How do I know if my marketing agency is any good?
If you have ever sat through a monthly marketing report and come away none the wiser about whether it is actually working, you are not alone. It is one of the most common conversations I have with business owners across Derbyshire and the East Midlands. They are paying someone every month, the reports look busy, but nobody can say with confidence whether it is bringing in customers.
I have been doing this for 18 years, and I have sat on both sides of that conversation. I have taken over accounts from agencies that were technically doing their job but never proving it, and I have seen business owners waste years and thousands of pounds because nobody ever asked the obvious question. Is this actually any good?
This post covers the specific signs that tell you whether your marketing agency is delivering or coasting, and what to check before your next renewal.
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Get your free scorecardAre you getting results, or just activity?
The first thing to check is what your reports actually contain. A good agency reports on outcomes: enquiries, quote requests, bookings, cost per lead, revenue linked to a campaign. A weak one reports on activity: posts published, impressions, reach, "engagement".
Activity metrics are not meaningless, but they are not the point either. I worked with a joinery firm near Ripley that had been getting monthly reports showing steady growth in social media reach for over a year. Enquiries had not moved at all in that time. Reach was going up because the agency had increased ad spend, not because anything was converting.
If your reports are full of numbers trending upward but you cannot point to a business outcome, that is the clearest sign something is wrong. Ask directly: how many enquiries or sales came from this activity, and what did each one cost us. A good agency answers that without hesitating.
One good month means nothing without a benchmark
A single month of data tells you almost nothing on its own. Marketing has seasonality, and a lot of natural noise. What matters is the trend over three, six and twelve months, and ideally some sense of how you compare to others in your industry or your local market.
This is a big part of what the test and measure pillar of our BIG12 framework is built around. Without a proper baseline, an agency can dress up almost any result as a win, and you have no way to challenge it.
Ask your agency to show you the trend line, not just the latest snapshot. If they cannot produce that easily, they probably are not tracking it properly in the first place.
Can they explain the strategy in plain English
Ask your agency to walk you through exactly why they are doing what they are doing, and what they expect it to achieve. A good one will give you a clear, specific answer. A weak one reaches for jargon.
Jargon is often a cover for no real plan
I have sat in enough of these conversations to know the pattern. When there is a genuine strategy behind the work, people can explain it simply, because they understand it themselves. When the answer is vague or full of buzzwords, it usually means the activity is happening because it is what they always do, not because it was chosen for your business.
A Derbyshire accountancy firm I worked with had been told for two years that their previous agency was "building brand awareness through content". Nobody could tell them what that actually meant for new client enquiries. Once we mapped their actual goals against the BIG12 framework, it became clear the content had never been connected to a lead generation plan at all.
What proper measurement actually looks like
That same accountancy firm went from guessing at their marketing to tracking cost per enquiry monthly against a clear baseline. Within two quarters they had cut their cost per new client enquiry by nearly a third, simply by knowing what to measure and acting on it.
See how test and measure worksIs there a plan, or just a stream of tactics
A social post here, a boosted ad there, an occasional email newsletter. If the work feels like a list of separate tactics rather than parts of a connected plan, that is worth challenging. Good marketing has a thread running through it: clear goals, a roadmap, and each piece of activity tied back to that roadmap.
This is exactly why we built the BIG12 framework in the first place, after 18 years of watching Derbyshire and East Midlands businesses get sold isolated tactics with no strategy holding them together. Twelve pillars, from lead generation and SEO through to CRM and follow-up, each one connected rather than sitting in isolation.
Are they testing and adjusting, or repeating the same playbook
Marketing that never changes despite flat or falling results is one of the clearest signs of an agency coasting on a retainer. Platforms shift, audiences shift, and what worked eighteen months ago rarely works exactly the same way today.
Ask what they have tested in the last quarter and what they changed as a result. If the honest answer is nothing, you are paying for maintenance, not marketing.
Do you actually feel like a priority
This one is less about numbers and more about how it feels. Slow responses, generic advice that could apply to any business in any industry, no real knowledge of your local market or your competitors. These things matter as much as the reports do.
A good agency working across Derbyshire and the East Midlands should know your local competitive landscape, not just your industry in the abstract. If every recommendation feels like it was written for a business in a different country with a different customer base, that is a sign you are not getting proper attention.
Where this fits into the bigger picture
Everything above maps onto the twelve pillars in our BIG12 framework. Reporting on outcomes rather than activity sits under test and measure. A connected plan rather than scattered tactics sits under strategy and brand. Knowing your local market sits under local marketing. When an agency is genuinely good, you tend to see strength across most of these pillars at once. When they are coasting, you usually find the gaps cluster in the same two or three places.
See exactly where your marketing stands against all 12 pillars
The BIG12 Scorecard takes ten minutes and gives you a clear picture of where your current marketing, whether in-house or agency-run, is strong and where it is falling short.
Get your free scorecardThe challenge is never learning. It is doing.
Most business owners already sense when something is not working. You do not need this post to tell you that the reports feel hollow or that nobody can explain what is actually happening. The harder part is knowing what good looks like, and then finding the time to actually check for it.
That is the gap I see most often after 18 years doing this. Owners across Derbyshire know their marketing should be doing more, but between running the business day to day, nobody sits down and audits it properly. It sits there, half working, for years.
That is where a proper external check earns its keep. Not another agency pitch, just an honest look at what is happening now, measured against a clear framework, so you know exactly where you stand.
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