How to Know If Your Marketing Agency Is Actually Working

Good agencies make this easy to answer. Bad agencies make it deliberately complicated. Here are the metrics, the questions, and the signals that tell you what is really happening.

The most common reason founders stay with underperforming agencies too long is that the reporting makes it genuinely hard to tell what is working. Dense dashboards, rising topline revenue, and confident explanations for why last month was 'transitional' — these are the conditions that let mediocrity persist. The Metrics That Actually Tell You Ignore: Platform ROAS, impressions, reach, engagement rate, follower growth. Watch: New customer CAC (not total CAC), blended MER month-over-month, new customer acquisition volume, and contribution margin after ad spend. The core question is not "are we s