qualified sales conversations
- What percentage of agency spend connects directly to closed business
- Whether increased costs correlate with improved lead quality or just platform inflation
- How agency-sourced opportunities perform compared to other lead sources
Without shared measurement frameworks, agencies maintain impressive platform performance while businesses struggle to understand return on investment. Both parties are trying to do their best with different definitions of success.
What to Examine First
Before changing agencies, get clear on these fundamentals:
Your conversion process How many marketing inquiries actually get properly followed up? How quickly? By whom? With what process? Most businesses discover their “lead quality problem” is actually a lead handling problem.
Your qualification criteria What makes a good prospect for your business? Can your sales team articulate this clearly? If your sales team can’t define a qualified lead, how can your agency generate them?
Your measurement gaps Where do marketing inquiries disappear in your sales process? Most businesses can tell you how many people visited their website but can’t tell you how many of those turned into sales conversations.
Your sales capacity Are you actually set up to handle more qualified opportunities? Sometimes the constraint isn’t marketing effectiveness, it’s sales process effectiveness.
The Internal Audit
Walk through your current process:
Of last month’s marketing inquiries, how many received follow-up within 24 hours? How many received follow-up at all? How many turned into qualified sales conversations? How many of those conversations turned into proposals? How many proposals closed?
You might find that your “lead quality problem” is actually a lead handling problem, not because of poor lead quality, but because of poor lead handling.
I worked with a professional services firm convinced their agency was generating poor leads. The reality: 40% of inquiries never received any follow-up. Of those that did, average response time was five days. The “lead quality problem” was actually a business process problem.
Working Together on What Matters
Before your next agency review, prepare to have a collaborative conversation about business outcomes.
Start by asking: “Can we work together to understand how last month’s spend connects to opportunities currently in our sales pipeline?”
This isn’t about catching them out, it’s about establishing shared measurement that both sides can work toward.
Ask if they can help calculate the true cost per qualified sales opportunity – not website conversion or form completion, but actual sales conversation. If they can’t provide this immediately, work with them to develop this measurement.
If they don’t have access to this data, that’s your starting point for better collaboration, not evidence of agency failure.
Get Your House in Order First
Define what you actually need Instead of “more leads,” be specific: “We need 20 qualified sales conversations per month that result in at least 4 proposals.” Work backwards from there.
Map your current performance Track every marketing inquiry from first contact to closed business. Identify where the biggest drop-offs occur. Often it’s not at the marketing stage.
Fix internal processes Improve lead response times, qualification processes, and follow-up systems before asking for more volume.
Create shared language Ensure marketing and sales agree on what constitutes a qualified opportunity. If your internal teams can’t agree, your agency certainly can’t deliver.
When to Keep Your Agency
Most agencies can deliver what you need, once you’re clear about what you need.
Your current agency understands your business, knows your market, and has established systems. Before throwing that away, try giving them clearer direction about business outcomes rather than platform metrics.
Start agency meetings with business requirements: “We need X qualified conversations at Y cost per conversation.” Then work backwards to marketing tactics.
Many agencies will welcome this clarity. They want to deliver business results but often default to platform metrics because that’s what they can measure and control.
When to Change Your Agency
Change agencies only after you’ve sorted your internal processes and can clearly articulate what success looks like.
If your agency can’t adapt to business-focused measurement after you’ve provided clear direction, then it’s time to find one that can.
But agencies who struggle with platform-focused briefs often excel when given specific business outcomes to optimise for.
Don’t fall out with your current agency over this. Likelihood is that you have a notice period anyway. Just recognise that you got it wrong, not them, you probably didn’t give them clear enough direction about what business success actually looks like.
And If You’re an Agency – I’m Not Letting You Off the Hook
While most agency problems stem from unclear client direction, agencies have a responsibility to do better, and to understand their clients, elevating the conversation beyond platform metrics, even when platform metrics are the most detailed data available to you.
You likely don’t want to lose your client and want to do a good job for them. You will already know this, most agency relationships work best as genuine partnerships where both sides are committed to business results rather than just fulfilling a brief.
Yes, Google provides incredibly sophisticated data that’s often more detailed and reliable than what clients can offer. But your job is to bridge that gap, not just default to what’s easiest to report upon.
Ask the hard questions upfront Don’t accept vague briefs like “we need more leads.” Ask: “What does a qualified lead look like for your business? How many do you need per month? What’s a qualified lead worth to you?” If they can’t answer, help them figure it out before you start spending their money.
Help clients improve their measurement If their internal data is poor quality compared to Google’s, help them fix it. You can’t optimize for business outcomes if the business can’t measure them properly.
Audit client processes first Before optimising their marketing, understand what happens to inquiries once they arrive. How quickly do they get followed up? By whom? With what process? You can’t improve lead quality if you don’t know how leads are currently being handled.
Challenge the brief When a client says “generate more traffic,” push back: “Let’s define what success looks like in business terms first.” Help them work backwards from revenue targets to marketing activity.
Report on business outcomes Yes, platform metrics are easier to track and more detailed, but they’re not what clients actually care about. Work harder to connect your detailed Google data to their business outcomes, even if their measurement systems are less sophisticated.
Educate, don’t just execute Help clients understand their own conversion process. Many don’t realise their “lead quality problem” is actually a lead handling problem. You’re in a unique position to spot these gaps.
Be brave with recommendations If a client’s sales process is broken, tell them. If their website isn’t optimised for conversion, say so. If they need more sales capacity before more marketing activity, recommend that first.
The best agency relationships are partnerships where both sides focus on business results rather than platform performance.
Why This Matters
The businesses that get great results from agencies are those that understand their own sales process first.
They can tell their agency exactly what a qualified lead looks like, how many they need, and what they’re worth. This gives agencies clear targets to optimise for rather than vague instructions to “generate more traffic.”
Your agency wants to deliver results that matter to your business. But if you don’t understand your own conversion process, you can’t direct them effectively.
Most agency problems are actually business process problems in disguise. Fix your internal processes first, then give your agency clear direction about what you need them to deliver.
The question isn’t whether you need a better agency. The question is whether you understand your business well enough to direct any agency effectively.
