When you hire a marketing agency, you’re trusting people outside your business to help it grow. They can see the campaigns, the website, and the numbers coming in. But they don’t automatically see what your sales team hears, what customers keep asking, or what has changed in the way you run things.
That context matters. If you’re wondering how to work with a marketing agency and whether it’s working for you, I’d start there. Do both sides understand the same business goal? And are you sharing enough information to make good decisions as that goal evolves?
A useful agency relationship goes beyond dashboards and meetings. The agency needs to understand the business well enough to help decide which work is worth doing in the first place.
Get Clear on the Goal Behind the Campaign
“More leads” is a common starting point, but it doesn’t tell us enough on its own. You might want more work for a team that has room in its schedule. You might be trying to grow a new service, reach larger customers, or bring in projects with better margins. Each of those goals calls for a different approach.
Imagine a home services company that has introduced a maintenance program. The company wants more customers to sign up because recurring work helps it plan staffing and build longer relationships. If the agency only hears “we need more leads,” it may run ads that attract people looking for a one-time repair. Those calls count as leads, but they don’t move the company toward the goal it set.
Once the agency understands what the business is trying to build, the conversation changes. We can look at the audience, the offer, the website, and the way the sales team explains the program. We can also decide what a good result looks like before spending more money to drive people in.
Share What Happens After Someone Calls
A dashboard might show that the maintenance campaign is generating calls. That’s helpful to know. The sales team may have a different piece of the story: callers don’t understand what the program includes, or they think it’s only available when something breaks.
Now we have something we can work with. The agency can make the offer clearer on the landing page and in the ads. The sales team can tell us which explanation helps people understand the value. We can compare what happens in those conversations after the changes go live.
That information won’t appear on its own in an analytics report. The same is true when you change a sales presentation, introduce a product, run into scheduling issues, or hear the same complaint from customers several times. Those details can change the marketing strategy, even when they seem unrelated to a campaign.
I think agencies do their best work when they have a view into how the business actually runs. We don’t need to sit in on every sales call, but we do need to know when the story customers hear from marketing differs from what they experience when they speak with your team.
Let the Information Change the Plan
Once we know what’s happening, the next step isn’t always another ad or more content.
In our maintenance program example, the company may already have a group of happy customers who would be interested in the new offer. It could make more sense to explain the program to them first, learn which questions come up, and use those answers to improve the website and sales materials. Paid advertising might still have a place, but we’d have a much clearer message to take to a new audience.
This is where I want an agency to act like a partner. It should bring ideas and be willing to test them. It should also be comfortable saying that the business needs to clarify an offer, improve follow-up, or rethink a tactic before putting more budget behind it.
Clients should be able to bring their own observations into that conversation. If your team is hearing that the leads aren’t a good fit, say so. If a service has become more profitable or harder to deliver, your agency needs to know. If customers are asking about something you haven’t addressed on the website, that may be the most useful content idea you have.
Marketing works better when those conversations go both ways. The numbers tell us where to look, and the people doing the work help us understand what we’re seeing.
How to Tell Whether Your Agency Is Working for You
Results matter, of course. You should be able to see whether the work is producing opportunities that support your business goals. But I wouldn’t judge an agency relationship only by whether a monthly chart went up.
Pay attention to how the agency responds to what your business is learning. Does it ask what happened to the leads it generated? Can it explain why it recommends the next campaign? When results are weaker than expected, does it help find the reason and make a sensible change? And when you share a new concern or opportunity, does that information show up in the plan?
You should have visibility into the work without having to manage every detail yourself. A good conversation might begin with the campaign results, move into what your sales and operations teams are seeing, and end with a decision both sides understand. Over time, that gives you a clearer way to judge progress than a dashboard alone can provide.
At your next meeting, start with the goal you’re trying to reach and what has changed inside the business since you set it. Then look at the marketing results in that context. If your agency understands what matters to you, asks for the information it needs, and can explain why the next step makes sense, you have something useful to build on.
