There is a familiar pattern in marketing.
A business appoints an agency. There is enthusiasm, a new strategy, plenty of activity and a regular reporting rhythm.
Six months later, somebody asks the uncomfortable question:
Is this actually working?
Traffic might be up. Impressions have increased. Campaigns have been delivered. Social engagement looks healthy.
But leads have not materially improved. Sales cannot see the difference. And the leadership team is beginning to question the spend.
The natural conclusion is that the agency is underperforming.
Sometimes it is.
But after spending years commissioning, briefing and managing agencies from inside businesses, I think there is another question worth asking first:
What exactly did we ask them to achieve?
Activity is not an objective
- “Improve our SEO.”
- “Run our social media.”
- “Generate more awareness.”
- “Manage our paid campaigns.”
- “Redesign the website.”
These sound like briefs. They are not.
They are activities.
A good commercial brief starts further back.
- Why does the business need more search visibility?
- Which customers are we trying to attract?
- What are those customers worth?
- Where are we currently losing them?
- How many additional opportunities would make the investment worthwhile?
- What happens to a lead after marketing generates it?
Without that context, an agency naturally focuses on the things it can control and measure.
Rankings. Traffic. Clicks. Impressions. Engagement. Campaign delivery.
Then the business measures success against something entirely different:
Revenue.
That gap is where many agency relationships start to break down.
The agency cannot own a number it does not understand
Imagine telling an agency:
We want to increase organic traffic by 30%.
They may deliver exactly that.
But what if most of the additional traffic lands on low-commercial-intent content and generates almost no enquiries?
Technically, the agency succeeded.
Commercially, very little changed.
Now compare that with:
We want to generate 20 additional qualified enquiries each month from businesses fitting these three customer profiles. Our average conversion rate is X%, an average customer is worth £Y, and we need the programme to generate £Z in additional gross profit to justify the investment.
That changes the conversation completely.
- Search strategy changes.
- Content priorities change.
- Landing pages change.
- Measurement changes.
- Even the conversations between marketing and sales change.
The agency has been given a business problem rather than a marketing task.
A better brief starts with the commercial outcome
Before appointing an agency or renewing an existing relationship, I would want clarity around five things.
1. What are we actually trying to change?
Not “improve digital marketing.”
Something measurable within the business.
- More qualified enquiries.
- Higher conversion.
- Greater customer value.
- Entry into a new market.
- Lower acquisition costs.
- Increased recurring revenue.
Start with the business outcome. That is the starting point for any marketing and growth strategy worth paying for.
2. What is that outcome worth?
Marketing becomes much easier to evaluate when there is a number attached to the opportunity.
If an average new customer generates £10,000 of gross profit, acquiring ten additional customers looks very different from a business where the average transaction generates £100.
Understanding the economics should influence how much you are prepared to invest.
3. Where is the problem today?
Do not automatically assume the answer is more marketing.
- Perhaps there is plenty of traffic but the website converts poorly.
- Perhaps marketing generates enquiries but sales follow-up is inconsistent.
- Perhaps the business ranks well but for searches that rarely generate customers.
- Perhaps the CRM data is so poor that nobody really knows.
More activity applied to the wrong problem simply creates more activity.
4. What does the agency actually own?
This matters.
An agency cannot reasonably be accountable for sales revenue if it controls advertising but has no influence over pricing, sales follow-up, website conversion or customer experience.
Agree the boundaries.
Then agree the measures within those boundaries.
Good accountability works both ways.
5. How will we know whether it worked?
Decide this before the work starts.
Not six months later when somebody asks whether the retainer is delivering enough value.
Agree the commercial measures, supporting marketing measures and reporting rhythm upfront.
Then reporting becomes a decision-making tool rather than a monthly collection of charts.
Sometimes the agency really is the problem
None of this means agencies should escape scrutiny.
I have challenged agencies over poor work, weak recommendations, junior delivery, vague reporting and activity that continued because nobody stopped to question it.
There are underperforming agencies.
There are also very good agencies operating against poor briefs.
The job of the person responsible for marketing is to distinguish between the two — which is often where a fractional marketing director earns their place.
That requires understanding what the business needs before deciding who should deliver it.
Before spending more, get clear on the problem
Businesses often approach marketing backwards.
They start with the channel.
- “We need SEO.”
- “We need paid media.”
- “We need a new website.”
- “We need someone doing social.”
Then they find a supplier who sells that thing.
I would start somewhere else.
- What are we trying to achieve commercially?
- What is preventing us from achieving it today?
- What would changing that be worth?
Only then ask:
What marketing activity — and what expertise — do we actually need?
That might mean changing agency.
It might mean changing strategy.
It might mean fixing the website.
It might mean improving sales follow-up.
And sometimes it means discovering that the agency was never really the problem.
The brief was.