Should I fire my Facebook ads agency?
By Dan BartleyUpdated 3 minute read
The short answer
Fire them if results have stalled for a quarter and they cannot show you a specific plan to fix it, or if they will not give you full access to your own ad account. Before you do, check whether the problem is the agency or something it does not control: your creative supply, your offer, your product page or your margins.
How do I know if it is the agency or my business?
Look at where the numbers changed. If the cost of each sale rose while your store converted visitors as well as it always has, the ads are the problem. If the ads still bring the same traffic at the same cost but fewer people buy, look at the store, the offer or the stock first.
| What you see | What it usually points to | Whose job it is |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per purchase rising while the same ads run for months | Creative fatigue: the audience has seen the ads too often | Whoever makes the ads |
| Clicks steady, add-to-carts or checkouts falling | The product page, the price, shipping or stock | Usually you |
| Meta reports sales that Shopify does not | Attribution settings and reporting | The agency |
| Spend going up, profit going down | Scaling budget faster than the ads can support | The agency |
| Results swinging from week to week | Too little budget per test, or too many changes at once | The agency |
What should a good agency be doing every month?
Testing new ads, reporting in terms of your profit, and telling you what it changed and why. An agency that only adjusts budgets and audiences is managing the account, not growing it.
- Launching new ad concepts every month, not new crops of the same photo
- Reporting cost per purchase against the cost you can afford, not only return on ad spend
- Comparing what Meta reports with what your store actually took
- Explaining what it tested, what it learned and what it will try next
- Keeping the ad account, pixel and business portfolio in your name, with the agency given access
Who is meant to make the ads?
Agree it in writing, because this is the most common gap. Many agencies manage the account and expect the brand to supply photos and videos. When nobody supplies new creative, the same ads keep running, the audience tires of them, and results slide while everyone assumes someone else is responsible.
Ask your agency how many new ads it launched last month and who made them. If the answer is none, or that it is waiting on you, the account is short of creative rather than short of management.
What should I ask before I fire them?
Ask the questions that show whether the agency understands your business. A good agency answers them quickly and with numbers.
- How many new ads did you launch last month, and what did you learn from them?
- What is our cost per purchase, and what can we afford it to be?
- How does what Meta reports compare with what our store took?
- Do we own the ad account, the pixel and the business portfolio?
- What will you change in the next 30 days, and how will we know it worked?
How do I switch agencies without losing results?
Keep what is working running while the new team starts. Make sure you own the ad account, pixel and creative before you give notice, hand over the ads that are still profitable, and judge the new team on what it tests and learns over several rounds, not on its first fortnight.
When is an agency worth keeping?
When it is honest about the numbers, it is testing, and the limit on growth is something it has already flagged to you, such as budget, margin or a shortage of new creative. In that case, fixing the constraint usually does more than changing the agency.
Other questions people ask about this
How long should I give a new Facebook ads agency?
Long enough to run several rounds of creative tests, which for most brands is two to three months. Judge them on what they tested, learned and changed, not only on the first month of results.
Can I fire my agency and run Facebook ads myself?
You can, if you have the time to make and test new ads every week. For most owners the bottleneck is producing creative, not using Ads Manager, so plan where the new ads will come from before you take the account back.
Do I own my Facebook ad account if an agency set it up?
You should. The safest setup is an ad account and pixel that sit in your own Meta business portfolio, with the agency given partner access. If the agency created them in its own portfolio, ask now how ownership will be handled if you part ways, because it is much harder to sort out after the contract ends.
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