Ask for the evidence before you sit through the pitch. A credible agency shows you named work, describes what it actually did, and tells you what it measured. A wall of client logos with no outcomes attached is decoration.

Three questions separate most of the field. Who does the work. What gets reported, and how often. And what happens when a channel underperforms — be wary of anyone who answers that one by changing the subject.

One more worth checking: whether the agency’s own house is in order. An agency that cannot be found for the services it sells is telling you something.

By tracing revenue back to the channel that produced it, which means deciding what counts as a conversion before the campaign starts rather than after the results arrive.

Branded and non-branded search are reported separately. Traffic from people already searching for your name is not evidence that marketing is working, and combining the two is the most common way agency reports flatter themselves.

Paid media is measured on return, not on cost per click. Organic search is measured on non-branded clicks and average position, and it moves on a horizon of months rather than weeks. Anyone describing organic results in thirty days is describing paid search.