time to fire your agency?.

switching agencies is disruptive, so most brands stay too long. but staying with the wrong one is more expensive than the switch. if several of these signs are familiar, it's probably time to have the conversation — or start looking.

— 01you can't get a straight answer

slow replies, vague updates, no clear reporting. poor communication is usually the first symptom of a deeper problem — an agency that's disorganised, stretched too thin, or hiding weak results behind a fog of busyness.

the clearest sign is a simple question that never gets a simple answer. how many enquiries came from social last month should take one line to answer. if it takes a meeting, a deck and a caveat, the agency either does not know or does not want to say.

the second version is reporting that keeps changing shape. when the metric being celebrated moves every month — reach in january, engagement in february, followers in march — you are watching someone search for a number that looks good rather than tracking the one that matters.

and watch who answers. when the person doing the work is never in the conversation and everything arrives through an account manager, judgment is being filtered out of the relationship.

— 02no results, no strategy

months in, can you point to anything that moved — reach, leads, bookings, sales? if there's no measurable progress and no clear strategy behind the activity, you're paying for motion, not results. activity isn't achievement.

after two quarters there should be a visible direction: formats that were tested and kept, ones that were dropped, and a cost per enquiry or acquisition trending somewhere. an agency that cannot describe what it learned has been producing rather than marketing.

the harder case is an agency producing perfectly decent content that never moves a business number. that is usually a strategy problem rather than a craft one, and it is worth raising directly before replacing anyone — sometimes the brief was never right.

but if you raise it and nothing changes over the following quarter, the answer is clear. an agency that cannot adjust after being told plainly what is wrong will not adjust later.

— 03recycled, off-brand content

if the content feels generic, repetitive or doesn't sound like your brand, the agency isn't invested in understanding you. content that could belong to any business belongs to none. that's a sign they've stopped caring — or never started.

a related tell is content that could only have been made by someone who has never visited. no staff, no premises, no product in use — just stock and text. that is a supplier working entirely at arm's length from the business they are meant to represent.

look at three of their other clients. if the accounts are in different categories and all look the same, you are buying a formula, and the formula will keep producing whatever it produces regardless of your business.

the other version is content that could belong to anyone in your sector — stock imagery, generic captions, quotes over gradients. that work is cheap to make and it is why the account is not converting.

and check whether anyone from the agency has asked you a question recently. an agency that stopped asking has stopped thinking, and the content follows within a couple of months.

— 04before you fire anyone.

raise it once, specifically, in writing: what is not working, what you expected, and what would need to change in ninety days. some of what looks like agency failure is an unclear brief, a missing approver or a number nobody ever agreed.

and check your own side honestly. an agency starved of access, material and timely approvals produces exactly the work you are complaining about, and replacing them without fixing that reproduces the same result with a new invoice.

— 05how to leave well.

get access back first: the accounts, the ad account, the raw footage and the finished files. do that before giving notice, not after — an agency that holds assets during a handover is not unusual, and the argument is easier while the relationship still works.

then write down what you learned. which formats worked, what the cost per enquiry was, what the brief got wrong. that document is what stops the next arrangement repeating the same quarter, and it is the most valuable thing to take from a relationship that failed.

and fix your own side before starting again — one named approver, timely access, material supplied on time. those three decide more of the outcome than the supplier does.