I need to check my marketing agency
Something feels off. The reports arrive, the invoices arrive, and the instructions do not. Before you fire anyone, or renew with a shrug, this page gives you a way to find out which of three things is true: the agency is doing good work that has not paid yet, the agency is doing work that will never pay, or the agency is fine and the problem is somewhere in your firm.
We are an agency, so read this knowing we have an interest. We have written it to be fair to the one you have, because a firm that switches agencies every eighteen months never gets the compounding that marketing depends on.
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Three verdicts, and only one of them means leaving
Most agency reviews end in a decision made on mood. The questions below are built to sort your situation into one of three, because each needs a different response and only one of them is “find another agency”.
The agency is building something real: the site is faster and better written, rankings are rising for terms clients actually search, enquiries are up even if files are not yet. Organic search and content take six to twelve months to pay. Leaving now means paying twice for the same foundations.
Response: hold, fix the measurement, set a review date.
Rankings for terms nobody who instructs searches. Blog posts written for volume. Ad spend going to clicks that could never become a file. Reports that change shape whenever the numbers are bad. The activity is real, the direction is wrong, and more time will not fix it.
Response: a direct conversation about direction; if it does not change within a quarter, leave.
Enquiries are arriving and dying: the phone rings out at lunch, forms go to an inbox nobody owns, quotes take four days, the fee earner never calls back. The agency’s numbers are honest and the firm’s intake is where the money leaks.
Response: keep the agency, fix the handling, and stop blaming the marketing for what happens after it.
Seven questions to ask them, and what the answers mean
Ask these in writing, one email, and give them a week. The answers tell you most of what you need; how the answers arrive tells you the rest.
How many instructions did your work produce last quarter, and what did each cost?
The whole review in one question. Good: a number, a method, and an honest note about what the method cannot see. Poor: traffic, rankings and “leads” offered in place of an answer, or the suggestion that instructions are not their concern. If they cannot answer because your firm never gave them the data, that is a shared failure and the fix is a week’s work on both sides.
Which three things did you do last month, and why those three?
Not the task list, the reasoning. Good: choices tied to your numbers, your matters and your competitors, with something that was deliberately not done. Poor: a list that would look the same for a dentist, or “ongoing optimisation” without a noun attached.
Which of the terms we rank for actually produce enquiries?
Ranking reports are where the most comfortable fictions live. Good: they can split the list into terms that convert, terms that are a step away, and terms that are decoration. Poor: every term is presented as equally valuable, or the list is long and nobody can say what any term is worth.
Who writes our content, and who checks it against SRA requirements?
Law is a regulated profession and the agency’s words are your publicity under paragraph 8.8 of the SRA Code. Good: a named writer, a sign-off step, and an understanding of what cannot be claimed. Poor: content arrives from nowhere, has never been reviewed by anyone at the firm, and nobody at the agency can explain why “no win, no fee” needs care.
What have you stopped doing for us, and when?
An agency that has never stopped anything is one that is not reading the results. Good: a channel paused, a page removed, a campaign cut, with the number that justified it. Poor: everything started is still running, every month looks like the last, and the retainer is a list of deliverables rather than a set of decisions.
Can we see the accounts: Google Ads, Analytics, Search Console, Business Profile?
You should own all four and the agency should be a user on each. Good: access within a day, no fuss. Poor: the accounts are in the agency’s name, access is “complicated”, or the ad account history is withheld. An agency that owns your data has a lock on you that has nothing to do with the quality of its work.
If you were us, what would you change about this engagement?
The honest ones have an answer ready, and it often includes something the firm is getting wrong. Good: a view on the budget split, the intake, the sign-off delays, the matters worth more attention. Poor: “we think it’s going well” and a proposal to increase the retainer.
An agency should be able to say, in a sentence, what it did for you last month and what it cost you to win each file as a result. If it cannot, the question is not whether the work is good. It is whether anyone knows.
The mirror: what the firm owes the agency
Roughly a third of the agency relationships we are asked to look at are failing on the firm’s side. It is worth checking before the conversation, because an agency that has been let down will say so, and it is better to know first.
Things only the firm can do
- Answer the phone, every time, in under thirty seconds, by someone who can take the matter details
- Respond to a web enquiry the same working day; the second firm to call rarely wins
- Give the agency the outcome of every enquiry it sends, so it can learn which ones to send more of
- Sign off content within a week; a page that waits a month for a partner’s review has cost a month of ranking
- Provide a fee earner for an hour a month to answer the questions clients actually ask
- Say which matters the firm wants more of, and which it would rather not take
Signs the brief was the problem
- The firm asked for “more leads” and never said which matters or where
- The budget was set from what felt affordable rather than from what a file is worth
- The agency was judged on a channel the firm chose, not one the agency recommended
- Nobody at the firm reads the reports until the renewal is due
- The partners changed the target twice in a year
- The firm wanted results in a quarter from a channel that takes a year
The signals that are not a matter of opinion
Most of a review is judgement, but a handful of things are simply wrong and should end the relationship on their own, because they put the firm at risk rather than merely wasting its money.
Links bought or exchanged on the firm’s behalf. Hundreds of location pages for towns the firm has never set foot in. Reviews written or incentivised, which the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made an offence from April 2025. Claims in the firm’s name that cannot be substantiated. Marketing to accident victims in ways that cross the line on unsolicited approaches. Content published under a solicitor’s name that the solicitor never saw.
Each of these is the agency spending the firm’s regulatory standing to hit a number. A firm found out for any of them answers to the SRA, not the agency, and none of them is a misunderstanding.
- ✕Paid or exchanged links in the backlink profile
- ✕Pages for towns the firm does not serve
- ✕Reviews the firm did not earn
- ✕Unverifiable claims made in the firm’s name
- ✕Advertising that approaches people who did not ask
- ✕Content under a solicitor’s name they never approved
- ✕Accounts the firm cannot access
- ✕Reports whose metrics change when the numbers fall
If you do leave, leave properly
A badly handled exit costs more than a bad agency. Rankings, ad history and accounts are assets, and they are easy to lose in the handover.
Confirm the firm is the owner of the domain, hosting, Google Ads, Analytics, Search Console, Business Profile and any social accounts. Export the ad account history and a full crawl of the site.
Notice periods, ownership of content and creative, what happens to campaigns on exit. Content written for you should be yours; check that it is before you need it to be.
Ads switched off overnight and a site left untouched for three months lose ground that takes a year to recover. Keep the working channels running through the gap.
Give the new agency the old reports, the real numbers and what went wrong, including your part. The firms that get a better result second time are the ones that changed the brief, not only the supplier.
Questions firms ask when reviewing an agency
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How long should we give them?
Paid search: a quarter, with the numbers to show for it. Organic search and content: a year from the start of real work, with clear progress at six months. A website rebuild: judged three months after launch, not on launch day. If no review date was agreed at the start, agree one now.
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They say the results are good. We feel they are not. Who is right?
Whoever has the instruction data. If neither of you does, nobody is right yet, and the first job is to connect enquiries to files for one quarter before anybody decides anything.
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Is a cheaper agency the answer?
Rarely on its own. The cheapest law firm marketing is almost always the scaled, templated kind that Google’s spam policies now target directly, and cleaning it up costs more than it saved. Pay for judgement and measurement; those are what you were missing.
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Should we bring it in-house instead?
It can work for a firm large enough to employ a marketing manager and a writer, with an agency for the technical pieces. For most firms under about forty people, one in-house person becomes the person who manages the agency, which is useful but is not a replacement.
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Will you tell us if our agency is doing a good job?
Yes, and we do, regularly. A second opinion that always says “switch” is worthless. We will read the reports, look at the site and the accounts, and tell you which of the three verdicts above applies and why.
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What does a second opinion involve?
Read access to the reports and, ideally, the accounts. A week. A written view of the work, the measurement, the direction and the risks, with a recommendation you can act on whether or not it involves us.
Get a second opinion before you decide
Send the last three months of reports and give us a week. We will tell you which of the three verdicts applies, what to ask your agency, and what to change on your own side. If the right answer is to stay, we will say so.
- Three months of reports, and read access to the accounts if you can arrange it.
- A written review in a week: the work, the measurement, the direction, the risks.
- A recommendation in plain terms, whichever verdict it is.