If you've ever read a slick monthly marketing report and felt vaguely worse afterward, you're not crazy. Most agency reports are designed to look like progress without committing to outcomes. Impressions are up. CTR improved. We optimized bids. Cool. Where are the jobs?
Here's the 30-minute self-audit any owner can run on a current agency — without sounding like you're trying to fire them.
Vanity metrics are the agency's friend and the owner's enemy. If you can't connect a report line to a booked job, the report is the product, not the work.
What are the warning signs that my Google Ads or LSA account is wasting money?
The four most common waste patterns in 2026 local trades accounts: broad-match keywords running without negative keyword lists, service areas extending into ZIPs the business doesn't actually want, single-keyword ad groups merged into mega-groups for "simplicity," and Performance Max campaigns left fully automated with no audience signals.
Open your Google Ads search terms report from the last 30 days. Sort by spend. If more than 15% of spend is on terms unrelated to your core services — "DIY," "how to," "jobs," "salary," competitor brand names you're not strategically targeting — you have a leak. We've audited accounts where 40% of spend was on irrelevant searches and the monthly report still said "performance trending upward."
How do I know if my LSA account is bringing in bad leads?
Pull your LSA leads from the last 60 days. Bucket them: booked job, qualified but didn't book, wrong service, wrong area, spam/wrong number. If more than 25% fall into the bottom three buckets, your LSA setup is leaking.
Most owners don't know Google credits disputed LSA leads — refunds the cost — if you dispute within 30 days with a valid reason. Agencies who don't dispute are either lazy or hiding the volume of junk leads they're sending you. Check your account: how many disputes filed last month? If the answer is zero, you're paying for leads Google would have refunded.
How can I tell if my Facebook ads are generating real customer calls vs junk?
Meta Lead Ads are the easiest place to fake performance. The platform reports a "lead" any time someone hits submit on a form. Your agency reports 80 leads. Your phone team books 4 jobs. Where did the other 76 go?
Three checks: (1) Does your form have at least one qualifying question — service type, ZIP code, or urgency — before the submit? (2) Is speed-to-lead under 5 minutes? (3) Are you running call tracking on the follow-up? If any of those is no, your Meta numbers are theater. Add a one-question qualifier and watch your reported lead count drop 40–60% — and your booked rate triple.
What metrics should I track every week for ads and SEO?
You need five numbers on a single page, every Monday morning. Anything more is noise. Anything less is willful ignorance.
| Metric | Why It Matters | Healthy Range (Home Services) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per booked job (by channel) | The only number tied to revenue | $80–$250 per booked job |
| Booked jobs per channel (weekly) | Trend matters more than absolute | Flat or growing month-over-month |
| Lead-to-booked conversion % | Exposes lead quality issues | 35–60% |
| Speed-to-first-response (minutes) | Single biggest close-rate lever | Under 5 minutes |
| % of LSA leads disputed and credited | Reveals account hygiene | 10–25% of leads disputed |
If your agency report doesn't include cost per booked job, ask for it. If they say it's "hard to attribute," the answer is: figure it out. That's the job.
What does good performance look like for LSAs, Google Ads, Meta, and local SEO?
Good performance in 2026 for a US home service business with a $1M–$3M revenue:
- LSAs: 25–50 booked jobs/month at $40–$90 per booked job, with 15%+ disputed and credited
- Google Search Ads: 15–40 booked jobs/month at $100–$200 per booked job, 10–20% conversion rate on landing pages
- Meta: 5–15 booked jobs/month (for $5K+ ticket trades), 3–5x ROAS on retargeting
- Local SEO: Top-3 map pack for 5+ core service keywords in your city, organic traffic growing 8–15% quarter-over-quarter
If your numbers are below the floor on multiple channels, the agency is the problem. If they're below on one channel and great on others, the channel might not fit your business.
How long does local SEO take to actually start producing calls?
Local SEO for a home service business produces measurable call volume in 4–8 months from a clean start, and meaningful pipeline contribution in 9–14 months. Anyone promising local SEO results in the first 60 days is either inheriting a strong existing profile or running paid ads they're calling SEO.
What you should see in month 1: Google Business Profile fully optimized, citations cleaned up, NAP consistent across 50+ directories, and a content/page plan for the next 6 months. If your SEO agency hasn't done that work by day 30, they're not running SEO. They're running invoices.
When is it time to fire my marketing agency?
Fire the agency when any of these is true for two months running: (1) cost per booked job is increasing while the budget stays flat, (2) you can't get a straight answer to "what specifically did you change last month and why," (3) the monthly call gets canceled or pushed and you're chasing them for it, (4) account ownership is still in their name despite repeated requests to transfer.
Don't fire over a single bad month. Markets shift. Algorithms update. But two months of vague answers is a pattern, not a hiccup. The cost of staying with a bad agency is rarely the fee — it's the 6 months of compounding underperformance and the opportunity cost of not having a real partner. Our agency vs freelancer vs in-house piece walks through what to do next.
People Also Ask
Should I do my own marketing audit before firing my agency?
Yes. Do a 30-minute self-audit before any conversation about leaving. Pull search terms report, LSA lead quality breakdown, and last 90 days of booked jobs by source. Walk into the conversation with data, not vibes. Half the time the audit reveals issues the agency can fix in 30 days if confronted. The other half, it gives you the receipts to leave cleanly.
How do I get an independent marketing audit?
Most reputable agencies offer free 30–60 minute audits as a sales motion, which is genuinely useful even if you don't switch. Have one or two of them audit your current account. Compare findings. If two independent auditors flag the same issues, your current agency is missing them — or hiding them.
What questions should I ask my agency on the monthly call?
Five questions, every month: What did you change last month and why? What did it produce in booked jobs? What's not working that you're going to change next month? What would you do if this were your money and your business? What's our biggest leak right now? If any answer is generic or evasive, that's data about the agency, not the account.
Is it normal for cost per lead to fluctuate month-to-month?
Yes, ±20% month-to-month fluctuation is normal even for well-run accounts — driven by seasonality, competitor bid changes, and algorithm updates. What's not normal: cost per lead climbing 40%+ over 3 consecutive months with no clear cause. That's a structural problem the agency needs to address, not a temporary blip to ride out.
How do I know if my agency is just running default Google recommendations?
Open your Google Ads account, go to the Recommendations tab, and check the "Auto-apply" settings. If every recommendation type is set to auto-apply, your agency isn't actively managing — they're letting Google's defaults run your budget. Manual override on bidding, audiences, and ad copy is the work you're paying for. Without it, you may as well be running the account yourself.
How much should I expect performance to drop if I leave my agency?
Plan for a 30–90 day transition dip when switching agencies — accounts need to be transferred, conversion tracking re-verified, and the new team needs to learn your seasonality. A clean handoff with a 4-week overlap keeps the dip under 15%. A messy fire-and-replace with no overlap can drop performance 40%+ for 60 days before recovery.