Agency problems
When your marketing agency isn’t delivering: how to judge and switch
Agency problems usually come down to three things: what gets measured, who owns the accounts, and whether you can see the work. All three can be checked in an afternoon.
Warning signs
- Reports show impressions, reach and clicks, and never leads or revenue
- You cannot log in to your own ad accounts, or they are in the agency’s name
- Nobody can tell you what changed in the account last month
- Complaints about lead quality always get the same answer: the algorithm needs time
- The fee rises with ad spend, whatever the results
- Leaving would mean losing your ad account history, your pixel or your website
- Your contact changes every few months, and each new one starts from zero
What to ask for, and what a good answer looks like
| Ask for | A good answer |
|---|---|
| Ownership of every account | Ad accounts, Meta business portfolio, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Search Console, Google Business Profile and domain in your company’s name, with the agency added as a partner or user |
| Access, today | Admin access for you, granted within a day, without conditions |
| A report in your numbers | Leads, qualified leads, booked appointments and revenue by channel and campaign, next to the cost of each |
| A change log | What was changed, when, why, and what happened after |
| Spend and fee apart | Platform invoices visible to you, and the agency fee on its own line |
| Your data | Leads, conversations and reports exportable at any time, in a usable format |
Before you blame the agency
Look at what happens after a lead arrives. If leads wait a day for a call, or nobody records which ones bought, no agency can show revenue, and none can fix that from inside the ad account. Lead handling may be the real gap.
Look at the brief. If it said “more traffic”, the agency may have delivered exactly that. Rewrite it in qualified leads, appointments and revenue before you judge.
And look at the clock. Paid campaigns show a direction within weeks; SEO takes months. Judge each one on its own timescale.
How a clean handover works
List every asset
Each account, tag, pixel, profile, domain, hosting plan and tool, with who owns it and who has access.
Take ownership first
Before giving notice, make sure your company is owner or admin everywhere. Ask for transfers where the agency holds an account.
Export the history
Reports, change logs, audiences, creative files and settings. If the ad accounts are yours, their history stays in them.
Overlap the teams
The new team gets access while the old one still runs things. Campaigns keep running; nothing is paused because the agency changed.
Record a baseline
The new agency measures the starting numbers for two to four weeks before rebuilding anything, so it can be judged fairly later.
Close the old access
Once the handover is done, remove the previous agency’s users and partner links, and change any shared passwords.
What we do when we take over an account
We ask to be added as users or partners on accounts your business owns. If an account sits in someone else’s name, getting it back comes before anything else.
The first two weeks are diagnosis: tracking checked, leads matched to sales, waste listed. We change little in that time, on purpose, so the baseline is honest. Then you get a ranked plan, and every month a report in qualified leads, booked appointments and revenue by source, with each lead tied to its campaign through revenue attribution. See how we report results and our approach.
Frequently asked questions
Who should own our ad accounts?
Your business. The agency works in them as a user or partner. If an agency created them in its own name, ask for a transfer; on Meta and Google it is a routine request.
Will switching agencies hurt our campaigns?
Not if the accounts are yours and campaigns keep running during the overlap. The damage comes from rebuilt accounts, deleted pixels and many changes made at once.
What should a monthly report contain?
Leads, qualified leads, appointments and revenue by channel and campaign, the cost of each, what changed and why, and what comes next. Our page on dashboards and reporting shows the format.
Can we leave in the middle of a contract?
That depends on the contract, so read the notice period and the clauses on accounts and data first. Ownership of your accounts should never depend on it.
How do we judge a new agency fairly?
Agree the numbers up front: what counts as a qualified lead, how revenue is attributed, and the baseline. Then judge the trend over the first full quarter, with analytics you can check yourself.
Last updated · By the Napexy team
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