Agency rescue · The evidence test
Marketing agency not delivering?
Run the one-question test.
Paying every month while the phone stays quiet means one of two things: a bad agency or a broken foundation. They get fixed differently. Here’s how to find out which one you have, with evidence, inside 30 days.
Fix my marketing leaks30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
- Cost per lead, not impressions
- Metro Detroit, office in Birmingham
- You own every account and login
The one-question test
“Which dollar produced which lead?”
Email your agency the long version, word for word: “Can you show me which campaigns produced which leads last month, and what each lead cost?” Then watch what comes back.
- 01
The answer
One screen-share: cost per lead by campaign, from call and form tracking, with the leads themselves on screen. An agency doing real work looks at that number every week.
- 02
The deck
Slides about brand awareness and reach, and nothing about who called.
- 03
The chart
Impressions up, engagement up, a line heading the right way, and no leads on it anywhere.
- 04
The dodge
“Attribution is complicated.” If nobody wired tracking into the account, it isn’t complicated. It’s missing.
Sound familiar?
You’ve read the report twice, looking for the part about customers.
- The report lands
“Reach is up. So why was Tuesday dead?”
- The invoice, right on time
“Same number as last month. Same quiet phone.”
- The check-in call
“They said it takes time. They said that in March.”
- Later
“Maybe marketing just doesn’t work for a business like mine.”
It works when someone can show you which dollar did it.
An agency doing real work can answer the one question in a screen-share, because cost per lead is the number the job runs on. If nobody wired call and form tracking into your account, that number can’t exist, and every report you’ve received was decoration.
If your agency can’t say what changed this month, you’re paying for a PDF.
The 30-day evidence window
Four checks, one verdict.
- 01
Ask the question, in writing
The cost-per-lead question above, by email. Give them a week. The shape of the answer is your first piece of evidence.
- 02
Check the tracking yourself
Call the number on your own website and see if the call shows up anywhere. Submit your own form and see if anyone follows up. Five minutes, and very revealing.
- 03
Look for fingerprints
Ask for the change history. Google Ads keeps one, and so does WordPress. An account “managed” every month with no changes since spring is paying for a ghost.
- 04
Get an outside read
A free audit checks the site, the tracking and the rankings on their own, so the verdict doesn’t rest on the agency grading its own homework.
Proof, before the pitch
Real evidence should survive an incognito window.
Result one
A Troy med spa we relaunched, already winning its market.
Rêve came to AlbaTech for a full relaunch. We rebuilt the site, the local-search foundation and the review engine together, and the treatments people actually search for now surface the business.
- Search: med spa troy
- Market: Troy, Michigan
- Result: first web result
- First web result under the map, and it holds that spot every time we check
- In the map pack too, highest rated of the three at 5.0 from 111 reviews
- Also in the pack for botox troy and laser hair removal troy
Result two
Our own studio, first for “microblading Michigan”.
Fine Strokes is our own studio. We built the website and the local search setup around the service customers actually search for. We ran the method on our own business before we sold it to anyone.
- Search: microblading Michigan
- Market: Birmingham, Michigan
- Result: first position shown
30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
The vanity decoder
What the report says, and what it means.
Six lines that show up in agency reports, translated. Only the last one belongs on page one.
“Impressions up 40%”
More people scrolled past you. Impressions cost nothing and buy nothing. A billboard facing a cornfield gets impressions.
“Engagement is strong”
Likes and comments, plenty of them from other businesses and bots. Engagement fills the agency’s case study, not your calendar.
“CTR above benchmark”
People clicked. Then what? A click that lands on a page with no reason to call is a visitor you rented and returned unused.
“Sessions are growing”
Traffic without conversion tracking is a crowd in the parking lot. The report says sessions because it can’t say customers.
“Keyword movement”
Ninth instead of fourteenth for a phrase nobody searches is movement. Rankings only matter on searches with buyers behind them.
Leads and cost per lead
The only line that belongs on page one. If it’s missing, the rest of the report is set dressing. It’s the first number we report, every month.
The uncomfortable possibility
Sometimes it isn’t the agency. It’s the foundation.
Some accounts we audit show competent campaign work producing nothing, because every click lands on a site that can’t turn a visitor into a call. Fire that agency and the next one inherits the same site, and the same silence.
- Bad agency
No tracking, no answer
The one question gets a deck, the change history is empty, and nobody can show you a lead. Replace the agency, and take your logins with you.
- Broken foundation
Decent ads, dead site
Sensible targeting and budgets, then a homepage with no clear offer, a phone number you can’t find and a form that emails a dead inbox. A new agency won’t fix that.
- The tell
Two agencies, same failure
Traffic up and leads flat twice in a row points at where the traffic landed, not who sent it. Run the Foundation Checklist on your own site before you hire anyone else.
What a real report leads with
A rankings report would’ve called it a bad month.
When our own permanent makeup studio, Fine Strokes, relaunched at the end of July, its average position in Google went from 19.9 in the 17 days before to 21.6 in the 11 days after. Its clicks a day went from 2.18 to 6.91. Report the rankings and it looks like a failure. Report what searchers did and you see what the rebuild was for.
- Clicks a day: 2.18 before the relaunch, 6.91 after
- Click-through rate: 0.51% to 1.15%
- Average position: 19.9 to 21.6, slightly worse
- 110 old URLs redirected at launch
Worried we’d be one more agency sending a PDF? Every number we report comes from accounts in your name, so you can open them and check.
Fix my marketing leaksSearch Console shows what searchers did. What each lead cost comes from call and form tracking, which is why it’s the first thing we check.
Common questions
When the results aren’t showing up.
How long should I give a marketing agency before expecting results?+
It depends on the channel, and an honest agency says so up front. Paid ads should show measurable leads inside 30 to 60 days, local SEO usually needs 3 to 6 months in a competitive Michigan market, and a new website should convert from day one. What’s never acceptable is no measurement: even in month one, tracking should exist and the plan should name the number it’s chasing.
My agency says results take 6 to 12 months. Are they stalling?+
For SEO in a competitive market, 6 to 12 months to the top can be honest. The test isn’t the timeline, it’s whether you can check progress along the way: pages actually published, rankings moving on searches with buyers behind them, technical fixes you can see. “Trust the process” with nothing to check is stalling.
What if my agency controls all the accounts and I can’t check anything?+
Then you have two problems, and access is the bigger one. You should be an owner or admin on your own ad account, analytics and website. Start with the ownership check, then run the test from a position where you can see the data.
Can an audit tell me if the problem is my website instead of the agency?+
Yes, that’s what the free audit separates. It looks at the campaign work and the destination on their own. If the ads are sound but the site can’t convert, you’ll see where visitors leak out, and you won’t fire an agency for a problem it didn’t cause.
Is it worth confronting the agency before leaving?+
Usually yes, once, in writing, with the cost-per-lead question. Some agencies get better when a client starts asking the right question, and you’ll know within one billing cycle. Secure your logins first, so the conversation happens with your accounts already safe.
Is this right for a business that’s just getting started?+
Not yet. If you’re just getting started and capital is tight, or you want something cheap and quick, we’re not the right call, and there are people who serve those needs well. What we build is for owners who already treat marketing as a budgeted line item and want it spent where it compounds.
What we turn down
We won’t send you a PDF instead of an answer.
- No report without leads and cost per lead on page one
- No ads pointed at a page that can’t convert
- No redesign without tracking
- No accounts held in our name instead of yours
The ownership promise
No hostage accounts. No mystery handoff.
Your ad accounts, website, analytics, data and documentation stay in your name. If we stop working together, nothing gets held over you.
The rescue library
If the verdict comes back guilty.
Burned by an agency?
Start here →Agency red flags
Spot it early →How to fire your agency
Exit clean →Switching agencies
A clean move →Who owns your website?
The ownership check →The Foundation Checklist
Check your own site →Conversion-ready websites
When the site is the leak →Michigan PPC
Ads with tracking first →One next step
Get an outside read before you fire anyone.
Thirty minutes with Ervin. We look at your website, your local search and your tracking, and you leave with a ranked fix list whether or not you hire AlbaTech.
Fix my marketing leaks