How to work with a marketing agency and monitor its performance

How to prepare for working with an agency

Before signing a contract, it’s worth organizing a few things on your side. It’s not mandatory, but it makes life much easier for both you and the agency.

Ideally, you should have:

• clear business goals (sales, leads, inquiries, bookings),
• a rough idea of your acceptable cost per acquisition / cost per lead,
• access to tools (Google Ads, Meta Ads, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, CRM, etc.),
• an understanding of your sales process—what happens after a lead submits a form, how fast your team responds, who closes the deal.

The better you describe your business, the more likely the agency will propose actions that genuinely make sense—instead of offering a “boxed solution” disconnected from your margins, sales cycle, or seasonality.

What a good agency should clarify with you at the start

At the start of the collaboration, the agency should ask very specific questions—not just about your ad budget. A reliable agency will ask about:

• your goals (exactly how many leads, what level of sales, which products/services matter most),
• your priorities (fast growth, higher margins, seasonal peaks),
• your marketing history (what was tested, what worked, what failed, which campaigns you’ve already tried),
• your constraints (budget, product availability, team capacity).

Based on this, the agency should prepare a real action plan, not just say: “we’ll run Google Ads and social campaigns.” A good sign is when the agency:

• maps out a simple funnel with you (how a user should move from first contact to sale),
• identifies data issues that need fixing (e.g., GA4 setup, tags, conversions),
• openly states that the first weeks are for testing—not guaranteed spectacular results.

Access and account ownership – the foundation of transparency

If you want to truly monitor your agency’s performance, you must have full access to your advertising and analytics accounts. This is not optional—it’s essential.

In practice, this means:

• Google Ads, Meta Ads, GA4, GSC accounts created under your business—not the agency’s,
• the agency receives access as a partner (manager), not the owner,
• you can log in anytime to check campaigns, budgets, and performance.

If someone proposes a model where “the agency owns the account, and you only get a monthly PDF,” walk away. Without access, you will always depend solely on their interpretation of the results.

Which reports you can (and should) demand

A good report is not a slide with the number of clicks and a chart of impressions. A good report is a decision-making tool. Depending on the channels used, a proper report should include:

• ad performance broken down by campaigns, ad groups, and channels (Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn, email, etc.),
• funnel segmentation (e.g., sales-focused vs awareness-focused campaigns),
• cost overview (total spend, CPC, cost per conversion),
• business outcomes (number of leads, number of sales, revenue, ROAS where applicable),
• period comparisons (MoM, YoY where appropriate),
• comments and insights explaining what happened, what worked, what didn’t, and what will be done next.

If a report is merely a spreadsheet or a few screenshots from Google Ads without any interpretation, it’s useless. You have every right to ask for a report that is:

• easy to understand for someone responsible for business outcomes,
• based on data but clearly explained,
• connected to an action plan for the next period.

Which metrics actually matter

You may see dozens of metrics when working with an agency: impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, CPM, reach, frequency, bounce rate, session duration… It’s overwhelming. What really matters to you is:

• cost per inquiry / lead / phone call,
• quantity and quality of leads (can your sales team close them?),
• number of transactions and revenue generated,
• ROAS / profitability if that data can be tied to ads,
• trend over time – are results getting better or staying inconsistent?

Advertising metrics like CTR or CPC matter, but mainly for the specialists optimizing campaigns daily. As a business owner or marketing leader, your priority is whether ads help you reach your business goals—not whether CTR improved by 0.3 percentage points.

Positive signs that your agency is doing a good job

Collaboration runs smoothly when:

The agency communicates with you regularly
– fixed check-ins (monthly or bi-weekly),
– you receive reports before meetings,
– there’s time for your questions and joint interpretation of performance.

You know what’s happening in your campaigns
– the agency informs you about major changes (new campaigns, tests, strategy shifts),
– you are notified in advance when tests may temporarily affect results.

You learn something after each meeting
– you understand why something works or doesn’t work,
– the agency explains things clearly instead of hiding behind jargon.

You see progress in data
– maybe not explosive growth immediately, but a consistent path: tests, pausing weak elements, strengthening what works,
– overall improvement over the mid- and long-term, not just in “one lucky month.”

The agency handles difficult conversations
– they can say: “this channel/product isn’t performing; let’s shift the budget,”
– they don’t promise “always growing charts,” but discuss risks honestly.

Warning signs – when a red flag should go up

Here are several indicators suggesting you should take a closer look at the cooperation:

• No access to accounts – you only get a monthly PDF and cannot check anything yourself.
• Reports without meaningful commentary – lots of numbers, zero insights, no plan.
• “We can’t show this, it’s our secret” – vague answers to basic questions about performance.
• Constant excuses blaming the algorithm without proposing solutions.
• No testing at all – campaigns look identical month after month.
• No interest in your business – nobody asks about margins, priorities, seasonality, or availability.

If several of these appear together, consider getting an external audit or having a strategic conversation with the agency.

The role of an audit in agency collaboration

An audit is not “fault-finding for sport.” It is primarily:

• a neutral assessment of what has been done so far (what made sense, what didn’t),
• an evaluation of how efficiently the budget was spent,
• a technical review (tracking, GA4 setup, tags, conversions),
• clear recommendations for future improvements—regardless of whether you stay with the same agency or not.

Very often, an audit alone uncovers a few simple adjustments that strongly improve results and budget efficiency.

How we work at Marketing Online

At Marketing Online, we approach client relationships as partnerships rather than “campaign management.”

In practice, this means:

• we work on your accounts (you are the owner; we are granted access),
• we begin with an audit of current activities and analytics,
• we set goals together and review them regularly through reports—not guesswork,
• our reporting is clear, data-driven, and enriched with actionable insights,
• we adapt to changes in your business (new products, seasonality, priorities),
• we offer both campaign management and training if you want to understand your accounts better.

We can help you by:

• managing your advertising campaigns (Google Ads, Meta Ads, and more),
• preparing a comprehensive marketing audit of your current campaigns,
• training you or your team so you feel confident in any agency conversation.

A good agency is never afraid of an informed client. In fact, someone who understands basic metrics, looks at data through a business lens, and asks concrete questions makes it easier to build a meaningful long-term strategy. Monitoring an agency’s performance is not about logging into accounts daily and obsessively checking numbers. It’s about having clarity about goals, transparent reports, regular communication, and readiness to adjust when something isn’t working. When these elements are in place, working with an agency stops being a “cost” and becomes a genuine investment in your company’s growth.

➡️ Read also: How to combine Meta Ads with Google Ads campaigns? - Most companies start with a single channel: either Google Ads or Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram). That’s natural – it’s easier to manage one platform, one invoicing system, one reporting source. The problem is that your users don’t live in just one channel. They might see an ad on social media, later type your brand name into Google, and finally come back via remarketing. Only when Google Ads and Meta Ads work together do you start seeing the full picture and better sales performance. As an agency, we run both Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns for our clients and also train in-house teams on both systems. Thanks to this, we see which mistakes are most common and how dramatically the results change once the channels are managed together instead of in separate silos.