What I find when I look
I ran My Social Agency from 2012 to 2019, so I have seen this from the agency side too. What I find now is a lot of vanity metrics, and reports that stay away from return. I also find a lot of hours billed for very little money back.
It is most common with web development. A project gets quoted that will cost the client a fortune, with no case for what it earns. The same is happening now with AEO and GEO. Both matter, but big quotes are going out with no clear measure of a good return.
Clients waste money too. Before video calls, clients would ask my whole project team to come to London for a meeting. They paid the train fares and several people’s hourly rates to sit in a room for hours. A strategy meeting is worth doing in person, but most of those meetings were not that.
Not every agency is there to make you a profit
An agency is often given a KPI that does not put money in the bank directly. It might be impressions, or a conversion rate on the website. That is fine, as long as someone on your side knows how that KPI leads to profit. The strategy should be owned in-house, and the agency should be working to it. Holding an agency to a target is part of what a fractional CMO does.
I don’t ask agencies for timesheets, and I think it is rude when clients do. An agency can spend as long as it likes if you are making a good profit on the spend.
How to brief a marketing agency on one page
I start every engagement with a one-page plan, built on Flex™, my own planning method. It has three outcomes, each with a number. An agency brief should hang off that page and answer four questions.
- What are you paying, and what has the agency said it will do for it?
- Which KPIs is the agency judged on?
- How does each KPI lead back to profit?
- Which work stays in-house?
The first two are usually written down somewhere. The last two are the ones I find missing, so the rest of this piece covers them.
How to brief a web build
A website that looks nice is one thing, but nobody can measure “looks nice”. The designer’s job is to make it look good. The front-end developer’s job is to turn that design into code. Neither of those tells you whether the site sells.
So every web build brief should include a CRO project. CRO is the work of getting more visitors to buy or enquire. Set the target from the averages in your industry, and treat that as the bare minimum.
The brief should also say what the build has to pass before it is signed off.
- It does everything you need it to do.
- Your team can use the CMS and is happy with it.
- The technical SEO basics are right, including canonical tags.
- Duplicate content and endless paginated pages are kept out of Google’s index.
- It is fast, and it passes Google’s speed tests.
Speed gets less attention than it should. My own site scores 94 out of 100 for performance on Google’s mobile test. Ask your agency what yours scores.
How to brief an AEO or GEO project
AEO and GEO mean getting your brand cited in AI answers. The work is still relatively new, so I want to see how the agency plans to prove the return. A promise to get you cited is not enough.
Right now I think the fair measure is impressions. Work out what each impression costs you, and compare it with the CPM you would pay for display advertising. Treat any conversions as a good bonus. Then ask what a citation is worth to you in numbers, for the money you are spending. I have yet to see an agency prove that return.
What comes in-house
This is the question clients leave off the brief. The test is cost and risk. If the work can be done in-house for less, at a risk you can accept, it should be.
When I ran a digital marketing agency, I told clients to hire their own social staff. A competent graduate who has been briefed and trained can run the accounts, with the agency alongside.
Email and CRM are going the same way. It is now common to have someone in-house run the whole CRM process, because it holds sensitive data. Admin and less critical jobs are candidates too, and AI agents now help with a lot of them.
The same is true of basic website changes. Many clients manage their own content and still pay an agency for simple code changes. If you have an IT team, tools like Claude Code or Cursor can handle much of that. Setting that up is part of my AI automation work.
Then give the agency time
Once the brief is in place, the most important thing is to give the agency time. It takes time to build a brand in the direction the agency has set out from your brief.
I like to see data every month, with a short overview from the agency. Then sit down with them once a quarter, at least at the start. If the agency seems to be underperforming, or the work is critical, move that to monthly.
Keep a more regular check-in with your main contact at the agency. That one is mostly for clearing blockers. Agencies often wait on the client for something they need. It is the client’s job to remove those blockers quickly, so the agency can do its work.
Start with the numbers
If your agency seems to be underperforming, look at the brief before you look for a new agency. Check the KPIs you set and whether anyone has tied them to profit. If nobody senior on your side owns that, it is the gap a fractional CMO fills. It is also one of the signs in when to hire a fractional CMO.
Bring your last three months of agency reports to a 30-minute call. You will leave knowing whether the problem is the agency or the brief.
Questions about briefing an agency
What should a marketing agency brief include?
What you are paying and what the agency will do for it. The KPIs it is judged on, and how each one leads back to profit. Which work stays in-house.
How often should I review my agency?
Look at the data monthly and sit down once a quarter. Move to monthly meetings if the agency is underperforming or the work is critical.
Should I ask my agency for timesheets?
No. Judge the agency on its KPIs and on your profit, and leave its hours alone.
