In a recent Wild Iris Marketing blog about organic SEO versus pay-per-click ads, we shared our anecdotal knowledge of some marketing agencies using their percentage-based income of paid ad budgets to bolster their bottom line, sometimes at the expense of their clients. This led us to the thought that it might be helpful for businesses to know what to look for when it comes to whether or not they have a healthy relationship with their marketing agency.

When you work with your marketing agency it should feel like you’re in a partnership. You’re trusting them with your brand, your budget, and often giving them control over your primary source of new business, after all. But many business owners ask the same question after a few months or even years into the process: “Is all this actually working?”

The tricky part is that marketing doesn’t always show easily whether it’s working or failing. Sometimes things look busy with lots of reports, dashboards, ad clicks, and monthly calls, but real progress is hard to see or measure. This article is meant to help business owners step back and evaluate whether their marketing agency is truly serving their business, or if they’re just doing their best to look busy.

What were you looking for?

Before you look at metrics or reports, go back to the beginning. Why did you hire your marketing agency in the first place?

Maybe you wanted more leads. Maybe you wanted better-quality leads. Maybe you wanted stronger visibility in your local market, or to stop relying so heavily on paid ads. Unless they have been met or have changed, your agency’s work should still be tied to those original goals, even if the tactics have changed along the way.

If the answer to “What are we trying to achieve?” feels vague or has somehow been lost without your input, it’s worth taking a pause and reassessing.

Busy-Busy Is Not the Same as Productivity

Many agencies are very good at showing constant (and billable) activity. Ads running. Posts published. Emails sent. Reports delivered. The harder question is whether all that activity is moving your business toward accomplishing your goals.

Are you seeing gradual improvements in organic search results? Are people finding you without ads? Is your website doing a better job of explaining what you do and landing you customers? Are its leads more consistent and better aligned with your services?

If everything resets the moment ads are paused, that’s not momentum. That’s dependency.

Do You Understand Why Your Agency is Doing What it’s Doing?

You don’t need to know all the marketing lingo, but you should be able to understand the strategy at a high level.

A good agency can explain:

• • why certain marketing channels are being used (email, SEO, blogs, paid ad, social media, etc.)
  • how the success of their efforts are being measured
  • what you should see improving over time
  • what the next phase might look like

If the reports your agency sends you feel confusing or overly technical, and they’re not being explained to you, that’s a red flag. Transparency isn’t just about showing you the numbers. It’s about helping you understand how those numbers affect your business and marketing plan.

Follow the Money

Some agency pricing models are tied directly to ad spend, sometimes alongside a separate management fee. That structure isn’t wrong in and of itself, but it can influence an agency’s priorities. When more ad budget from you means more revenue for the agency, an unscrupulous or disinterested agency might feel less incentive build your organic visibility and thus safeguard their subscription-style income.

It’s important to examine your billing structure and see if there is a clear plan to make your marketing more organic over time, allowing you to reduce or reallocate your marketing spend, or if the strategy seems to require you to keep paying for ads or other billable items indefinitely just to maintain the same level of visibility.

A healthy strategy should aim to give you sustainability, not lock you into a never-ending payment plan. If you feel like you’re making minimum payments on a credit card with no end in sight, something is wrong.

Is Your Website Getting Better, or Just Getting More Visitors?

Your website is the basis upon which a marketing agency builds almost all its digital strategy. As you work with your agency, you should see an improvement in how clearly your site communicates to visitors, how easily they find what they need, and how effectively it converts them from “visitors” into customers.

If you’re driving traffic to a site that hasn’t meaningfully improved or optimized in months or years, that’s not only a missed opportunity, but it’s a waste of whatever money you’re giving to your agency to get people there. A marketing agency should work to strengthen the destination of your marketing efforts, not just direct more traffic to it.

Are Questions Welcome?

A strong and healthy relationship with you marketing agency should be like any other relationship. It should prioritize communication and encourage dialogue and questions. You should feel comfortable asking why something is being done, what alternatives exist, and whether what is being done is still the right fit for your business or situation.

If you express concerns that are consistently brushed aside, or if the answer to every question is “trust us” without the option to get some explanation, that’s not really a partnership. You deserve to have understanding and input for your money!

What a Healthy Relationship Looks Like

An agency should work toward becoming less indispensable over time. That may sound counter-intuitive, but it doesn’t mean they should want you to no longer need their services, it means helping your business build real assets like visibility, trust and content that don’t vanish if a campaign pauses or ends. Helping your business establish these enables your agency to move in whatever direction you’d like them to next, whether that is more growth, more stability, or simply taking a break to catch your breath.   

There needs to be a balance between short-term tactics and long-term growth and between paid visibility and organic visiblity.

How Can Wild Iris Marketing Help?

At Wild Iris Marketing, we believe business owners should understand their marketing well enough to make informed decisions. We focus on building organic visibility, strong websites, and clear messaging first, then using paid advertising strategically when it makes sense to enhance those.

Our goal isn’t to keep our clients dependent. It’s to help them build marketing that works even when budgets and goals shift. We understand that doing what’s best for you is best for us, because good relationships last.