What an agency actually does all month
A surprising number of people ask Google what a marketing agency is, and almost nobody has answered plainly. Here is the plain version, from the inside of the trade.
| Activity | Who does it | How much of the fee it is | Does the client see it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account management: calls, emails, reports, chasing approvals | Account manager | Often the largest single share | Yes; it is most of what you see |
| Adverts: bids, budgets, creative, search terms review | A PPC or paid social specialist | Significant, and sometimes charged as a percentage of spend on top | Through a dashboard |
| SEO: technical fixes, titles, content, links | An SEO specialist, often junior | Variable; “ongoing optimisation” is where undefined hours go | Through a ranking report |
| Content and social: posts, articles, scheduling | A content executive | Moderate | Yes |
| Strategy and reporting | Senior staff, briefly | Small but priced high | A monthly deck |
Source: Cybrial’s assessment of the agency model as commonly structured; agencies vary, and the good ones name their hours and deliverables.
None of that is dishonest. It is what a team of specialists costs to coordinate. The question is whether your business needs a team of specialists, or one person who knows your site and does the three things that matter this month.
Worth it when
- The budget is large enough that channel specialists pay for themselves. Above several thousand pounds a month in ad spend, a dedicated paid-media specialist usually earns their fee.
- Someone on your side can brief them and read the reports. An agency without an informed client drifts to its own priorities.
- The work genuinely needs several disciplines at once: a product launch across search, social, email and PR in the same quarter.
- The fee buys named deliverables and reports from your own Search Console, analytics and ad accounts, not the agency’s dashboard.
- The notice period is short. A month is fair. Twelve is a warning.
Not worth it when
- You are a small business and the account manager is most of what you are paying for.
- The fee is a percentage of your ad spend. Some agencies charge up to 40% of the budget to manage it. That rewards spending, not results.
- Nobody can tell you what will happen in month one, specifically.
- The site does not convert yet. An agency pouring traffic into a leaking site is the most expensive thing in marketing, and few will tell you to fix the site first, because that is a different invoice.
- You have not done the free things. A Google Business Profile with ten reviews and published prices outperforms most retainers for a local business, and costs nothing.
The alternative: a block of hours from one person
This is our model, so read it as a position rather than neutral advice. A small business does not need five specialists; it needs its profile complete, its site converting, its pages ranking for the searches that bring work, one advert campaign that is measured, and someone who reads the numbers each month and does whatever they say. That is a block of hours from one person who knows the site, and it is priced from £250 a month with no minimum term.
The trade-off is real and it is stated on the about page: one person is one person. Hosting, backups and monitoring run automatically regardless; anything needing a human waits if that human is ill. An agency has cover. For a business spending £20,000 a month on adverts, cover matters more than the management layer costs. For most small businesses it is the other way round.
What to ask either of us
- What will you do in month one, specifically?
- Show me a result you measured, with its source and dates.
- Who does the work, and can I talk to them?
- How is the fee calculated, and does any part of it move with my ad spend?
- Will I have access to my own Search Console, analytics and ad accounts, and will your reports come from them?
- What is the notice period?
- What would you tell me not to spend money on?
