Marketing agency doesn’t work: why and how to avoid it

Updated in October 2026. The market numbers in this article come from industry research and from public personnel cost rules. The calculations, examples and observations about agencies’ day-to-day are MindBrand’s and are stated as such.

Summary

When the marketing agency "doesn’t work", the problem almost always starts at the purchase, and not only at the delivery: vague scope, price deciding in place of an indicator, a promise in place of an agreement.
An agency is a company and does the math. A senior Google Ads manager costs, with charges, R$ 8,800 to R$ 10,500 per month. If they take care of 20 accounts, there are about 8 hours per month left for each one.
Price is scope. A R$ 6,500 website is not a R$ 15K website with a discount, and a logo with visual identity is not branding.
Price is not the only culprit. In a 2026 industry survey of Brazilian agencies, price appears in 10% of the cancellation reasons cited. Lack of perceived value (16%), change of priorities (13%) and misaligned expectations (12%) weigh more.
Marketing is only one part of the process. The company needs to be aligned with the defined strategy. What happens inside (a lead with no reply, a disconnected proposal, price, deadline) the agency doesn’t control.
The client also decides the result. A sales team that doesn’t answer, the absence of a CRM, a price without positioning and a budget incompatible with the goal bring down any campaign.
Marketing becomes an investment, not a cost, when there is someone who holds accountable, knows the numbers and connects marketing, CRM and sales.
You can hire better: diagnosis before the proposal, indicator written into the contract, ad accounts and domain in your name, fee separate from the budget.
At MindBrand, more than 95% of all the clients we have served came from other agencies after a bad experience, and some have been with us since 2017, before Fastcore became MindBrand.
The answer is not always an agency. In some cases, an in-house team or consulting solves it better, and the article says when.

Why the marketing agency "doesn’t work" (and when it does)

The frustration is real and common. The company hires an agency, pays every month, receives a report and, at the end of the semester, can’t answer the simplest question: did marketing bring in customers? When this happens, the quickest conclusion is "marketing agencies don’t work". In most cases we see, the correct conclusion is another: that hire, done that way, had no way to work.

This article starts from a thesis that is uncomfortable for both sides: a bad result rarely comes from a single cause. It comes from a set of decisions made before the first campaign runs, and a good part of them are the client’s, not the agency’s. That is why we will talk about both ends, with numbers, and not with accusations.

What the client expects and what the contract delivers

Whoever hires expects sales. The contract, most of the time, describes activities: number of posts, campaigns managed, monthly reports. The agency fulfills what is written, the client demands what they expected, and both think they are right.

What is sold in a marketing engagement is, to a large extent, a promise that any contract accepts. There is no way to write there "the client expects to double sales" next to "the agency offers 12 posts per month". They are different things, and that is where expectation detaches from delivery. When the agreement doesn’t include an indicator, the conversation about results turns into opinion.

Serious agencies exist: how to recognize them

Before any criticism, an honest caveat: there are many serious agencies, and they have similar signs. The ones that most separate the good from the bad:

Client retention. The best thermometer of an agency is how long its clients stay. An agency that swaps its entire portfolio every year is solving the wrong problem.
Diagnosis before the proposal. If the price arrives before the agency understands your ticket, your margin and your service, what is being sold is a package.
A report with contacts and cost, and not only with reach and likes.
The name and response time of whoever serves your account, stated before closing.
Accounts, domain and contact base in your name.

We also provide services to other agencies, covering vacations, leaves and demand peaks, and this gives us an inside view of how the client portfolio moves. In a pattern we see often, an agency brings in 10, 15 or 20 new clients in a month and loses almost the same number in the same period. That is not bad luck: it is the sign of a model that depends on selling more to make up for those who leave.

Two ways of hiring that almost always go wrong

From our experience, most hires that go wrong fall into two patterns. Neither is anyone’s malice, and both are predictable.

Those who buy on price

The first buyer asks for three quotes and closes the lowest. The logic seems sensible: if the three deliver "marketing", why pay more? The problem is that the three don’t sell the same thing. To fit the price, the agency cuts what doesn’t show in the proposal: analysis time, the senior professional’s attention, original production, results meeting.

Whoever charges little needs many clients to make the numbers work, and many clients per professional mean little time for each. The consequence is the delivery that the price buyer ends up complaining about: automatic report, reused creative, little analysis. The agency even fulfills the contract, but the contract never paid for more than that. See more about this mechanism in why cheap management burns budget.

Those who buy the promise of a "famous expert"

The second buyer goes after those with a name: the course expert, the stage expert, the one who meets famous people. The promise is of a method, a shortcut, sometimes a guaranteed result. What arrives after signing is usually something else: a standardized process, a junior team and the same script applied to different businesses.

The point here is not to disqualify those who teach or give talks. It is to remember that a well-known name is not an indicator. Always ask what changes in your business, who does the work day to day and which number will prove it worked. If the answer is a catchphrase, the proposal is not ready yet.

The agency is also a company and does the math

An agency owner is also a business owner: has payroll to pay, taxes, tools, rent and a margin target. The client who calculates rigorously the industrial cost of their own product usually forgets that the agency does exactly the same math. And that this math limits what it can deliver for a given price.

What goes into an agency’s price

An agency’s monthly fee needs to cover, at a minimum:

the cost of the professional who does the work, with salary and charges;
the fraction of the time of whoever coordinates and reviews;
tools, licenses and reports;
taxes on revenue;
the cost of selling and serving (sales, meetings, support);
the margin that keeps the company standing.

When the proposal is far below the market range, one of these lines was cut. Almost always the first is the professional’s time. See the range practiced in management fee and media budget.

Why the client’s math rarely includes the agency’s math

The buyer looks at the agency’s price against the competitor’s price. Almost nobody looks at the price against the cost of doing it well. That is why the next section exists: it shows, with simple numbers, what fits inside a Google Ads management fee.

The Google Ads account from the inside

Google Ads management is the most contracted paid traffic service and the easiest to calculate. You don’t need to believe us: just do the math with the public personnel cost rules.

How much a senior manager costs

Let’s use a deliberately conservative example: a salary of R$ 6,500 per month. The published ranges for a senior traffic manager are usually higher, so the real cost tends to be greater than in the example.

On top of the salary, the employer pays FGTS (8%) and provisions the 13th salary, vacation and the constitutional one-third vacation bonus. That alone adds up to 27.44% of the salary. Outside the Simples Nacional tax regime, there are also employer INSS, RAT and third-party contributions, which add up to 26.8% to 28.8%. With R$ 500 in monthly benefits, the professional’s total cost comes to:

about R$ 8,800 per month at a company under the Simples Nacional;
about R$ 10,500 per month at a company outside the Simples.

In other words, the real cost of a CLT (formal-employment) employee is between 1.4 and 1.7 times the salary.

How many accounts, how many hours

A month has about 20 business days, or 160 working hours. The question the client rarely asks is how many ad accounts this professional serves. In our experience, at many agencies a single manager takes care of about 20 accounts. The table below shows what this means:

Accounts per manager	Hours per account per month	Manager cost per account (Simples)	Manager cost per account (outside Simples)
8	20 h	about R$ 1,100	about R$ 1,300
12	13 h	about R$ 730	about R$ 880
20	8 h (about 24 min per business day)	about R$ 440	about R$ 530

The values are a simulation with the assumptions above, not a market price. They don’t include tax, tools, coordination, sales or margin. That is, the manager’s cost is only the floor of the fee.

What can be done in 8 hours per month

A well-kept Google Ads account asks, over the month, to: review search terms and add negatives for what doesn’t serve, adjust bids and budgets, test ads, review the landing page, check that conversions are being measured correctly and prepare a results reading the client understands. In 8 hours, you can do the essential maintenance. You can’t investigate why the contact didn’t become a sale, nor test a new idea calmly.

This doesn’t mean every account needs 20 hours. Small accounts can run well with less. The point is another: the time per account is information you can and should ask for. An agency that knows how to answer how many accounts each manager serves and how much time is dedicated to yours is in control of its own work.

What to ask the agency about this

How many ad accounts does each manager serve?
Who will be the professional on my account and what is their seniority?
How many hours per month are planned for my campaign?
Is the media budget paid directly to the platform, and is the fee separate?

To understand how the market composes fee and budget, see fixed fee or percentage of the budget. And if you want to see how Google Ads has been changing with artificial intelligence, read Gemini and Google Ads in 2026. Our paid media campaigns page shows how we work.

Price is scope: three real examples

The Google Ads account shows the principle, which holds for almost everything an agency sells: price is not a table of items, it is the size of the work. When the client negotiates the price without negotiating the scope, the agency has two exits: refuse or deliver less.

Website: the R$ 3,500 one, the R$ 15K one and the R$ 65K one

An example that happens all the time. Our yardstick for a website starts at R$ 15K, because it comes from what the client needs: strategy, structure, copywriting, design, performance, technical SEO and measurement. Then comes the counteroffer: "I’ll pay R$ 6,500, at most". It can be done. And the client will receive a R$ 6,500 website. If they say R$ 3,500, that can be done too, and they will receive a R$ 3,500 one.

What can’t be done is delivering the same R$ 15K, R$ 35K or R$ 65K website for that amount. Each range buys a different amount of research, content, testing and integration. In the total cost of ownership that the cheap website hides, we show what usually appears afterward: redoing, fixing, paying again. Our websites and e-commerce solution always starts from what the website needs to do for the business.

Branding: when "logo and visual identity" became "branding"

The second example is the most sensitive, because it involves the name of the service itself. Today logos and visual identity are sold as if they were branding, and they are not. The honest question is: whose fault is it? Of the agencies that know the difference and sell it that way anyway, or of those who look for a "branding" for R$ 5K? Probably both, and that is how the term became a well-finished logo.

Branding is brand management: positioning, value proposition, voice, architecture, application. Visual identity is one of its deliverables. To understand the difference, see what is branding. And, if the doubt is what changes the price, read when cheap branding turns out expensive.

Google Ads: expensive management and cheap management

In the third example, we go back to the manager’s math. A management of R$ 800 per month, with a personnel cost per account of R$ 440 to R$ 530 before tax and tools, leaves almost nothing for analysis, testing or meeting time. That doesn’t mean every cheap management is bad. It means that, when the price is very low, it is worth asking what was cut for it to fit. If the answer is "attention to your case", the agency is selling automatic management under the name of careful management.

What a real branding requires

As branding is the most confused service, it is worth detailing what a decent process involves. In our practice, it takes at least three months, with several people involved, on our side and yours.

The first phase is understanding, and lasts at least a month. It includes research of the market, competitors, clients, partners, employees, the board and conversation with the owner. Only with this material can you answer where the company is and where it wants to go, with tools such as SWOT analysis and Golden Circle. Only after this phase does the second begin: positioning, brand platform, naming when necessary, identity and application.

This is expensive because it requires the time of experienced people. That is why it is easier, for those who sell, to call a logo delivery branding and move on. Whoever buys, in turn, receives something beautiful that doesn’t solve the positioning problem that made them look for the agency. In how long a branding project takes, we explain the stages. See also how we work in branding.

Why the competition becomes about price and not quality

If the math is so simple, why does the market insist on competing on price? Because the client has difficulty comparing quality before hiring, and price is the only thing that can be compared in a spreadsheet.

What happens when the price drops and the delivery has to fit

There is a predictable mechanism. The client wants to pay the cheapest. The agency, which also needs to pay its bills, lowers the price to close. For the numbers to work, it starts serving more clients per professional, or using less experienced professionals, or standardizing production. In a few months, the client feels the drop in attention, cancels, and the agency goes back to selling to another client with the same logic. It is a cycle in which both sides lose.

What the market data show about price, perceived value and cancellation

A 2026 industry survey of Brazilian agencies and consultancies helps see the picture more carefully. According to the agencies themselves:

the most cited reasons for losing clients were lack of perceived value in the service (16%), change of client priorities (13%) and misaligned expectations (12%). Price appeared in 10%;
among the reasons that lead a client to choose an agency, service and relationship led (28%), followed by referral (23%) and niche specialization (19%). Price appeared with 8%;
for 34% of the agencies, the average ticket per client was up to R$ 2K per month, and only 18% had an average ticket above R$ 15K.

Two readings are possible, and both are true. The first: price, on its own, explains little of the cancellations. What weighs is the client not seeing the value and expectations not having been agreed. The second: the contract base is still very concentrated in low tickets, and it is in that layer that the agency’s math tightens the most. It is worth remembering that these are agencies’ answers, in a sample of a few hundred companies, and that they represent what they perceive, not necessarily what each client thinks.

The practical conclusion is simple: price is what makes the client come in, and the lack of perceived value is what makes them leave. To reduce the risk, you need to agree from the start on what will be measured and how the result will be shown.

The client’s part: what is not the agency’s fault

If the article stopped at the previous section, it would be unfair to those who work at an agency. There are bad results that no agency, however competent, could avoid. They originate on the inside of the company.

We have been through this ourselves. Many clients proposed that we earn only on results. At first it seems great, and at the beginning we accepted: we analyzed the business and the market and took on the risk. What we learned is that marketing is only one part of the process. It brings the right person to the company. What happens after arrival is not in our hands.

For marketing to work, the company needs to be aligned with the strategy that was defined. That is the basics, and it is precisely what the agency can’t impose from outside.

What happens inside the company and the agency doesn’t control

A lead that isn’t answered, or is answered too late, when the buying moment has passed.
A sales proposal disconnected from what marketing promised. The ad says one thing, the proposal delivers another.
A price out of the market, with no positioning to justify it.
Deadline and delivery quality below what was sold.

None of this shows up in the campaign report, and none of it can the agency fix from outside. When the result is weak, whoever looks only at the campaign searches for the problem in the wrong place.

A sales team that doesn’t answer, with no CRM, with no measured funnel

It is the most common cause and the least admitted. The campaign brings contacts, but the reply takes hours on WhatsApp, nobody follows up and there is no record of who bought. The agency shows 100 contacts in the report, the client closes 3 sales and concludes that marketing "didn’t work". Without someone responsible for service, a response deadline and a CRM, not even the best campaign converts. Paid traffic only brings people; whoever sells is the company.

A price above the market, with no positioning to support it

A company can charge more than the competition, as long as the market understands why. When the price is high and the positioning is generic, the customer compares, sees no difference and leaves. No ad solves this. Before investing in media, the company needs to know who it sells to, what differentiates it and why that is worth the price. It is brand work, not campaign work.

A budget incompatible with the goal

A goal of 30 sales per month with a budget that barely pays for 30 contacts doesn’t add up. The math needs to be done before signing: ticket, margin, closing rate and cost per contact. When it isn’t, the result looks weak and the conversation becomes about the agency’s price. See when paid traffic is not the first step.

Expectation of a miracle

There is a belief that hiring marketing is buying sales. It is not. Marketing increases the chance of the right customer reaching you. Converting them depends on the product, the price, the service and the closing. Time also counts: each optimization cycle takes weeks to show a signal and months to consolidate. Marketing doesn’t perform miracles, and expecting the responsibility to be entirely the agency’s makes no sense. Whoever expects a miracle in 30 days will be frustrated with any agency.

When marketing becomes an investment, not a cost

After all this, it is worth saying with what kind of client marketing works best, because the answer helps explain what goes wrong with the others.

The client we like serving the most

The client we most like working with has someone responsible for marketing, a CMO or an equivalent manager, who knows what they want, knows how to hold accountable, knows the numbers and metrics and follows the whole result. This person doesn’t ask whether the campaign "is going well". They ask how much each contact cost, how many became proposals and how much came back in sales. For an agency, it is the best possible situation: the conversation is about data, not opinion.

Everything connected: marketing, reports, CRM, conversions and values

In these clients, everything is linked. Each contact has its origin recorded, each deal has a stage and value, and a campaign’s result can be compared with the sale it generated. When this exists, the agency optimizes what matters and the client decides based on return. In our experience, it is where the partnership works and lasts, because both sides see the same number. To link these pieces, see our marketing automation.

Cost or investment

Whoever doesn’t do marketing in a targeted way, without an objective, without measurement and without a link to sales, sees cost: a monthly expense you don’t know pays off. Whoever knows what they are doing sees investment: the money goes in, the sale comes out and the numbers add up. That is how marketing becomes cheap. Not because the fee is low, but because every real invested has a return you can see.

Signs that the agency is not working

If you doubt whether the problem is the agency, these signs help separate the cause:

You can’t see results in numbers. The report talks about reach, likes and impressions, but not about contacts, cost per contact and sales.
The proposal came before the diagnosis. The agency gave the price without asking about your ticket, your margin and your service.
You don’t know who takes care of your account, nor how long it takes to reply.
The ad accounts, the domain and the pixel are in the agency’s name, and you don’t have administrator access.
The strategy is the same for all clients. The creative is reused, the calendar is standard, and nothing has been adjusted in months.
Communication disappeared after signing.

One or two isolated signs can be a communication problem that gets resolved in a meeting. Three or more indicate a structural problem.

How to hire a marketing agency without regret

Almost everything that goes wrong in a hire can be avoided before signing. These are the five points that weigh the most.

Demand a diagnosis before the proposal

A serious proposal is born from a conversation about your business: what you sell, to whom, at what price, with what margin, through which channels and with what closing rate. If the agency sends a closed price without asking anything, it is selling a package.

Write the objective and the indicator into the contract

You don’t need to promise results. You need to agree on which number will show that the work is moving: contacts generated, cost per contact, qualified visits, proposals sent. Also agree on which numbers the monthly report will bring, at a minimum: budget invested, contacts, cost per contact and, with your help, how many became sales.

Leave the accounts and assets in your name

Before signing, confirm in whose name these stay:

the Google ads account and the Meta ads portfolio, with you as administrator and the agency as a partner;
the website domain, which in the case of .com.br is registered with your CNPJ as holder;
the pixel, the Google tag and Analytics;
the contact base and the CRM, which need to be exportable and yours at the end of the contract;
the final files of the creatives produced.

Ask for the accesses in the first month, not the last. It is the item that generates the most conflict when a relationship ends.

Separate fee and media budget

The fee pays for the agency’s work. The budget pays for the media, and ideally goes straight to the platform. When the two appear as a single value, you don’t know how much went to ads. If the agency charges a percentage on the budget, understand how it works and what happens if you increase or reduce the investment.

Understand the billing model

There are four more common models, each with a different risk:

Model	How it works	Advantage	Risk
Fixed fee	Monthly value for the agreed scope	Predictability	Little incentive to optimize beyond the scope
Percentage of the budget	The agency receives a percentage of what you invest in media	Scales with the account	Gain grows with spend, not necessarily with results
Performance	Part or all of the payment depends on an indicator	Aligns interests	Requires a reliable indicator and clean measurement
Hybrid	Lower fee plus bonus per goal	Balance between security and incentive	More complex contract

The industry survey cited earlier shows a clear change: the fixed fee, which was the model of 74% of agencies in 2024, fell to 32% in 2025, with hybrid and performance formats gaining space. There is no perfect model. There is the one that matches your level of maturity in measurement.

An observation of ours on the performance model: the proposal of "I only earn if there are results" sounds great, and we accepted some at the beginning. It works best when the company takes care of its part, because the result also depends on service, proposal and price, and not only on the campaign. See the section the client’s part.

The questions for the first meeting

Which indicator will you use to say the work is working?
How much media budget is needed for the objective I gave, and how did you arrive at that number?
In whose name are the ad accounts, the domain, the pixel and the contact base?
Who serves my account, and how long do they take to reply?
How many accounts does each manager serve?
What happens if I want to leave, and with how many days’ notice?
Can you show me a real report, with the client’s data hidden?

An agency that answers the second question with a closed number, knowing nothing about your business, deserves distrust. The healthy answer is: "I need to understand your ticket and your closing rate first".

What we see at MindBrand: clients who came from other agencies

We speak from a concrete experience, and it is worth as data, with the right labels. MindBrand was Fastcore, founded in 2015, and changed its name about five years ago. Some of the clients we serve today have been with us since 2017, that is, since before the name change. Those who followed us saw the company change brand without changing its way of working. The complete story is in our story.

Where our clients come from

More than 95% of all the clients we have served came from other agencies, after a negative experience. It is internal MindBrand data, about our whole history, and not a market statistic. It matters for one reason: almost everyone who reaches us has already gone through a hire that didn’t work, and already brings the right questions. That was the case of Fix, which came to us in 2023, in a round with 15 agencies, after having already gone through other agencies.

What usually went wrong before

Without naming anyone, the patterns we find the most are always the same: vague scope, a report with vanity metrics, ad account and domain in the agency’s name, service that disappeared after signing and a strategy equal to that of all other clients. It is exactly the list of signs from the previous section.

What we do differently in the first month

We start with a diagnostic, not a proposal. We understand the business, the ticket, the service and the digital presence before talking about price (the Business Diagnostic exists for this). We agree in writing on the indicator, leave the accounts and accesses in the client’s name and define who serves and how fast. What the client learned to demand from the previous agency, we start offering without them needing to ask.

What changed in their business

Fixing what went wrong and serving the business’s growth are two stages. The first is fixing the base: measurement, service, positioning, landing page. The second is growing on top of it. We don’t promise a number, because the result depends on what is inside and outside the company, as we show in this article. Some cases are in projects.

Is it worth it for B2B companies?

B2B has characteristics that change the reading of everything we saw. The sales cycle is long, the decision involves several people and the volume of contacts matters less than their quality. An agency that measures success in clicks and in lead volume will look efficient and deliver little.

It makes sense to hire an agency when the company has a defined product or service, a sales process that serves and closes, and a goal that can be measured in qualified contacts and proposals.
It makes little sense when there is no sales team, when the positioning is undefined or when the budget doesn’t cover the objective.
It requires extra care when the sales cycle exceeds three months: the result of marketing takes time to show up in cash, and the report needs to show intermediate stages.

See what changes for B2B companies in paid traffic for B2B and industry, and the Generate demand solution.

Agency, in-house team or consulting: which to choose?

Not every company needs an agency. The best model depends on budget, maturity and how much you want to control.

	Agency	In-house team	Consulting
Cost	Monthly fee, predictable	Salary plus charges (1.4 to 1.7 times the salary)	Lower project or monthly fee
Control	Shared	Total	Guides, doesn’t execute everything
Speed to start	Fast	Slow (hiring and training)	Fast
Specialization	Several disciplines	Depends on who is hired	Strategy and direction
Risk	Delivery diluted across accounts	Dependence on one or two people	Execution stays with you
Makes the most sense when	You want execution and have no team	Marketing is central and the volume justifies it	You need direction before investing

In many cases, the combination works better: someone in-house who gives direction and handles service, and an agency that executes. If your case is still in the phase of defining direction, our marketing consulting is the shortest path. If the subject is appearing in searches, see SEO.

Common mistakes

Switching agencies without a diagnosis. If the cause was in service or positioning, the next agency will hit the same problem.
Judging by the pretty report. Reach and likes don’t pay bills.
Expecting results in 30 days from work that takes cycles of months.
Negotiating price without negotiating scope.
Closing an "I only earn on results" model without the company’s service, proposal and price being ready to sustain it.
Leaving accounts, domain and pixel in the agency’s name.
Measuring only the end of the funnel, without knowing where each contact came from.
Hiding from the agency what happens after the contact. It can only optimize what it sees.
Canceling without asking for accesses and files first.

Checklist before hiring (or renewing)

Write the objective and the indicator in one sentence, before asking for any quote.
Do the budget math: ticket, margin, closing rate and cost per contact.
Review your side: who answers the contacts, how fast, and where they are recorded.
Ask for a diagnosis before the proposal.
Confirm in whose name accounts, domain, pixel and contact base stay.
Ask how many accounts each manager serves and how much time is planned for yours.
Agree on the monthly report: budget, contacts, cost per contact and sales.
Read the clauses on term, penalty and notice. If necessary, consult a lawyer.

Glossary

Fee: the amount the agency charges for the management work, separate from the media budget.
Media budget: money invested in the ads, paid to the platform.
Qualified lead: a contact that has a real buying profile and interest, and didn’t just fill out a form.
CPA: cost per acquisition, how much it costs to get a contact or a sale.
CRM: a system that records the contacts and the progress of each deal.
Onboarding: the initial phase of an engagement, in which the agency understands the business and sets up the operation.
Churn: client cancellation in a portfolio.
Vanity metric: a number that looks good (reach, likes) but doesn’t measure sales.

Frequently asked questions

Why didn’t the marketing agency deliver results?

Almost never from a single cause. The most common are a proposal without a diagnosis, an objective without an indicator, a budget incompatible with the goal, a sales team that doesn’t convert the contacts and communication that disappears after signing. Before switching agencies, it is worth finding out at which point the process got stuck.

How much does a marketing agency cost?

It depends on the service, the company size and the scope. What you pay for is the time of experienced professionals, so prices far below the market range usually indicate cuts in attention, analysis or production. To estimate your case, use the budget simulator.

Why doesn’t a cheap agency work?

Because the price needs to cover the professional’s cost, tools, taxes and margin. When it is very low, the agency compensates by serving more clients per professional, which reduces the time dedicated to each account. This doesn’t apply to every cheap agency, but it is the first point to investigate.

How many clients can an agency serve per manager?

There is no official number. In our experience, there are agencies where one manager takes care of about 20 ad accounts, which leaves around 8 hours per month for each one. The best attitude is to ask the agency how many accounts each manager serves and how much time is planned for yours.

Fixed fee or performance: which is better?

It depends on your ability to measure. A fixed fee gives predictability, and the performance model aligns interests, but requires a reliable indicator and well-done measurement. Many contracts use a hybrid: a lower fee plus a bonus per goal.

How soon can you see results?

The first signs, such as contacts and cost per contact, usually appear in weeks. Consolidation, with adjustments to campaign, page and service, takes a few months. In SEO and branding the timeline is longer. Be wary of anyone promising results in a few days.

Who owns the ad accounts and the website: me or the agency?

They should be yours. The Google Ads account and the Meta portfolio need to be in your company’s name, with you as administrator. The .com.br domain must be registered with your CNPJ (Brazilian company tax ID), and the pixel, Analytics and the contact base must be exportable. Confirm this before signing.

Is it worth switching agencies or hiring someone in-house?

It depends on the reason. If the problem was service, measurement or positioning, switching agencies without fixing them repeats the result. Hiring in-house makes sense when marketing is central to the business and the volume justifies the cost, which is between 1.4 and 1.7 times the salary. In many cases, the combination works better.

Is marketing a cost or an investment?

It depends on how it is done. Without an objective, without measurement and without a link to sales, it becomes a cost: an expense you don’t know pays off. With indicators, CRM and conversions connected, it becomes an investment, because every real invested has a return you can see.

Can marketing be recovered after a bad experience with an agency?

It can, and it is what we do the most. The path is to start with a diagnostic to find where the process got stuck: measurement, service, positioning, budget or scope. More than 95% of the clients we have served came from other agencies. The Business Diagnostic is the first step.

Have you had a bad experience with a marketing agency?

If the last contract didn’t work, the first step is not to switch agencies, it is to find where the process got stuck. The Business Diagnostic analyzes market, competition, digital presence, current budget and your main bottleneck before any proposal, and you decide calmly whether you want to continue with us. To understand what each service usually costs, see the budget simulator and the Generate demand solution.