Five Questions To Ask Your Ad Agency Before You Renew

Before you renew, ask five questions. How fast is a new lead answered? What happens to a missed call? Which ads are selling? Which campaign produced last month's sales? Who is working the old list? If the answers are numbers, renew. If they are reports, you have found where your ad money goes.

Questions One And Two: After The Lead Comes In

One. How long does a new lead wait for a reply? Ask for the time on a Friday night, not on a Tuesday morning. A lead that fills out your form at 9:47 PM has filled out other forms too. If your first reply goes out on Monday, somebody else has already spoken to them.

Two. What happens when a call is missed? Your front desk is with a customer and the phone rings out. That caller does not leave a message. They ring the next business on the list. Ask who or what gets back to them, and how soon.

Questions Three And Four: Inside The Ad Account

Three. Which ads are selling, and which are still running anyway? In most accounts a few ads pay for the rest. If nobody can name them, the budget is being spread across all of them, losers included.

Four. Which campaign produced last month's sales? Not clicks. Not leads. Sales. This is the question that makes a room go quiet. An agency that tracks to the sale answers it with a campaign name and a cost per sale.

Question Five: The List You Already Paid For

Five. Who is working the old list? Everyone who asked for a quote and went quiet is sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere. You paid to get every one of them. Ask when anybody last spoke to them.

How To Read The Answers

Your agency may say that follow-up, missed calls and old lists are not its job. For an agency that only runs ads, that is a fair answer. It also tells you that nobody answers for what happens between the click and the sale.

None of these five is fixed by a better ad. So before you sign again, decide who owns each one. If it is you, put a name next to it. If it is nobody, that is your leak.