Picking a Meta ads agency is a big decision. You hand over your ad money, your brand and often your customer data. Get it right and your ads pay for themselves. Get it wrong and you can lose months before you find out.
I'm Josh, one of the two founders of Dalo Marketing in Armadale, Melbourne. Chris leads our Meta and Google ads, and I lead content, social and email. This is the list we would use if we were picking an agency for our own business. Use it on every agency you talk to, including us.
What a Meta ads agency should do for you
Meta ads are the ads people see on Facebook and Instagram. You pay Meta to show them. An agency's job is to turn that spend into sales or leads at a cost that works for your business.
A good agency does five things:
- Checks your tracking before it spends a dollar, so every sale or lead is counted.
- Makes new ads often. The ad itself often matters more than any setting.
- Runs the account every week: more money to the ads that sell, less to the ones that do not.
- Shows you what you spent and what came back, in plain words.
- Tells you the truth when something is not working.
If an agency only talks about clicks, reach and likes, it is not doing the job. Those numbers are easy to grow, and they do not pay your bills.
Seven questions to ask before you sign
Ask every agency on your list the same questions and write down the answers. A good agency answers each one plainly.
Who runs my account day to day?
Ask for the name of the person who will be in your account every week, and ask to meet them. The person who sells to you is not always the person who does the work. You want to know who decides how your money is spent.
Who owns the ad account and the pixel?
Your ad account holds your ads, your spend and their history. The pixel is a small piece of code on your website that tells Meta when someone buys or fills in a form. Ask who owns each one, and what happens to them if you leave. Meta lets a business give an agency access to its ad account without handing it over, so many owners keep both in their own name.
How do you make new ads, and how often?
Ads wear out. Show the same ad to the same people for months and it usually costs more and sells less. Ask who comes up with the ideas, who writes the words, who films, and how often new ads go live. Ask to see ads they have made for businesses like yours.
How will you report to me?
Ask to see a real report, with the client's name hidden. Look for your spend next to the sales or leads it brought in, not just clicks. Ask how often it comes and who goes through it with you. You should never have to chase your own numbers.
How do you count sales against Meta's own count?
This question sorts the good agencies from the rest. Open Meta, then open your store, and the two sale numbers will not match. That is normal. Meta counts a sale when someone bought within a set number of days of clicking your ad, or sometimes of only seeing it, and it fills some gaps with estimates. Your store counts the orders you really took. If you also run Google ads, both may count the same sale.
Ask which number they judge your ads on. A good answer uses both: Meta's number to see which ad is working, and your own sales to see whether the month was any good.
What does the contract look like?
Ask how long you are signed up for, how much notice you need to give, and what you keep when you leave: the ad account, the pixel, the ads and the reports. Get it in writing before any work starts.
What will it cost, all in?
There are two costs: what you pay the agency, and what you pay Meta for the ads. Ask for both in writing, and ask what the fee includes. You should know the full cost before any work starts.
Red flags
Slow down, or walk away, if you see any of these:
- A promised result. No honest agency can promise a future result.
- You never meet the person who will run your account.
- Nobody can tell you who owns the ad account and the pixel, or what you keep if you leave.
- Reports full of clicks, reach and likes, with no sales or leads.
- The same ads running for months.
- Money going out before anyone checks the tracking.
- Ads that fake people, places or products.
- A contract nobody will explain or put in writing.
What good looks like
Here is how we work at Dalo Marketing, as one example. Hold every agency you meet to the same standard.
- A founder on your account. Josh and Chris work on every account, and a founder signs off every change before it goes live.
- Tracking fixed before any spend. We check every step from the click to the sale first.
- One offer, many ads. New ads every week: the ideas, the words, the scripts and the filming plan. Real people and real products, never stock photos.
- You say yes to every ad. You see every ad before it runs, on your own page.
- Judged on your sales. We read your store or your lead list every week, next to Meta's count, and money moves to the ads that sell.
- Your own live results page. Your spend sits beside your sales on a private page, and Josh or Chris goes through the numbers with you.
Our clients are one of two kinds: online stores, our ecom clients, and businesses that want calls and enquiries, our lead gen clients. Here are our numbers, by Meta's own count:
- 4.6x average return on ad spend for our ecom clients.
- 1.7x the leads a month, on average, for our lead gen clients.
- 37% lower cost per lead for our lead gen clients.
- $300,000+ in Meta ad spend managed in the last 12 months.
Return on ad spend is the sales your ads bring in for each dollar you spend on them. Cost per lead is what each enquiry costs you in ads.
And in our clients' words:
- Sooshi Mango, the Australian comedy trio: "We have seen a huge spike in sales on our international tours." Weekly ticket sales more than doubled once our ads went live, 2.6x in our first full week of ads against the week before.
- Andrea Moss of Liberty Belle Rx, CEO and co-founder of Liberty Belle Group, in her video for us: "No surprises, our new customers have more than doubled."
- Priyanka, Regional Manager for five Anytime Fitness clubs in Melbourne: "Josh and Chris have been fantastic in managing our social media and consistently generating high-quality leads." 1.7x the leads a month and 37% lower cost per lead, by Meta's own count across the five clubs, our best quarter against our first three months.
Does the agency need to be in Melbourne?
Not always. Meta ads are run online, so a good agency can run yours from anywhere. A Melbourne agency helps if you like to meet face to face, or if it needs to film at your business. But the seven answers above matter more than the postcode.
We are in Armadale, Melbourne, and we work with brands across Australia and overseas.
A short checklist
Before you sign, you should be able to tick every line:
- I have met the person who will run my account.
- I know who owns the ad account and the pixel, and what I keep if I leave.
- My tracking will be checked from the click to the sale before any spend.
- New ads will be made often, with real people and real products.
- I will see every ad before it runs.
- Reports will show my spend next to my sales or leads, not just clicks.
- They can explain why Meta's number and my store's number differ.
- The full cost, the contract length and the notice are in writing.
- Nobody has promised me a result.
Want to see how we would run yours? Read how we run Meta ads, or book a free call with a founder below.