7 questions to ask your marketing agency before you renew

Why ask before renewing

Renewal is the one moment you have full leverage. After it, you are locked in for another term. Most agency reports are built around what the agency controls: reach, clicks, cost per lead and the ROAS shown in Ads Manager. Those numbers can look healthy while your sales stay flat. These questions move the conversation to what you actually care about.

The 7 questions

1. What was our cost per sale, or per deal, last month? Not cost per lead.

Divide what you spent on ads by the sales or deals that actually closed. If the agency cannot answer, it is not because the number is hard. It is because nobody is tracking it. You may need to share your sales data to get it, and that is a good sign, not a bad one.

2. How many of last month's leads were real buyers?

Ask them to check a sample of 20 recent leads with your sales team. If most were wrong numbers, students or people who never meant to enquire, the campaign is buying form fills, not buyers. (Here is why Meta lead forms bring junk, and how to fix it.)

3. How many enquiries got a reply within 15 minutes?

The reply is often on your side, not the agency's. Ask anyway. A good partner looks at the whole road from ad to sale, including the part they do not run.

4. How many enquiries got 5 or more follow-ups?

One call and one WhatsApp is not follow-up. If nobody knows the answer, that is a leak worth more than any new campaign.

5. Which campaign brought the most sales or meetings, not the most leads?

These are often different campaigns. The one with the cheapest leads can be the one with the fewest sales.

6. How many sales were returned or unpaid, and how many proposals went quiet?

Ads Manager stops counting at checkout or at the lead. Returns, refused cash-on-delivery parcels and proposals that never close do not show up in the report, but they come out of your bank account.

7. If we kept the budget the same next month, what would you fix first?

This is the most useful question on the list. A strong answer names one specific problem and a plan. A weak answer asks for more budget.

Also check who owns what

Before you sign anything, confirm in writing:

• The ad accounts are in your business name, and the agency has partner or user access, not ownership.
• The Meta pixel, Google Analytics and conversion tracking sit in your accounts.
• Your leads, customer lists and creative files belong to you and can be downloaded any time.
• The notice period is clear. Guides on agency contracts often treat about 30 days as standard.

If the agency owns your accounts, changing agencies later means starting from zero.

How to read the answers

If the answers worry you, it does not always mean change the agency. Sometimes the agency is fine and nobody senior is owning the result on your side. That is a different fix: see fractional CMO, agency or in-house marketing head.

These 7 questions are the last page of the workbook in my ₹999 report, along with a table to trace your own ₹1 lakh. If you want a second opinion on your account before renewing, that is the Ad-to-Sale Diagnosis. Keep your agency running while I look.