Your marketing agency's report looks good.
They'll always find a way to dress it up. The ROAS is up, the cost per click is down, or the reach is impressive. And yet something doesn't add up. You don't notice it immediately in your revenue, but your gut tells you something different from what the agency's report says. The growth they promised isn't materialising. When you ask questions, you wait a while for an answer. And when you finally get one, it comes wrapped in buzzwords and good vibes. So that's fine then, right?
I wrote this article as a reference for people who need to scrutinise digital agencies but don't always understand every detail themselves. But also as a foot in the door for when you need a second opinion on your marketing reports, whether they come from an agency or in-house.
I go through the most commonly used metrics or numbers in digital marketing: what gets measured, how a digital marketer can put a positive spin on it, and how you can question the KPI. It's easier to show what seems to be working than to hide what isn't. A number that looks like success for a marketing agency doesn't always translate into success for your business.
"It's easier to show what seems to be working than to hide what isn't."
ROAS: Return On Advertising Spend
What it measures: the ratio between what you spend on marketing and the revenue that comes out of it. It usually refers to the marketing costs of one specific source.
How it can be manipulated:
Branded campaigns are included in the numbers. Branded campaigns, campaigns that bid on searches containing your own brand name, almost always perform brilliantly. The people searching for your brand name are often already interested. The chance they'll convert is high, costs are low, and the ROAS looks spectacular. But would those people have found you anyway through organic search, without that campaign? Probably yes. What you're measuring is then largely revenue you would have had anyway. When branded and non-branded campaigns are reported together without a split, you can't judge the actual performance of your acquisition campaigns.
The attribution window is set too short or too long. Google Ads measures conversions within a window you set yourself. An agency that sets a 7-day window for a product with a 30-day purchase process reports a fraction of the actual impact. Conversely, a window that's too long can attribute conversions to campaigns that may have had nothing to do with them.
The attribution model in external reports differs from what the platform uses. Google Ads now uses data-driven attribution as the default. But many agencies report via Looker Studio, their own dashboards or GA4 reports where last-click is still the most common setting. Last-click gives full conversion credit to the last channel before the purchase, so organic traffic, for example, sometimes takes the credit from email campaigns, SEA and especially Social ads. Always ask which model is used in the report you receive, because that determines what you see.
Platform data isn't checked against actual revenue. Google Ads looks at what happens after the date of a click. You usually can't compare those numbers one to one with what happened in your till that same week. On top of that, a 'conversion' is sometimes something other than a purchase. It might be a lead, or someone who started a payment. If that doesn't translate into revenue, it's not worth much to you. An agency that only forwards platform numbers without comparing them to your actual revenue is showing you only half the story.
The question you ask: "Can you show the ROAS excluding branded campaigns? Which attribution model are you using in this report? Which conversions did you measure exactly? Is every conversion worth the same?"
Conversion rate
What it measures: the percentage of visitors or traffic that completes a desired action: a purchase, an enquiry, a sign-up.
How it can be manipulated:
Benchmarks used as a sales pitch. "Your conversion rate is 1.2% and the benchmark for your sector is 2.5%" sounds like a diagnosis. Yet a benchmark says nothing about who comes to your site, what you sell and at what price. A webshop selling expensive, complex products to a niche audience has a lower conversion rate than a webshop with twenty-euro impulse purchases. Framed like that, you seem to trail your competitors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
Traffic mix is ignored. When campaigns reach new, cold audiences, for example people who don't know your brand yet and are comparing options, the conversion rate drops. Logically: more cold visitors on your site automatically means a lower percentage that converts straight away. I've seen consultants audit a website several times while ignoring a changed traffic mix in their advice on a falling conversion rate.
Micro-conversions are used to hide macro-results. In some sectors you can't measure actual purchases, for example with large purchases or when a sales conversation has to happen first. Then you measure leads, catalogue downloads, newsletter sign-ups and so on. The context you miss then: are all these micro-conversions of good quality? I've seen a paid campaign generate lots of leads without a single good one among them. When I switched it off, our lead conversion rate suddenly dropped a lot, but the conversions we got were far better.
The question you ask: "Based on what data do you conclude our conversion rate is too low? What's the traffic mix? How do you decide what counts as a good lead?"
CTR
What it measures: the percentage of people who click on an ad after seeing it.
How it can be manipulated:
High CTR without intent. A CTR of 8% looks impressive. But if those clicks come from a broad audience that clicks out of curiosity and buys nothing, it's of little use to you. CTR tells you how well the ad appeals. Whether the people who click are also buyers, it doesn't tell you. A provocative ad can attract clicks, but that doesn't always mean it carries the right message for the audience that buys.
CTR is used to compensate for poor conversion numbers. When conversions disappoint but CTR is high, the focus shifts to "the ads are performing well, the problem is the website." Maybe that's true. It can also be a way to shift responsibility for the result.
Average CTR hides what's happening. A campaign with ten ad groups can have an average CTR of 5%, while two groups are at 15% and eight groups at 1%. Those two groups pull the average up. The question is which groups are converting.
The question you ask: "What's the correlation between CTR and conversion rate in the campaigns? Which clicks lead to results?"
Cost per click and CPM
What it measures: CPC is what you pay per click. CPM is what you pay per thousand impressions.
How it can be manipulated:
Low costs are sold as efficiency. "Our CPC has dropped from €1.80 to €0.90" sounds like good news. But if those cheaper clicks come from a broad, less relevant audience that doesn't convert, you've gone backwards. A low price per click says little as long as you don't know what those clicks deliver.
Cheap reach is easy to buy. With broad audiences and low bids you reach many people for little money. Some objectives can certainly be justified with a good CPM, but never on that number alone. Whether those people are relevant to your business is another question.
The question you ask: "What's the cost per actual conversion, broken down by audience segment? Which segments have a low CPC but no conversions?"
Impressions and reach
What it measures: how many people saw your ad, how many unique people you reached.
How it can be manipulated:
Impressions and reach are the easiest metrics to produce and the hardest to challenge. "We reached 2.3 million people" sounds impressive. And then?
When a campaign generates no measurable conversions, reporting shifts to reach and brand awareness. These can be legitimate objectives, but only if that was agreed upfront. Reach can have a place in the marketing funnel, but like every metric, it isn't a standalone KPI that can call a campaign a success or a failure.
The question you ask: "Upfront: what's our objective for this campaign, reach or conversion? If it's reach: how do we measure whether that reach is contributing to the business?"
Optimisation score and campaign health
What it measures: platform-specific scores indicating how well a campaign is set up according to the platform's own criteria.
How it can be manipulated:
What platforms suggest as actions to improve your campaigns isn't always an improvement for your campaigns. It makes me shudder every time I look into an account and see they've done exactly what Google suggests: put everything on broad match and let Google do the work.
"All our campaigns have an optimisation score of 100%" only proves they're set up the way the platform wants. I've seen campaigns with an optimisation score of 50% that perform ten times better than campaigns with a score of 100%.
The question you ask: "Aside from the optimisation score: what have these campaigns contributed to our revenue or leads in the past period?"
| KPI | What an agency says | What good reporting looks like |
|---|---|---|
| ROAS | "Our ROAS is 800%" | ROAS excl. branded, checked against actual revenue |
| Conversion rate | "The benchmark is 2.5%, you're at 1.2%" | Conversion rate per traffic source and funnel stage |
| CTR | "Our CTR is 8%, the ads are performing great" | CTR linked to conversion rate per ad group |
| CPC / CPM | "CPC dropped from €1.80 to €0.90" | Cost per actual conversion per segment |
| Reach | "We reached 2.3 million people" | Reach with context: who, and what did they do? |
| Optimisation score | "All campaigns are green" | Contribution to revenue or leads, regardless of platform scores |
| Guarantees | "We'll double your conversion rate" | Transparent approach, honest about what's possible and what isn't |
What results can you expect from a marketing agency?
Something I've come across during my career: agencies making promises they can't possibly keep.
A concrete example I've seen more than once. An agency promises to raise the conversion rate from 0.5% to 1% and presents that as doubling revenue. That sounds logical, but it's wrong in two ways.
The reasoning itself is too simplistic. Conversion rate depends on what's on your website or what happens there, and also on what type of people you attract. You can optimise conversion rate by improving your landing page or website, but you can also manipulate it by adjusting your marketing mix so you only keep the most purchase-ready visitors, and then you shrink at the top of the funnel. I wrote about this in more detail in the piece on conversion rate and what it does and doesn't tell you.
On top of that, many businesses need to work at the top of the marketing funnel. Where are the potential customers who don't yet know your business or solution? To reach them you need to target non-branded keywords, address new audiences, attract colder traffic. And cold traffic simply converts less quickly. What can then happen: the conversion rate drops. A falling conversion rate sounds very negative to people with a basic knowledge of digital marketing, but in this case it isn't the KPI that determines success.
Marketing is closer to philosophy than to an exact science. And that applies to every aspect. The focus here is on SEA, but it applies equally to SEO and Paid Social ads. An agency that guarantees results is lying, consciously or not. What an agency can promise: an approach, transparent reporting and honesty about what works and what doesn't.
"An agency that guarantees results is lying, consciously or not."
Also look in the mirror
So far this article has been about what an agency does wrong. But being honest also means I address the other side, because a collaboration works both ways.
Only in very rare cases can an agency make enormous differences within a few days. That has little to do with their quality; marketing simply works that way. If the time between a first point of contact and an actual purchase at your business averages six weeks, a two-week campaign simply hasn't had that time. I wrote about this in more detail in the piece on attribution windows and campaign evaluation.
The same applies to the context you provide as a client. If you hire an agency to grow non-branded traffic, but you don't tell them which search terms are relevant to your audience, which products or services you want to push, or what type of customer you want to attract, they'll fill that in themselves. And that will be generic, because they don't know your business as well as you do. I understand that as a client it's sometimes hard to give more direction on this. That's why I think it's important to properly understand the business, the objectives and the product when working on it.
When your gut tells you the approach is too generic
Sometimes it feels like the agency is telling the same story to every client, making the same recommendations, using the same structure. Gut feeling is just hard to defend in a meeting. What you can look out for:
The report could have been from another client. If you replaced the logo on the report with a competitor's, would the report still make sense? If the answer is yes, the report says nothing about your specific situation.
They cite benchmarks without context. Benchmarks are useful as a reference. If an agency only measures its performance against sector averages, it doesn't know your business well enough. Your own history and your objectives are the yardstick.
Watch how they answer when you ask a specific question. Ask one of the questions from this article. If they know your situation, the answer refers to your numbers and your campaigns. If not, you get an answer that could have come from a blog post.
You don't need to be an analytics expert to ask these questions. It's enough to expect that the numbers you receive help your business forward.
The checklist for your next meeting
- ROAS: "Can you show the ROAS excluding branded campaigns, and which attribution model are you using?"
- Conversion rate: "Based on what data do you say our conversion rate is too low?"
- CTR: "Which clicks lead to results?"
- CPC / CPM: "What's the cost per actual conversion per segment?"
- Reach: "How do we measure whether that reach contributes to the business?"
- Campaign health: "What have these campaigns contributed to our revenue or leads?"
- Guarantees: "What can you guarantee, and what can't you?"
- Before you sign: "What do you want to know about our business before you propose an approach?"
Do you have doubts about your marketing report?
Do you have doubts about your marketing report after reading this article? Whether it comes from an agency or in-house, I can serve as a second opinion.
Send me your question about your marketing report without any obligation, or let me look at it myself if you have general doubts. I don't charge anything in that observation phase. So if I find nothing wrong, it costs you nothing. If I do find something, it might be the start of a good collaboration and better marketing results for your business.