Free marketing agency evaluation tool

A marketing agency scorecard built around evidence.

Use five weighted areas to evaluate whether you have enough visibility to judge your marketing provider. The score measures access, verification and transparency; it does not accuse an agency of poor work or misconduct.

Updated 21 August 2026 · 9 minute read

Interactive scorecard

Rate the evidence you have today.

Choose 0 when you have no visibility and 5 when the evidence is clear, accessible and regularly verified. This is a self-assessment, not a finding about your provider.

Account access

20%

Can your business access and retain its ad, analytics and reporting accounts?

Tracking and verification

25%

Can reported conversions be reconciled with real enquiries, customers or revenue?

Reporting clarity

20%

Does the report explain spend, outcomes, changes, issues and next actions clearly?

Management transparency

20%

Can you see what was changed, tested and learned during the reporting period?

Commercial alignment

15%

Are campaigns judged against lead quality, sales, margin and business capacity?

Rate all five areas to calculate your score out of 100.

How to use the scorecard

Score the evidence you can see—not how much you like the agency.

A friendly account manager and a polished report can coexist with poor visibility. Equally, a direct communication style can coexist with excellent account control and commercial results. Keep the assessment anchored to evidence.

Score each area from 0 to 5

Use 0 when the business has no visibility and 5 when the evidence is accessible, understood and independently verifiable. Record a reason beside every rating.

Apply the published weight

Divide the rating by five and multiply by the area weight. A tracking score of 3 contributes 15 points because tracking is worth 25% of the total.

Repeat it monthly

A single score is a baseline. The useful signal is whether weak areas improve after the questions are raised and whether strong areas remain supported by evidence.

The five evaluation areas

What to look for, what to ask and how much it counts.

The weights reflect a simple principle: a performance claim is only as useful as the tracking and business evidence underneath it.

Account access

Weight 20%

What good evidence looks like

The business owns or can administer its core advertising, analytics and data accounts. Access can be retained if the agency relationship ends.

Where visibility is weak

The agency owns the account, access is unclear, or reports are the only way the business can see what is happening.

Questions to ask your marketing agency

1.Can we sign in independently without asking the agency?
2.Who owns the billing profile, audiences, pixels and historical data?
3.Is there a documented handover process if the relationship ends?

Tracking and verification

Weight 25%

What good evidence looks like

Conversion definitions are documented and platform results are reconciled with real enquiries, qualified leads, orders or revenue.

Where visibility is weak

The report relies on platform conversions that the business cannot reproduce, explain or connect to what sales actually received.

Questions to ask your marketing agency

1.What exactly causes each reported conversion to fire?
2.How many reported leads were contactable and qualified?
3.When was tracking last tested from click to CRM or sale?

Reporting clarity

Weight 20%

What good evidence looks like

Every report explains spend, verified outcomes, important changes, unresolved issues and the next action in language the business can use.

Where visibility is weak

The report is chart-heavy, shifts format frequently or celebrates volume metrics without explaining whether the business outcome improved.

Questions to ask your marketing agency

1.What happened commercially, not only inside the platform?
2.Which result is verified and which is modelled or attributed?
3.What is the single most important action next month?

Management transparency

Weight 20%

What good evidence looks like

The agency can show what it changed, the reason for each test, the result and what it learned—even when the test did not work.

Where visibility is weak

Work is described as a general task list, recommendations repeat each month, or no test has a declared beginning, end and outcome.

Questions to ask your marketing agency

1.What material change was made during this reporting period?
2.Which hypothesis did the change test?
3.What was stopped because the evidence did not support it?

Commercial alignment

Weight 15%

What good evidence looks like

Targets reflect qualified demand, revenue, margin, capacity and the locations or services the business actually wants to grow.

Where visibility is weak

Optimisation rewards the cheapest platform action even when lead quality, sales capacity or profitability moves in the wrong direction.

Questions to ask your marketing agency

1.What is a qualified lead or profitable sale worth to us?
2.Which campaigns are producing the customers we most want?
3.Does the proposed budget match our ability to serve more demand?

Reading the result

The score tells you where to ask—not what to accuse.

A score from 80 to 100 suggests strong visibility. Keep monitoring whether the evidence remains available and whether reported outcomes continue to match the business. A score from 55 to 79 means some important gaps deserve a direct answer. Below 55, an independent review may help establish what can and cannot be verified.

A low rating does not prove the agency has done anything improper. Access may be missing because nobody asked for it. Lead quality may be absent because the sales team never sent it back. Treat each gap as a question, give the provider the chance to supply context, then update the score when the evidence changes.

For a more detailed assessment, the free AgencyGuard Check asks eleven questions and returns a score with three questions tailored to your answers.

Use the complete check

Turn the scorecard into questions for your agency.

Take the free two-minute AgencyGuard Check for a scored breakdown and three specific questions to ask next.

Take the free check See our audit process