Is Your Agency Actually Doing Anything? 7 Questions Every eCom Founder Should Ask

You're paying your agency £3,000+ a month. They send you monthly reports full of colourful charts and industry jargon. But here's the uncomfortable truth: half of them are doing sweet FA whilst collecting your direct debit like clockwork.

Sound harsh? Maybe. But after seeing too many eCommerce founders get burned by agencies who mistake busy work for actual work, it's time someone called it out.

If you've ever wondered whether your agency is actually earning their keep or just excellent at PowerPoint presentations, these 7 questions will separate the wheat from the chaff faster than you can say "performance marketing."

1. "Show Me Exactly What You Did Last Week (Not What You're Planning to Do)"

This is the agency equivalent of asking your teenager what they actually did with their Saturday. Watch them squirm.

A proper agency should be able to pull up their task management system and show you:

• Specific optimisations made to campaigns

• New ad creative tested and results

• Negative keywords added (with rationale)

• Audience refinements implemented

• Landing page changes suggested/implemented

If they start waffling about "strategic planning sessions" and "competitor analysis," you've found your first red flag. Good agencies do strategic work, but they also get their hands dirty with actual campaign management every single day.

Red flag response: "We've been focusing on high-level strategy this month." What you want to hear: "Here's the list of 47 negative keywords we added after finding search terms that were wasting your budget on Tuesday."

2. "What's Our Actual Profit Per Click, Not Just ROAS?"

Most agencies love showing you ROAS because it makes them look brilliant. "Look, we achieved 4.2x ROAS!" they'll crow, whilst conveniently ignoring that your profit margins mean you're actually losing money on every sale.

A switched-on agency calculates and optimises for Profit on Ad Spend (POAS), not vanity metrics. They should know your gross margins, understand your fulfilment costs, and optimise campaigns for actual profit, not revenue.

If your agency doesn't know the difference between a 20% margin product and an 80% margin product when setting up campaigns, they're essentially flying blind whilst burning your cash.

Red flag response: "ROAS is the industry standard metric." What you want to hear: "Based on your 35% gross margin, we need 2.85x ROAS minimum to break even, so we're optimising for 4x+ to ensure profitability."

3. "How Are You Preventing Google from Wasting My Budget?"

Google wants to spend your money. Your agency's job is to stop Google from spending it stupidly.

A competent agency should be actively:

• Adding negative keywords weekly (not monthly)

• Excluding irrelevant placements in Performance Max

• Adjusting device and location bids based on performance

• Identifying and pausing underperforming ad groups

• Setting up proper conversion tracking to prevent optimisation towards junk traffic

If they can't show you a growing list of negative keywords and excluded placements, they're letting Google's algorithms run wild with your budget.

Red flag response: "Google's AI handles most optimisation automatically now." What you want to hear: "Here's our negative keyword list that we update weekly, and here are the 23 websites we've excluded from Display campaigns because they were generating clicks but zero sales."

4. "What Tests Are Running Right Now and What Have We Learned?"

Testing separates professional agencies from button-pushers. But here's the thing: most agencies either don't test properly or they test so slowly that trends change before they get results.

Your agency should be running continuous tests on:

• Ad creative (headlines, descriptions, images)

• Landing page elements

• Audience targeting

• Bidding strategies

• Campaign structures

More importantly, they should be applying lessons from winning tests across your entire account, not just letting good creative sit in one ad group.

Red flag response: "We'll start testing next month." What you want to hear: "We're currently testing 5 different headline variations, and the one with urgency language is beating our control by 23% - we're rolling it out to similar ad groups tomorrow."

5. "How Are My Campaigns Performing Compared to Industry Benchmarks?"

Any agency worth their salt knows industry benchmarks and where your account sits relative to them. They should be able to tell you how your:

• Click-through rates compare to your vertical

• Conversion rates stack up against similar businesses

• Cost per acquisitions benchmark against competitors

• Quality Scores compare to industry averages

If they can't benchmark your performance, they can't identify opportunities for improvement.

Red flag response: "Every business is different, so benchmarks don't really apply." What you want to hear: "Your CTR is 2.1% which is above the 1.8% average for fashion eCommerce, but your conversion rate of 1.2% is below the 2.3% benchmark - here's what we're doing to fix that."

6. "What Insights Are You Getting from Our Data That We Couldn't See Ourselves?"

This question separates the real strategists from the campaign button-pushers. A proper agency should be mining your Google Ads data for insights that inform not just your advertising, but your entire business strategy.

They should be identifying:

• Which products have the lowest cost per acquisition

• What time of day/week your customers are most likely to buy

• Which geographic locations are most profitable

• What audience combinations work best for different product categories

• Seasonal trends that could inform inventory planning

Red flag response: "The data shows your campaigns are performing well." What you want to hear: "We've noticed your best-converting traffic comes from mobile users between 7-9pm, and they prefer products under £50. Have you considered creating a mobile-specific evening email campaign for your lower-priced items?"

7. "If You Left Tomorrow, What Documentation Would You Hand Over?"

This is the ultimate test of whether your agency is building something sustainable or just keeping secrets to maintain dependency.

Professional agencies maintain detailed documentation of:

• Account setup and structure rationale

• Bidding strategy decisions and changes

• Audience definitions and performance notes

• Creative testing results and insights

• Conversion tracking setup details

• Historical performance data and trend analysis

If they get shifty about this question or claim everything is "proprietary," that's a massive red flag. You're paying for the work - you should own the insights and be able to continue without them.

Red flag response: "Our processes are proprietary to protect our intellectual property." What you want to hear: "Here's our shared drive with all account documentation, performance histories, and strategic recommendations. We believe in transparency and want you to understand exactly what we've built."

The Bottom Line: Actions Speak Louder Than Reports

Great agencies don't hide behind jargon, fancy dashboards, or monthly catch-up calls that somehow never address the elephant in the room: are you actually making more money than you're spending?

If your current agency can't answer these questions with specifics, data, and confidence, it might be time to have a difficult conversation. Your Google Ads budget isn't a charity donation - it should be working as hard as you are to grow your business.

The best agencies welcome these questions because they're proud of their work and can back up every claim with data. The dodgy ones will deflect, make excuses, or try to blind you with technical terminology.

Your move, founders. Time to separate the professionals from the PowerPoint warriors.

Looking for an agency that welcomes tough questions and delivers transparent results? Get in touch with JudeLuxe - we're happy to show our working.