How to Know If Your Digital Marketing Agency Is Actually Working

You've been paying for months. The reports arrive, the numbers are large, everyone sounds pleased. And you still have a quiet feeling that you cannot tell whether any of it is working.

That feeling is usually correct, and it's usually not because the agency is dishonest. It's because they're reporting the wrong things. Reach, impressions and engagement all move in the right direction whether or not the campaign is producing customers, which makes them comfortable to report and useless to act on.

Here is how to find out where you actually stand.

Ask for four numbers

Send this to your agency today. Ask for it covering the last three months.

1. Cost per lead. Total ad spend divided by genuine inquiries. Not comments. Not reactions. Inquiries from someone who could plausibly buy.

2. Lead quality. Of those inquiries, what share were real prospects? This one you can answer yourself, and you should, because your agency cannot see your inbox the way you can.

3. Cost per customer. Total spend, including their fee, divided by customers gained.

4. Return on ad spend. Revenue attributable to campaigns, divided by ad spend.

The numbers themselves matter less than what happens when you ask. An agency that can produce all four within a day is measuring properly. One that needs a week, or sends impressions instead, has not been tracking the things that decide whether you should keep paying them.

ውጤቱን ማየት ካልቻሉ፣
ውጤት የለም ማለት ነው።

What a useful report looks like

Not longer. Clearer.

A report you can act on tells you: what was spent, what it produced, what changed since last month, what the agency changed and why, and what they intend to do next. Five things, on one page, in language you don't need translated.

A report you cannot act on is a screenshot of a dashboard, a follower count, a grid of published posts, or any document where you have to hunt for what it cost to get one customer.

If yours is the second kind, ask for the first. The response to that request is informative in itself.

The answers that mean something is wrong

"Brand awareness takes time." Sometimes true, and often the last refuge when nothing measurable has happened. Fair in month two. Not in month eight.

"Engagement is up." Engagement is not revenue. Ask what those engaged people did next.

"The algorithm changed." Platforms do change. But this explains a bad month, not a bad half-year, and a competent agency adapts rather than reports the weather.

"We can't track that." Almost everything is trackable. If it genuinely isn't, that's a setup problem they should have fixed in month one.

"Your industry is difficult." Then that should have been said before you signed, and reflected in the targets.

Silence, then a flurry of activity right before renewal. The pattern speaks for itself.

None of these is proof of bad faith on its own. Two or three together usually mean nobody is steering.

Six things to check yourself

You don't need the agency's cooperation for any of these.

Do you have access to your own ad accounts? Log in. If you can't, that's the most urgent thing on this list, well ahead of performance.

Is the spend where they said it would be? Open the billing section and compare it against the plan.

Are your inquiries actually rising? You know this without a report. Ask whoever answers the phone.

Is anyone asking your team about lead quality? An agency that never asks whether the leads were any good is optimizing blind.

Has the creative changed in the last two months? Audiences tire. Nothing new usually means nobody is working on it. New Creative Graphics Production or Ad Video Production should be arriving regularly.

Do you understand what they're doing? If every explanation leaves you more confused, that's often deliberate.

Related: How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in Ethiopia · Facebook Ads vs Google Ads

What working actually looks like

So you have something to compare against.

You Lead Africa needed partners and donors, not audience size. A Digital Marketing Strategy defined what success meant, then Meta Ads and Social Media Management delivered against it. The campaign was judged on whether real conversations started, and it returned 14.6 times ad spend.

"Awaj helped us put our mission in front of the right people. The campaign brought real partnership conversations our way, not just impressions." Patricia S., Global Partnerships Manager

That last phrase is the whole test. Impressions are what you get when nobody agreed on what success meant.

Gift Real Estate applies the same standard commercially: the question is not how many people saw the listing, it's how many serious buyers called.

"Every listing we boost with Awaj brings in serious inquiries, not just clicks. It's changed how quickly we close." Ephrem S., Senior Sales Consultant

In both cases someone named the outcome before the spending started. That's the difference, and it costs nothing to insist on.

How to run the conversation

Not an ultimatum. A reset.

Ask for the four numbers, in writing. Give them a week.

Name the metric going forward. Pick one, usually cost per customer, and agree what good looks like within sixty days.

Agree what changes. Creative, audiences, offer, or budget allocation. Something specific.

Set a review date. Put it in the calendar now.

Most agencies respond well to this, because a client who knows what they want is easier to serve than one who is vaguely unhappy. The ones who react badly to being measured have told you what you needed to know.

When to leave

Three months past the reset, with no measurable change and no clear diagnosis of why.

Before you go, take your accounts back: the Meta Business Manager, the Google Ads account, the Google Business Profile, the website access, the content files. This is the moment it becomes difficult if the accounts were never yours, which is why it belongs in the first conversation with the next agency rather than the last one with this agency.

Then get a second opinion on the account before you commit anywhere. A competent outside read of the campaign history, which is what a Growth Strategy and Insight engagement starts with, usually explains what happened in an afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

How long before I should expect results? Inquiries can appear in the first weeks. A sustainable cost per lead usually takes six to twelve weeks. Search visibility takes months.

What if my results are good but the reporting is bad? Then fix the reporting, not the agency. Good work with poor reporting is a communication problem. Poor work with beautiful reporting is the expensive one.

Can I get a second opinion without changing agency? Yes, and it's a reasonable thing to do with any significant recurring spend. A review is not a betrayal.

They keep showing me follower growth. Is that ever meaningful? Only as a secondary signal, and only alongside inquiries. On its own it tells you the ads reached people, not that they were the right people.

What if I never agreed on a metric at the start? Then agree one now. Starting late is better than never starting.

The short version

Ask for cost per lead, lead quality, cost per customer and return on ad spend. Give it a week.

What comes back, and how fast, tells you most of what you need to know.

The solutions behind this: Growth Strategy and Insight · Meta Ads · Google Ads

ቤተሰብ ይሁኑ፣ የማስታወቂያ ሂሳብዎን በነጻ እንመረምራለን። ገንዘብዎ የት እየሄደ እንደሆነ እናሳይዎታለን።