"I might as well just put the money in a bin and set fire to it."
That's a sales trainer with twenty years in the business, describing every marketing agency they've hired.
They'd spent more than £20,000 on marketing help in two years. They got "nowhere near" that back.
One team charged them £5,700 over three months. They got one meeting out of it. (To that team's credit, they gave the money back.)
I hear some version of this on most of my sales calls. A training firm owner who spent about £25,000 and made zero sales. An advisor who paid for meetings with people who never showed up. An executive coach who paid a marketer who stopped answering, then vanished along with their company.
I run an advertising agency, so I'm the last person you'd expect to write this post.
But I'd rather you hear it from me than learn it the expensive way.
The ads usually aren't the problem
When someone tells me "we tried ads and they didn't work," I ask what happened.
The answer is almost never about the ads themselves. It's about how the agency was set up to get paid.
A lot of agencies charge a monthly fee, called a retainer, whether or not you get a single new client. So their job, from a money point of view, is to keep you paying the retainer. Not to get you clients.
Those are not the same job.
Claude Hopkins wrote the book on measurable advertising a century ago, and he didn't leave much room for argument:
The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.
Not clicks. Not "brand awareness." Sales.
Any agency that can't tell you how its work turns into sales for YOUR business is going to waste your money. Here's how to spot one before you sign.
1. They pitch before they understand your business
The president of a leadership development firm said something on our first call that I haven't forgotten:
"Very rarely do people try and understand what we're doing because they want to give me a solution without listening to the problem. They want to get to the pitch."
If the first call is mostly them talking about themselves, their packages and their dashboards, they're going to run the same playbook for you that they run for everyone.
Ask: "Before you tell me what you'd do, what do you need to know about my business?"
2. They report activity, not results
Same president, describing their last agency: "they think that they're going to tell me how many clicks we got last month and I'm going to be impressed... clicks doesn't matter."
Here's what those report words mean:
- Impressions are how many times your ad was shown. Somebody scrolling past counts.
- Clicks are how many people tapped it.
- Leads are people who typed in their name and email.
None of those is a client. All of them are easy for an agency to make look good.
Ask: "What will you report to me every month, and how does each number connect to new clients?"
3. They run everything in their own account
Every ad runs from an ad account. It's where you pay Facebook or Google, and it keeps the record of everyone who ever saw your ads, clicked them or filled out a form. Over time, that record is what makes the ads cheaper and better.
An advisor told me they'd worked with two different agencies and never once had an account of their own:
"I was just giving the ad agency the money."
When they stopped, they got a spreadsheet of names. Everything the ads had learned stayed with the agency.
Ask: "Whose name is the ad account in?" The only right answer is yours.
4. They promise a number they can't control
A strategy consultant who works with very large companies told me about their current outreach firm. The firm promised 50 meetings.
They delivered one. In six months.
The consultant knew going in it would never happen. Even in their best years they'd had 20 to 24 meetings a year. My guess is that a big number wins the contract, so agencies keep promising big numbers.
An honest agency gives you a range, tells you what it depends on, and tells you what happens if they miss.
Ask: "What happens if you don't hit that number?"
5. Their proof can't be checked
The executive coach who got burned had done their homework. The marketer had "a page full of testimonials."
They were all fake.
Ask: to see results from real companies you can look up. Video from an actual owner beats a quote with a first name and a stock photo.
6. They can't tell you what they'll test first
A good agency doesn't know what will work for your market on day one. Nobody does. What they should know is how they're going to find out cheaply before your real budget goes in.
If the plan is "we'll launch and optimize," that means they'll start spending and adjust as they go. Your budget becomes their experiment.
Ask: "What will you test before you spend real money, and what will it cost to find out?"
7. All the risk is on you
Big setup fee. Monthly retainer. Ad spend on top. Six-month contract. No refund.
Add that up and the agency gets paid in full whether you get one client or zero. That sales trainer put it perfectly: they'd be sitting there with "another 5000 pounds with my fingers crossed."
If the agency doesn't need it to work as badly as you do, it probably won't.
Ask: "What do you lose if this doesn't work for me?"
What a good agency sounds like
When one of these burned owners finished telling me their story, I said something I meant: "On behalf of the entire industry, I apologize."
Then I told them how we work, because it's built around these seven problems.
We ask before we pitch. Most of my first call is questions about your business, your clients and your numbers.
We test before you spend real money. We write a handful of short ads, each describing your buyers' problem a different way, and run them for a few days on a small budget. The ones your buyers respond to are the ones we put real money behind.
You own everything. The ad account is in your company's name, paid on your own card. If we ever part ways, it all stays with you.
We get paid for results, not activity. Before we start, you and I write down what a qualified call looks like for your business. Company size, budget, the problem they have. You pay us when someone who fits that description gets on a call with you. Not for clicks. Not for no-shows.
The first calls are on us. The setup fee covers building everything, and it includes your first qualified calls. If we don't deliver them, you get it back.
We'll tell you when it won't work. I've told a loan broker on a first call that the math didn't work for their business and they shouldn't run ads. I told a strategy consultant whose buyers really weren't on Facebook that I couldn't help them. If ads won't make you money, you shouldn't buy them from me or from anyone else.
Before you sign with anyone
If you've been burned before and you're thinking about trying again, book a strategy call with me. Bring your last agency's monthly report if you still have it.
I'll ask about your business, look at what went wrong, and tell you honestly whether ads make sense for you. If they don't, I'll say so. If another kind of marketing would serve you better, I'll tell you that too.