5 signs your agency is wasting your money

Most agencies are not dishonest. They are busy, and your account is small, and the easiest thing to do with a small account is run it on autopilot and send a report that looks like work.

Here is how to tell the difference, without learning marketing.

1. The report leads with impressions

Impressions are the number of times your site appeared in search results. It is a real metric and it is almost useless on its own: it goes up when Google shows you to more people who did not click.

Same with “total keywords ranked”. You can rank for thousands of terms nobody searches. A report built on these numbers is a report built to look good.

2. Nobody can tell you what a lead costs

Ask: “What did a lead cost me last month?” This should take seconds. It is ad spend plus fees, divided by genuine enquiries.

If the answer involves qualifications about attribution and multi-touch journeys, the real answer is that nothing is being tracked properly. Which means nobody — including them — knows whether any of it is working.

This is usually a tracking failure rather than a lie. Call tracking is not set up, form submissions are not recorded as conversions, and Google Ads is optimising towards clicks because that is all it can see.

3. Nothing on your site has changed

Open your website. Can you point at anything that is different from four months ago? A new service page, rewritten copy, new photos, a faster homepage?

SEO that exists entirely off your website is doing one of two things: nothing, or link building you do not want to know about. The visible work should be visible.

Easy check: search site:yourdomain.com.au in Google. That lists your indexed pages. If the count has not moved in six months of paying for content, ask where it went.

4. You are paying for ads with no negative keywords

This one is specific and worth checking. In Google Ads, “negative keywords” stop your ads showing for searches you do not want — “free”, “jobs”, “DIY”, “courses”, competitor names, suburbs you do not service.

Without them you pay for clicks from people looking for a job, a tutorial, or a tradie three hours away. In Sydney, where service clicks run $5 to $7.50, that adds up fast.

Ask to see the search terms report — the actual words people typed. If it is full of obviously irrelevant searches, nobody is minding the account.

5. You only hear from them when the invoice is due

Not a metric, but the most reliable tell. Accounts that are being worked on generate questions: can we get photos of that job, what is your margin on this service, do you want these enquiries.

Silence usually means autopilot. A monthly call is not a nicety; it is evidence that someone looked.

How to check all of this in twenty minutes

1. 01Open your last report. What is the first number on it?
2. 02Email them: “what did a lead cost us last month?” Time the reply, and read what it avoids.
3. 03Search site:yourdomain.com.au and count pages.
4. 04Log into Google Ads — your account, which you should have access to — and open Search terms.
5. 05Look at your Google Business Profile on your phone. Are the hours right? Is there a photo from this year?

If several of these land

Do not fire anyone on the spot. Send the questions in writing and give them a fortnight. Plenty of relationships recover from this conversation, because the problem was attention rather than competence.

But get your logins first. Domain, hosting, Google Ads, Google Business Profile, analytics. Whatever happens next is easier when the assets are already in your name.