What 'No Results' Usually Turns Out to Mean
You pay every month and the jobs have not come. Or they have, and you cannot connect them. "No results" can be three different situations. Telling them apart takes about an hour.
Marketing Agency No Results: Three Situations
Work through them in order. Each has its own check.
Situation 1: Genuinely Nothing
The ads ran, and few jobs came. How to check: ask your agency for the month's spend, and count the new jobs on your own list that came from ads. If both are small, the ads may not be reaching the right people, the budget may be too small to matter, or the phone is going unanswered. Invoca's 2026 benchmarks (more than 70 million calls) found only 52% of inbound calls to home-services businesses are answered by a person. Check your missed calls first.
The remedy: agree on a target in jobs, a deadline, and a review.
Situation 2: Something Happened and Nobody Measured It
Jobs came in. Nothing ties them to the ads. A report that cannot be verified is experienced as no results. This is a reporting failure, not a lie.
How to check: ask 10 recent customers how they found you. If several say Google, the ads worked and the report did not show it.
The remedy: join the calls to your jobs. See Tracking a Lead All the Way to the Job.
Situation 3: Measured Wrongly
The report counts something that is not a job. A call is counted whether it lasted 12 seconds or 12 minutes, whether it was a wrong number or a repeat customer. Platform "conversions" can include all of these.
How to check: ask how a conversion is defined, and compare the conversion count with your new-job count.
The remedy: count jobs with a name, a phone and an address, and tell Google about them. A bidder fed calls buys calls. See offline conversion.
One Month, Two Readings
Example, with made-up numbers. The same month, read two ways.
| As unmeasured | As measured | |
|---|---|---|
| Spend | $4,000 | $4,000 |
| What the report shows | 70 calls | 16 jobs booked, 12 paid |
| What you conclude | "Nothing is happening." | $250 a booked job, $3,200 left after the ads |
Same ads, same month. The difference is what was counted.
A Plain Agreement
If you stay, write down what you will both look at each month. Three lines are enough.
- What they send. Spend, jobs booked, cost per booked job, and what was left, on one page, by the 5th.
- What you send. Your paid job list with phone, date and amount, by the 3rd.
- When you review. A date three months out, with the question: did the ads pay?
Questions for the Next Call
- How is a "conversion" defined in my account?
- How many of last month's calls came from a tracked number?
- What share of calls cannot be traced to an ad at all?
- What did you change last month?
The third question is a fair one. No setup traces every call. A number on a van or a call from your Business Profile has no click behind it. A report that tells you the share is more honest than one that says nothing.
Questions Owners Ask
How Long Should I Give an Agency?
Pick the review date yourself and write it down. Three months of numbers say more than one.
Do I Have to Send My Job List?
Without it, nobody can say how many calls became paid jobs. It is the single most useful thing you can send.
What If the Numbers Are Honest and Bad?
Then you have something real to talk about, which beats not knowing.
What to Ask For
- A report that opens with jobs booked and money left.
- Your own login to the ad account.
- A review date in the calendar.
Not every situation is the agency's fault. You hold the job data, and they need it. Walk through Is My Marketing Working? together. And if you want a fair read of your agency, see Is My Marketing Agency Ripping Me Off?.