How Do I Tell if My Agency Is Wasting My Ad Budget?
You cannot tell whether your ad budget is being wasted unless you can see which ad dollars turned into booked jobs and revenue. The test is to compare what each campaign cost to the revenue from the customers it brought in. If your agency's reports cannot show that, you are paying without proof.
Warning signs in your agency's reports
- The report shows clicks, impressions and conversions but never booked jobs or revenue.
- Conversions in the ad account are far higher than the leads your team actually received.
- Phone calls from ads are not tracked back to the ad.
- Results are never compared with your other channels.
- Nobody can say which campaigns to cut.
Questions to ask your agency
- How many of last month's leads came from our ads, and how many became booked jobs?
- What revenue came from those jobs, and what did we spend to get it?
- Which campaigns brought in no paying customers?
- How are phone calls from our ads tracked?
- What counts as a conversion in our ad account, and has it been checked against our CRM?
Why conversion tracking is often the problem
Ad platforms aim your budget at whatever is marked as a conversion. If that tracking counts the wrong actions, the platform spends money chasing them and the report can still look good.
How Ad Intel Lab helps
Setup includes an audit of your current data, conversion tracking and landing pages. After that, every lead is followed to the booked job and revenue, so you can hold each vendor to the numbers, including your current agency.