It’s very common for business owners to ask themselves: “Is my marketing agency or manager doing a good job?” This type of doubt is more common than it seems and can lead to significant frustration.
After all, how can you evaluate something you don’t fully understand? The answer lies in knowing the right indicators and understanding how to monitor the work without needing to become a marketing expert.
Let’s look at how you, as a business owner or manager, can protect yourself from mistakes, identify whether you’re working with an excellent professional or team, and learn how to track results in a practical and objective way.
Understand the True Role of Marketing
One of the first points to clarify is that the main goal of marketing is not “selling.” While this idea is popular, it distorts the true role of this area.
Marketing is responsible for creating an environment that is favorable for sales, attracting, engaging, and educating potential customers. In short, it prepares the ground for the sale to happen more naturally and consistently.
If you are evaluating the work of your agency or manager based solely on immediate sales, you might be overlooking other important factors that indicate good performance, such as:
- Increased brand visibility.
- Audience engagement.
- Generation of qualified leads.
- Retention and customer loyalty.
Why You Can’t Remain in the Dark
Ignoring what is happening in your campaigns is a mistake. This can result in:
- Lack of clarity about return on investment (ROI): Without understanding the numbers, you won’t know if you’re gaining or losing.
- Hasty decisions: You may end up terminating contracts or firing professionals who were delivering good results.
- Missed opportunities: Sometimes, simple adjustments could significantly improve results, but without visibility, these opportunities go unnoticed.
To avoid this type of situation, it’s crucial to establish clear metrics and maintain open communication with your agency or manager.
What to Evaluate in Your Agency’s Work
Here are the key points you should monitor to ensure you’re on the right track:
- Tangible Results
- KPIs (Key Performance Indicators): Ensure your agency sets clear goals, such as increasing traffic, generating qualified leads, or improving conversion rates.
- Campaign ROI: What return are you getting on every dollar invested?
- Transparency and Communication
- Regular Reports: The agency should provide detailed reports with results and future strategies.
- Expectation Alignment: You should know exactly what actions are being taken and why.
- Personalized Strategies
- Audience Targeting: Are the campaigns well-aligned with the profile of the ideal customer?
- Use of Data: Data-driven strategies are more efficient than guesses or generic formulas.
How to Monitor Without Being an Expert
If you don’t want to or can’t dive into the technical details of marketing, here are some practical tips to keep track without getting lost:
- Set Periodic Meetings: Schedule bi-weekly or monthly meetings to review results and strategies.
- Focus on Strategic Results: Ask about the impact of campaigns in the medium and long term, rather than just short-term results.
- Learn the Basics: Understanding key metrics like CTR, CPC, and ROI will help you have more productive conversations.
The Role of the Manager or Agency
For managers and agencies, here’s the key point: it is essential to educate the client. Often, the entrepreneur does not know how to evaluate results, and it is the professional’s responsibility to present data and explain the impact of strategies in a clear and accessible way.
An efficient marketing manager:
- Provides Clear Data: Avoids jargon and presents numbers that make sense to the client.
- Explains Strategies: Demonstrates how each action is contributing to the larger goal.
- Maintains Open Communication: Is always available to clarify doubts and adjust actions.
Control, Knowledge, and Trust
Evaluating the work of your marketing agency or manager doesn’t have to be an insurmountable challenge. With the right information and the right indicators, you can make more confident decisions and ensure you’re investing in the right professional.
Remember: marketing is about building a consistent path to results. If you have a team delivering visibility, engagement, and qualified leads, you’re on the right track. Now, it’s up to you to align expectations and work together to achieve the best possible results.
What Your Strategy Really Needs to Achieve
One of the biggest misconceptions in the business world is believing that marketing, on its own, is the solution to all of a company’s goals, especially sales.
Marketing can and should be a powerful strategic tool, but it’s essential to understand its limits and responsibilities. Without this clarity, you may create unrealistic expectations, feel frustrated with the results, and even make wrong decisions about your team or strategy.
Differentiate Marketing and Sales Objectives
Before evaluating results, it’s crucial to understand that marketing and sales play different roles in a business’s growth process. Marketing is not responsible for “closing sales.”
It creates the conditions for that to happen by delivering qualified leads, building brand perception, and increasing company visibility. The conversion of these leads into customers often falls on the sales team.
For Example:
- Lead Generation: Marketing attracts potential customers to your base. If these leads are not converting into sales, the issue may lie within the sales team or a lack of clear sales processes.
- Branding: When your brand is new or not well-known, the initial goal may be to increase visibility and build trust with the audience. This is crucial for businesses competing with market giants, where brand recognition makes a difference.
- Engagement and Audience: In campaigns aimed at attracting followers or subscribers, the focus is not on generating immediate sales but on building a solid audience that can be nurtured in the future.
The Reality of Branding Strategies
In scenarios like beginner e-commerce or businesses competing with major players, the first strategic step is not to sell, but to build credibility. Investing in branding is essential for your brand to become recognized by the public.
Imagine a newly launched appliance store. Without a history, reviews, or clear differentiators, expecting people to make a purchase on the first contact is a strategic mistake. The marketing should, first and foremost:
- Create brand presence.
- Highlight competitive differentiators.
- Build trust with the audience.
This phase is often overlooked by entrepreneurs who expect immediate customer acquisition results. It’s important to remember that branding is a long-term investment, but crucial for building solid foundations.
Define Clear and Specific Goals
Another common mistake is not knowing the real objective of marketing actions. Each campaign should be designed with a clear goal, and that goal needs to be aligned with the overall company strategy.
Ask yourself:
- Do I want to generate leads or make sales? Lead generation campaigns attract qualified contacts but require the sales team to convert these leads into sales.
- Do I want to increase followers? In this case, success will be measured by the number of followers or subscribers gained and the cost per acquisition, without necessarily expecting immediate sales.
- Do I want to retain customers? Retention strategies may focus on engagement or rewards for existing customers, creating a more loyal base.
Each objective requires specific metrics and different tools for evaluation.
Performance vs. Branding
If the goal is customer acquisition, performance campaigns (such as Google Ads or Meta Ads) focused on conversion can bring faster results. However, if the brand is still not recognized, branding campaigns should come first. Both are important, but for different stages of the sales funnel.
For example:
- Follower Campaign: Measure the agency or manager’s performance by cost per follower or subscriber.
- Sales Campaign: Evaluate based on cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS).
The Role of the Entrepreneur
The entrepreneur must be aware that a successful marketing strategy requires alignment between expectations and reality. Expecting an agency or manager to solve all problems without clear direction creates fertile ground for frustration.
As a Business Owner, It is Up to You to:
- Set clear goals for each campaign.
- Understand the necessary steps to achieve long-term results.
- Provide strategic support to the marketing or sales team.
An Essential Piece in Your Growth
Marketing is an essential part of any business’s growth, but it needs to be understood and evaluated within its true role.
Setting clear goals, aligning expectations, and understanding the journey needed to achieve success are the foundations of a productive partnership with any agency or marketing manager.
If you want to build a successful business, abandon unrealistic expectations and focus on creating strategies that are aligned with your reality and market.
After all, effective marketing is a combination of strategic vision, precise execution, and a clear understanding of what you truly aim to achieve
Marketing Doesn’t Solve All Problems
Often, marketing is expected to be the magic solution to all of a business’s challenges. However:
- Marketing does not replace a good sales team. If the leads generated by marketing are not converting, the issue may lie in the sales team’s approach, not the campaign.
- It doesn’t fix product or reputation issues. A poor product or a brand with a bad reputation in the market won’t be saved by well-crafted ads. These structural problems need to be addressed before scaling campaigns.
Practical Example: A new online store competing with giants like Amazon needs to first build credibility and trust (branding) before expecting significant sales results.
Key Principles for Evaluation
To assess the quality of the work done on your marketing, follow these guidelines:
- Understanding of the Business: The professional or agency must have a deep understanding of the market, competitors, and the specificities of your industry. This helps avoid wasting money on poorly directed strategies.
- Alignment with Positioning: It’s crucial that the communication respects the brand identity. Ads or pages that deviate from the company’s tone can compromise public perception.
- Knowledge of the Product and Target Audience: Effective campaigns depend on a detailed understanding of what you sell and the desires of your ideal customer.
Practical Tip: Request clear documentation. Ask the person in charge of marketing:
- What do you understand about my business?
- How do you plan to communicate our positioning?
- What is the profile of the audience we are targeting?
- What pain points and desires does this audience have?
Documentation and Validation
Many marketing errors happen because business owners don’t validate the proposed information or strategies. Validate the following:
- The ideal customer profile (ICP – Ideal Customer Profile).
- The clarity of each campaign’s objective.
- The metrics that will be used to evaluate performance.
Benefits of Validation: With solid documentation, you eliminate “guesswork” and ensure that the work is aligned with the overall strategy.
Dividing Strategies by Type of Sale
The type of sale defines the metrics and marketing efforts. Let’s look at two main cases:
Direct Sale
Example: E-commerce or digital products that can be purchased directly on the website.
What to evaluate:
- Cost per sale (CPA – Cost per Acquisition).
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
- Conversion rate.
Cautions:
- Do not set unrealistic goals. Scale gradually.
- Focus on branding before expecting sales in markets where your brand is unknown.
Consultative Sale
Example: Services that require negotiation, such as consulting or customized quotes.
What to evaluate:
- Quantity and quality of leads.
- Percentage of leads that turn into real opportunities.
- Conversion rate from the sales team, which depends on their performance.
Marketing x Sales: Set Clear Boundaries
Marketing’s role ends when delivering qualified leads or opportunities. The responsibility for converting them into sales lies with the sales team.
Indicators for marketing: Volume and quality of leads generated.
Indicators for sales: Conversion rate and revenue.
Reducing Conflicts Between Teams: To avoid mutual conflicts, clearly document:
- Who is the ideal customer.
- Which leads are qualified.
- What is the standard process for nurturing and converting leads.
Monitoring and Transparency
Regular meetings are essential to align expectations and track results. Request:
- Detailed reports on campaign performance.
- Action plans to improve key indicators.
- Adjustments to the strategy based on data and feedback from the sales team.
Evaluation is Building Results
For both business owners and marketing managers, the key to consistent results lies in clear objectives, documented strategies, and continuous validation.
Avoid blindly delegating tasks; instead, be involved in the process, understand the steps, and demand transparency.
With this approach, you will recognize when you have a gem in your hands and avoid falling for empty promises or unrealistic expectations.
After all, efficient marketing is a construction that requires alignment, patience, and ongoing adjustments.