Before You Fire Your Ads Agency, Ask This One Question
A mid-sized law firm reached out, frustrated by months of underwhelming marketing results. It had spent thousands on digital ads and hired a well-regarded agency. Leads were inconsistent, conversions were flat, and the pipeline felt like a leaky bucket. The firm's conclusion: "Our ads agency isn't skilled enough. We need someone better." That was not the real problem.
By Kenny Lloyd. Originally published on the Lloyd Solves blog on May 20, 2025. Moved here and updated on October 20, 2026.
Do you even have a system?
What we found was not bad creative or poor targeting. It was missing infrastructure: no attribution model, no way to score leads, no consistent follow-up, and no visibility from the ad click to client intake.
The marketing was not failing because of the agency. It was failing because the firm did not have a marketing system.
Most agencies handle traffic. But if your lead forms do not reach the system your intake team works in, if intake is manual, and if nobody can see cost per signed case by source, how would anyone know what is working? It is like hiring a pit crew without ever building the race car.
Ads without systems
What most firms have:
- Some ad copy
- A handful of landing pages
- A few reports that do not tie to real business results
What is missing:
- Conversion tracking tied to intake results
- A connected path from inquiry to intake to signed matter
- Follow-up for leads who are not ready yet
- Feedback that shapes ad creative based on cases that actually signed
Most agencies do not offer this. Not because they are bad, but because their model was not built to.
Start with the system, not the ads
Look at the whole path, from first impression to signed engagement. Decide where each inquiry should land, who owns it, how its source is recorded, and which numbers leadership will trust. Then connect the tools to support those decisions.
When that path exists, your agency finally has a fair shot, and you can see what is working, what is not, and what to fix first.
Before you fire your agency, fix the system
If your ad spend feels wasted, do not rush to find a new agency. First, ask the hard question: do we have a system that gives our agency a fair shot at success?
What to do next
If you are not sure that system exists, start with the decisions behind it. The Future-State Decision Worksheet walks through the open questions behind intake, referral, data, and reporting. A Future Design Call decides whether the next step is a Blueprint, a Sprint, or a referral.
The blueprint is the product.