What to Check Before Firing Your Marketing Agency

Ending an agency relationship badly usually costs more than the frustration that led to the decision — lost account history, a gap in coverage, or a scramble to rebuild tracking from scratch. This is the checklist to work through before, not after, you give notice.

Confirm what you actually own

• Account ownership: Google Ads, GA4, Search Console, Google Business Profile — check who holds top-level admin access on each. See Who Should Own Your Google Ads Account if you are not sure.
• Website and domain: Confirm the domain registrar account and website hosting are in your name, not the agency’s.
• CRM integrations: If the agency built any CRM connections or automations, confirm whether those live inside your CRM directly or depend on agency-side infrastructure.

Confirm what you can take with you

• Campaign history: Can you export or retain historical campaign structure and performance data, or does it disappear if the agency removes access?
• Creative assets: Ad creative, landing page files, images, and copy — confirm these are saved somewhere you control, not only inside agency tools.
• Tracking setup documentation: Ask for documentation of how conversion tracking, UTMs, and any custom tracking are configured. This saves significant time for whoever takes over next.
• Analytics and Search Console access history: Confirm you will retain access, or have exported what you need, before access is removed.

Review the contract terms

• Notice period and any early termination provisions
• Outstanding invoices or prepaid periods that may need to be settled or refunded
• Any non-solicitation or non-compete language that might affect a next vendor

Separate the real problem from the symptom

This is the step most often skipped, and it is the one an independent audit is built for. “Performance is down” can mean several very different things:

Possible cause	What it looks like
Agency performance issue	Poor campaign structure, low effort, weak strategy
Tracking problem	Real performance may be fine; it is not being measured correctly
Internal sales process issue	Leads are fine; follow-up or close rate has slipped
Seasonality	A normal, recurring dip unrelated to marketing execution
Strategic mismatch	The strategy is being executed well but is the wrong strategy for the business right now

Firing the agency solves exactly one of these. If the real cause is tracking, an internal sales issue, or seasonality, a new agency will inherit the same apparent problem and look no better within a few months.

For a broader framework on distinguishing these causes, Is My Marketing Agency Actually Doing a Good Job? is a useful companion piece.

The value of checking before you switch

An independent audit, done before the decision rather than after, answers the “what is actually wrong” question with evidence instead of frustration. In some cases it supports the decision to leave. In others, it identifies a fixable issue — a tracking gap, a sales-process problem, a scope misunderstanding — that a new agency would not have solved either.

Either way, you make the switch, or do not, with a clear reason rather than a guess.