How to Audit Your Marketing Agency's Results Yourself

You hired an agency to grow the business. Every month, a report arrives with charts and percentages. Do you know whether it is true?

You do not need to be a marketer to find out. Here is how to audit your marketing agency’s results yourself, in an afternoon.

Why audit your marketing agency results at all?

Because reports describe what the agency chose to show. A good agency welcomes questions and checks. A weak one avoids them. An audit protects your money and starts honest conversations, even when results are good.

Auditing is not an accusation. It is ordinary management, like checking a bank statement.

What should you check first?

Ownership and access. Confirm that the ad accounts, analytics, tracking tags, website and CRM are in your name, and that you have admin access. If any account is owned by the agency, ask to move it, and get it in writing.

Without access, you cannot check anything else, and you may lose your data and history if you leave.

How do you check that tracking works?

By testing it. Submit a form and make a call from a test device, and see whether the event appears in your analytics and in the ad platform. Google explains in its guide to conversion tracking how conversions are counted, and you can check which actions are set as conversions.

Look for double counting and vanity conversions, such as page views counted as leads. Ask what each tracked action means and why.

How do you compare the report with your own data?

Line them up. Take the agency’s report for last month: leads, calls, bookings, sales. Compare with your CRM, phone records, booking system and bank. The numbers should be close, and differences should be explained.

Call a sample of leads from the report. Ask whether they enquired, what they wanted and what happened. This tells you about quality in a way no dashboard can.

What do you look at in the ad accounts?

Three things. The search terms report in Google Ads shows what people searched before they clicked. Irrelevant terms mean wasted spend, and negative keywords are the usual fix. The conversion settings show what the account is optimising for: Google explains in About Smart Bidding that automated bidding uses your conversion data, so a weak goal means weak results. And the budget and spend history show what changed and when.

If you run Meta ads, check the audience, placements and the events sent through its Conversions API.

Are the right outcomes connected to the ads?

Ask whether real sales are sent back to the platforms. Offline conversion imports let Google learn which clicks became customers. If your agency only optimises for form fills, you may be paying for volume that never buys.

Ask what they plan to do about it. An agency that wants your sales data is working toward revenue.

What about speed and follow-up?

Check your own side too. The Harvard Business Review study The Short Life of Online Sales Leads found that firms replying to web leads within an hour were far more likely to qualify them than firms who waited. If your team replies slowly, even excellent leads will look poor, and the agency will be blamed for a problem that sits inside your business.

How do you judge the claims?

By evidence. The Federal Trade Commission’s advertising basics say that claims must be truthful and backed by evidence. Apply that to the agency’s statements about results: what is the source, what is the period, what is the comparison and what else changed?

Be careful with percentages. A 200 percent increase from a very small number is not a big result. Ask for absolute numbers.

What questions should you ask in the review?

Use the same list every time.

• What did we spend, and what did it produce in qualified leads, meetings and revenue?
• What changed since last month, and why?
• What did you test, and what did you learn?
• What will you do next month?
• What is not working, and what is your plan?

Write down the answers, and compare them over time.

What do good reports look like?

They are short, clear and checkable. A good report states spend, qualified leads, meetings or bookings, pipeline and revenue for the period, compares them with the last period and explains changes in plain words. It lists what was tested and what was learned, and what will happen next.

It also admits what is not working. If every report is glowing, ask what is missing. Good agencies are comfortable showing problems, because they come with a plan.

What if you find problems?

Stay calm and specific. Share the evidence, ask for an explanation and a plan, and agree a deadline. Many issues come from misunderstandings or poor set-up and can be fixed. If the agency refuses access, cannot explain the numbers or hides information, consider an exit, and check the contract’s notice terms first.

Keep copies of reports and data, so that you can move to another provider without starting from zero, and note the date and the reason for each decision, so that the record is clear if you need to refer back to it later.

How do you keep the habit?

Put a monthly review in the calendar. Keep the checklist in one place. Share the results with your team, and give the agency a chance to respond. Over time, the agency learns that you check, and the quality of reporting usually rises.

What should you do first?

Check ownership and access this week. Then pick one month and compare the agency’s numbers with your own. Call ten leads. Write down what you find, and share it with the agency in a calm, factual way.

For related reading, see marketing agency red flags, questions to ask a PPC agency and how to choose a marketing agency. See also our go-to-market strategy service, or book a free growth diagnostic and we will go through your reports with you.