Ask them in writing before you sign. Each takes a minute. Each is easy to answer if the work is being done and hard if it is not. You do not need to know anything technical, only what a real answer sounds like.
Three questions. Ask them in writing, on email, before you sign anything.
Each one takes a minute to ask. Each has an answer that is easy to give when the work is happening, and hard when it is not.
You do not need to know anything technical. You need to know what a real answer sounds like.
"Of the appointments you book for me, how many actually happen? Send me last month's number."
Why it works. Nobody can produce this by accident. No franchise filing we read files it. Many CRMs mark an appointment complete when its date passes, whether or not anyone attended. So the number only exists if somebody built a way to collect it.
A real answer names a figure and says who counted it. For example: "Six in ten last month, from the tap the office does after each visit." Or it says "we do not count that yet", and then says how it would start.
A fake answer reaches for the calendar. "You booked forty last month" is the booking count, which you already had. "Around seventy percent" with no source is a guess.
Why this number is so hard to get
"What event does my account optimise on, and how many of it did each ad set get last week?"
Why it works. Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit; one that can't get there reads "Learning limited".
At Re-Bath's filed average a unit gets about 169 leads a month. That is about 39 a week, across every ad set. So the answer tells you at once whether the money is spread too thin to learn.
A real answer is two numbers and a name. "Lead, and the two ad sets got 22 and 17 last week."
A fake answer talks about reach, impressions or engagement. Those are not events you buy. If the reply explains why the count does not matter, the count is low.
The floor, and what to do when you are under it
"When my office marks an appointment as happened, where does that go? Does Meta see it?"
Why it works. Meta's ads aim at whatever event you tell them to. Send only form fills and that is all they can aim at.
Most setups send the form fill and stop. The rest of the chain never reaches the platform at all.
A real answer names the event and the path. "When your office marks it, our server sends Meta a visit that happened, into your own ad account's data, within the hour."
A fake answer says "the pixel handles it". A pixel sits in a browser. Your office marking a visit two days later is not in a browser, so a pixel cannot carry it.
If you want the follow-up question, ask whose dataset your conversions land in. It should be yours and nobody else's.
The engineering notes, for whoever runs your tracking
Do not ask this one. Open your own ad on your phone. Tap the button the way a homeowner would. Try to book next Tuesday at half past ten.
In late August 2026 we opened 28 bath companies' pages this way, 21 of them Re-Bath units. Not one could hold a time, and two of them were running Meta's "Book now" button.
What we found on all 28
A good one answers in a paragraph and thanks you for asking. The questions are the job description.
An agency that cannot answer question one is not being dishonest. Almost nobody in this trade collects that number. What matters is whether they say so, and what they propose to do about it.
The reply that should worry you is the one that explains why the question is the wrong question.
We built this business around question one, so it would be strange to publish the list and dodge it.
Not yet. No client has run a full month. What runs today is the booking page at the foot of this site, live on a real calendar, and the count of the bath trade we publish every month.
Ask us the three on a call and you get the same paragraph answers we just described.
Copy the three quoted lines into an email. Send it to whoever runs your ads.
Do not explain why you are asking. The value is in the unprompted reply.
Then open your own ad on your phone and try to book a time.
No. You are asking what your money bought. A good agency has these three answers in a dashboard already, and the ones that do not will usually thank you for the clarity. Ask in writing so the answer is on the record.
Then the problem is further up, in the offer or the market, and you have ruled out three expensive things. That is worth the email on its own. Run your month through the steps and see which one loses the most.
Question one and question three do. They ask about appointments and about what goes back to the platform, not about a channel. Question two is specific to paid social and search. Ask the first and the third of anyone.
No. Both platforms let you export your results, and your CRM exports appointments. What is usually true is that nobody has joined the two, which is a different answer and an honest one.
Before. A proposal that answers these three is a different document from one that does not. You want to see which kind arrives.
You hear the price on our second call, before you sign anything. Your ad account and every lead stay yours.
What comes with it depends on where you start, with ads running or with none. You get it on one page before you sign anything. The longer answers.
Lovro Lucic, on US hours from Zagreb. You deal with me, not a team. Your page, your number and your calendar stay in your time zone. Call me at +1 (866) 989-4568, answered by me 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eastern, or pick a time on the calendar.