5 Questions to Ask Your PPC Agency: How to Tell a Real Answer From a Polished Dodge
Five questions to ask your PPC agency this week, what a good answer sounds like, what a dodge sounds like, and how to check the answer yourself.
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Every monthly agency call sounds about the same. The charts come up, the numbers get read aloud, someone says the account is "trending in the right direction," and the call ends five minutes early.
You leave without a decision, because you never asked a question that required one.
Most advice on questions to ask a PPC agency is written for hiring. This is for the agency you already pay. Five questions you can ask on your next call, what a good answer sounds like, what a dodge sounds like, and how to check the answer yourself in the account. You don't need to be a PPC expert to use them. You need to listen for specifics.
Why Good Questions Beat Better Reports
When the agency builds the report, the agency decides what counts. That's why the numbers can look healthy while revenue sits still. A 2025 TransUnion and EMARKETER survey found that 60% of marketers say people inside their own company question the validity of their metrics at least sometimes. Your CFO probably isn't the only skeptic in the building.
Questions change the dynamic. A report lets the agency pick the story. A specific question makes them show their work. The five below are built so that a strong agency can answer each one in under a minute, with numbers, and a weak one can't.
The 5 Questions
Question 01
“How many of last month's conversions became qualified leads in our CRM?”
This is the gap between what the platform reports and what your sales team actually received. It's the single most expensive gap in paid advertising, and it's invisible from inside the ad account.
A good answer sounds like
"Google counted 140 conversions. 61 matched to leads in your CRM, and sales qualified 38 of them. The rest were duplicate form fills and a phone-click action we've since moved to secondary."
A dodge sounds like
"Conversions were up 18% month over month." Or anything that answers with platform numbers when you asked about your CRM.
Question 02
“How much of our spend goes to people already searching for our name?”
Brand searches are usually the cheapest, best-converting traffic in the account. They can make an account look great while doing very little the rest of your marketing wasn't already doing.
A good answer sounds like
"About 22% of spend is brand. We report brand and non-brand separately, and here's non-brand cost per qualified lead on its own. We use brand exclusions to keep broad match and Performance Max from quietly buying your brand name."
A dodge sounds like
"Brand is part of a healthy account structure." True, and not an answer. Watch for a single blended return-on-ad-spend number that never gets split.
Question 03
“Who made the last ten changes in our account, and why?”
This tells you who actually works on your account, how often, and whether the changes follow a plan. It's the fastest check for a senior pitch followed by a junior handoff.
A good answer sounds like
Names you recognize, specific changes, and reasons tied to results. "I paused three ad groups on the 12th because they spent $4,100 without a qualified lead. Our feed specialist restructured the Shopping feed on the 18th."
A dodge sounds like
"The team is in there every day." Or "Our platform optimizes continuously." Activity claims without names, dates, or reasons.
Question 04
“What did you test last month, and what did it teach you?”
Accounts improve through deliberate tests. If nothing is being tested, the account is being maintained, and maintenance at agency rates is expensive.
A good answer sounds like
"We ran a 50/50 experiment on the landing page for the commercial campaign. The new page converted 31% better over five weeks, so we rolled it out. Next we're testing a lead-quality question on the form."
A dodge sounds like
"We're always optimizing." Or a list of routine tasks, like bid adjustments and negative keywords, presented as tests.
Question 05
“If we cut the budget 20% tomorrow, what would you cut first?”
An agency that knows where your money works also knows where it doesn't. This question finds out whether they know the account at the margin, where the real decisions are.
A good answer sounds like
A specific answer with numbers. "The display remarketing campaign and two broad-match ad groups. Together they're 23% of spend and produced 4% of qualified leads last quarter. We'd also tighten the search terms we flagged last month."
A dodge sounds like
"Everything is performing, so cutting would hurt results." Or "The algorithm needs the budget to learn." Every account has a least-efficient 20%.
Take it to your next call
The five questions, ready to paste
Paste these into your next agenda, or send them ahead so the agency can come prepared. A strong agency will welcome the notice.
01How many of last month's conversions became qualified leads in our CRM?
02How much of our spend goes to people already searching for our name, and what does non-brand look like on its own?
03Who made the last ten changes in our account, and why?
04What did you test last month, and what did it teach you?
05If we cut the budget 20% tomorrow, what would you cut first?
How to Run the Conversation
Send the questions ahead. You aren't trying to catch anyone out. You're trying to see what your agency knows when it has time to prepare. A weak answer with a week's notice tells you more than a weak answer on the spot.
Ask for numbers, then ask for the source. "Where does that number come from?" is the best follow-up in marketing. Platform numbers, analytics numbers, and CRM numbers all describe the same customers differently. You want to know which one the agency is quoting.
Give recent weeks some slack. Some clicks turn into conversions days or weeks later, and Google notes that recent performance can look weaker until those late conversions come in. A fair comparison uses periods that have had time to settle.
Judge the pattern. One fuzzy answer is a conversation. Three fuzzy answers is a pattern. If you're seeing a pattern, our guide to the signs of a bad PPC agency covers what usually sits behind it.
When the Answers Don't Add Up
Sometimes the problem isn't the agency's honesty. It's that nobody has ever lined up the platform numbers against the CRM, so nobody, agency included, knows the real answer to question one. That's fixable, and it's usually the first thing worth fixing.
It's also exactly what our senior team does in a second opinion. We take read-only access to your ad platforms and a 30-day export of your CRM leads, match them by hand, and agree together on one diagnosis and one treatment plan. If you're wondering what a review like that should include, here's what a real PPC audit covers and how long it should take.
5K Team
Our team helps companies to increase revenue, decrease costs, increase efficiency, and scale employees using digital marketing and AI technology.
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