This is one of the questions I get asked most often, usually from business owners who've been with an agency for six months or a year and have a nagging feeling that something isn't right. They're getting reports. They're seeing numbers. But enquiries haven't gone up, sales haven't improved, and when they try to ask a direct question they get a complicated answer that doesn't quite answer it.
I've had this conversation with businesses from across North Wales and beyond. The details vary but the pattern is consistent: reports full of metrics, meetings full of optimism, and a commercial outcome that hasn't moved. The framework below will help you work out whether you're in that situation.
Let me give you a framework for working out the answer and be honest about what the warning signs look like.
The difference between activity and results
Most agency reporting covers activity. Here's what we did this month: we published four blog posts, ran three campaigns, sent two emails, updated your Google Business Profile, built six backlinks. All of that is measurable, and measuring it is easy. Whether any of it moved the needle for your business is a different question, and it's harder to answer because it requires connecting marketing activity to business outcomes.
Activity is not results. Writing four blog posts is activity. Those blog posts ranking on page one for terms your customers search and generating enquiries is a result. Running a Google Ads campaign is activity. Generating phone calls at a cost you can afford is a result.
The question to ask yourself: does your monthly report show you what changed in your business, or does it show you what the agency did? If you removed all the numbers from the report and replaced them with "we did stuff," would the report still make sense? If yes, you're being reported on activity, not performance.
Red flags in agency reporting
There are patterns in reporting that consistently signal a problem. Here are the most common ones.
Impressions and clicks are front and centre, but leads aren't mentioned. Impressions (how many times your ad or page appeared) and clicks (how many times someone clicked) are intermediate metrics. They matter as context, but they don't tell you whether you made money. An agency that leads with impressive-looking impression numbers is often doing so because the conversion data is less flattering.
The report is a PDF you can't interact with. If you receive a nicely designed PDF each month with charts and numbers but no way to drill into the data, ask why. Proper reporting should link to or come from the actual platforms: Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, your email platform. A polished PDF that can't be verified is a presentation, not a report.
There's a reason agencies send PDFs: it's much harder to ask difficult follow-up questions when the data is a screenshot rather than a live dashboard you can explore yourself. If your agency is confident in their performance, they should have no issue giving you direct access to the underlying data.
You don't have access to your own accounts. This is a serious one. Your Google Ads account, your Google Analytics, your Search Console, your social media ad accounts: these belong to you. If your agency manages them, you should still have owner-level access. If they've set up accounts in their own agency dashboard and you can't log in independently, that's a significant problem. If you ever leave that agency, you may lose all your historical data.
Rankings are reported without context. "You're now ranking for 50 keywords" sounds good. But if none of those keywords generate any search volume, or if they're variations of your brand name that you'd rank for anyway, that number means nothing. Ask which keywords drove actual traffic, and from that traffic, how many enquiries came in.
Month-on-month comparisons are used to hide poor year-on-year performance. December compared to November will always look worse. Summer compared to spring will look better for some businesses and worse for others. An agency that consistently uses month-on-month comparisons rather than year-on-year is often burying a longer-term trend.
What good reporting actually looks like
Good reporting is specific. It tells you what changed in your business, not just what the agency did. Here's what I'd expect to see in a useful monthly report.
The key business metrics first: leads generated, calls tracked, enquiries via the website, bookings, purchases. Whatever the conversion events are for your business, they should be at the top.
Then the channels that drove those conversions, with cost where relevant. If Google Ads generated 12 leads at an average cost per lead of £45, that's useful. If SEO generated 8 organic enquiries, that's useful. If email generated 3 bookings, that's useful.
Then what's being done about underperforming areas. If one campaign isn't working, what's the plan? If a page has lots of traffic but no conversions, why? Good agencies are honest about what didn't work and specific about what they're changing.
And finally, a clear recommendation for next month. Not just "we'll continue to optimise," but a specific action with an expected outcome.
The three questions to ask your agency
If you want a quick way to test whether you're getting real value, ask your agency these three questions directly. The quality of the answers will tell you a lot.
What specifically improved last month, in terms of business outcomes, not marketing metrics? A good agency can answer this in two sentences. If the answer is "well, we saw some positive movement in impressions and engagement across channels," push again.
What didn't work last month, and what are you changing because of it? Good agencies talk about what didn't work because that's how they improve. If everything is always going well, either you have an extraordinary agency or they're not being honest with you.
What's the single most important thing you're doing next month and why? If they can't tell you this, they don't have a clear plan.
Vanity metrics vs business metrics
This distinction is worth being explicit about. Vanity metrics look good in a report and feel encouraging but don't connect to business outcomes. Business metrics tell you whether the marketing is actually working.
Vanity metrics include: page impressions, follower counts, reach, engagement rates, number of keywords ranked, click-through rate in isolation, email open rate in isolation, number of posts published. Business metrics include: cost per lead, number of leads or enquiries, revenue attributed to a channel, return on ad spend, conversion rate, year-on-year growth in organic traffic to key pages.
None of the vanity metrics are completely useless. But they should support the business metrics, not replace them.
You should own your data
Before anything else, make sure you have owner-level access to every platform your agency manages. Log in to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console. Check that the accounts are in your name or your business's name, not the agency's. If you're not sure how to do this, ask your agency to walk you through it. A legitimate agency will have no issue with this.
If they're reluctant, or if they tell you the accounts are "agency managed" and you can't have direct access, that's a problem. Not necessarily a sign of dishonesty, but a structural issue that puts you in a weak position if the relationship ends.
What to do if you're not getting straight answers
If you've asked the questions above and the answers were vague, or if your agency reacts defensively to being asked about results, that tells you what you need to know.
You're not being unreasonable. You're paying for a service and asking whether it's working. That's a straightforward question that deserves a straightforward answer.
If you're considering a change, read questions to ask a digital marketing consultant before you start talking to new providers. And if you're weighing up whether to go with a freelance consultant or another agency, freelance digital marketer vs marketing agency covers that comparison honestly, including when an agency is the right choice.
If you'd like a second opinion on what your current marketing is actually achieving, get in touch and I'll give you an honest assessment, not a pitch. I work with businesses across North Wales on website design in North Wales and broader digital strategy, and a clear-eyed audit of what your current marketing is producing is always the right starting point.
