Performance marketing company, hired on evidence

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How to structure a performance engagement

1. Define the outcome in one sentence. Write down the exact action you will pay for and the conditions that disqualify it. A lead with a wrong number, a duplicate submission or an out-of-area enquiry should be named as excluded before the contract is signed, not argued about later.
2. Agree whose measurement counts. Platform-reported conversions, your analytics and your customer records will not match. Nominate one system as the invoice of record, and agree a tolerance and a reconciliation process for the gap between them.
3. Separate media cost from fee. A blended cost per result hides how much of your money buys attention and how much buys management. Insist on visible ad spend, visible fee, and the ability to see the platform account yourself.
4. Set the review window with the volume in it. A cost-per-acquisition target is unreadable until enough conversions have landed to be meaningful. Agree the number of conversions, not just the number of weeks, that constitutes a fair test of the arrangement.
5. Keep the accounts and the data. Ad accounts, conversion configuration, analytics and audiences belong in your name with access granted to the agency. The performance history is the asset that makes your next negotiation cheaper.

Why measurement is the whole negotiation

Performance marketing is only as good as the conversion definition underneath it. Google's own documentation describes conversion tracking as measuring specific customer activity that is valuable to your business, and the reason it exists is to learn which keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns drive that activity. If the tracking is loose, everything above it is decoration: a company can hit a cost-per-lead target by counting page views of a contact page, and nobody in the meeting will notice for a quarter.

So the first hour of the engagement should be spent on definitions rather than strategy. Which actions count. Which are excluded. Whether a phone call under a certain duration counts. How duplicates are handled. Whether offline outcomes, such as a sale closed a month later, feed back into the account. Agencies that welcome that conversation are the ones whose numbers will survive scrutiny.

Fee models and the incentives they create

A percentage of media spend rewards spending more. A flat retainer rewards efficiency but caps effort. A pure cost-per-result model pushes the company towards whatever converts most cheaply, which is often your existing customers or your own brand name, and away from the harder audiences that actually grow the business. A hybrid with a floor plus a performance component is the common compromise, and it works when the floor is honest about the labour involved.

Whichever model you choose, ask the company to model a bad quarter out loud. What does it earn if results halve. What does it change first. The answer tells you more about the relationship than any case study, because it describes the behaviour you have actually purchased.

The claims that need evidence

Guaranteed cost per acquisition, guaranteed lead volume and guaranteed positions are commercial promises, not mechanical ones, because the auctions are competitive and no company controls what rivals bid or what the market does next. A guarantee is only meaningful with a written definition of what qualifies and a stated remedy when it is missed. Ask for both in the contract.

Ask also for a named client in a comparable market, with permission to speak to them. A company with a real record can arrange that within a day. A company selling a template will offer anonymised charts and confidentiality as the reason, which is sometimes true and always worth testing.

Questions people actually ask

What is a performance marketing company?

An agency whose compensation is tied at least partly to measurable outcomes such as leads, sales or bookings, rather than to hours or deliverables alone. The definition of the outcome, and who measures it, is what makes the model work or fail.

Is pay-per-lead better than a retainer?

It shifts risk but changes incentives. Pay-per-lead favours cheap volume unless the qualifying definition is tight; a retainer favours steady work but pays regardless of outcome. Many workable contracts combine a modest floor with a performance component.

How do we handle disagreements about the numbers?

Nominate one measurement system as the invoice of record before work starts, agree a tolerance for the gap with platform reporting, and set a monthly reconciliation. Disputes come from undefined terms far more often than from bad faith.

Can a company guarantee a cost per acquisition?

It can commit contractually, but no agency controls competitors' bids or market demand. Treat any guarantee as a commercial term that needs a written qualification standard and a stated remedy, and be sceptical of guarantees offered before anyone has seen your data.

Who should own the advertising accounts?

You should, with the agency granted access. Keeping the account, conversion configuration and audiences in your name preserves the performance history that makes future campaigns and future negotiations cheaper.

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