How to Audit Your Marketing Agency in 30 Minutes

Who owns your ad and analytics accounts?

Log in to Google Ads, Meta Business Manager and Google Analytics. If you cannot, or you are only a viewer, that is your first red flag. The business should be the account owner, and the agency should be a partner with delegated access.

Ownership matters because the account holds your history: audiences, conversion data, keyword performance. If an agency owns it, that history leaves when they do, and you restart from zero.

Ask for admin access today. A confident agency will grant it within a day and explain how they use their delegated seat. If you hear that access is complicated, or that it is against policy, treat that as the answer to your question.

Can your agency name your cost per paying customer?

Not cost per click or cost per lead. Cost per paying customer is total spend divided by customers who actually paid. If your agency cannot give you this number, or a clear plan to calculate it, they are reporting activity rather than results.

Ask for it by channel. A blended figure hides the channel that is quietly burning budget while another carries the whole result.

A simple example: if you spent ₹60,000 last month and won 12 paying customers, your cost per paying customer is ₹5,000. If your average customer pays you ₹4,000, you are losing money on every sale before overheads, whatever the click numbers say.

Does the monthly report mention revenue?

Open last month's report and search for the words revenue, sales and customers. If they do not appear, the report was designed to show effort, not outcomes.

Impressions, reach and followers are inputs. They are worth tracking only when you can show how they connect to money in your bank account.

Ask for a one-page view with spend, leads, customers and revenue side by side. If the agency cannot produce it, ask which part of the chain they cannot see. The gap tells you where the measurement is broken.

What has your agency stopped doing?

A good partner cuts what does not work. If nothing has been paused, reduced or killed in the last quarter, nobody is really looking at the numbers.

Ask directly: what did you stop, why, and what did that save? A specific answer, such as pausing a campaign with a rising cost per customer, shows real analysis.

Also ask what they would cut next if your budget dropped by a third. Partners who know your numbers answer instantly. Partners who report activity hesitate, because every line item looks equally important when nothing is measured against revenue.

How do you score the audit?

Give one point for each question your agency answers clearly: ownership, cost per customer, revenue reporting, a recent cut, a testing plan and a clean exit. Five or six means a healthy partnership. Three or four means have a frank conversation. Two or fewer means start planning a transition.

Still unsure? Our free growth audit walks through all of this and tells you honestly, even if the answer is that your agency is fine.

Write the score down with the date. Repeating the audit each quarter turns a vague feeling about your agency into a trend you can discuss calmly and, if needed, act on.