Your next agency meeting is an opportunity to connect campaign decisions with the economics of your business. Bringing the person who owns your financial numbers into that conversation gives everyone a clearer starting point.
Start with the information that affects what your business keeps from a sale: product or service delivery costs, discounts, fulfillment, returns, and commissions. Ask your finance lead to clarify which costs are included in your margin figures and whether those figures are before or after advertising.
You can begin with a focused summary, category-level margins, or agreed acquisition targets. Establish who can access the information and how you will update it when costs change.
A shared agenda for marketing and finance
The checklist helps your team work through five areas:
Agreeing on what success means for the business.
Identifying costs that sit outside campaign dashboards.
Sharing useful information with clear boundaries.
Turning financial inputs into campaign decisions.
Holding a 30-minute monthly review with named owners and next steps.
It also includes a meeting record you can copy into your own working document. Use it during onboarding or bring it to an existing agency relationship when targets, costs, or growth plans change.
Make the next decision together
Profit-First Marketing starts with better questions. Before agreeing to a new campaign target or a larger budget, give your agency and finance team a chance to compare their assumptions. The goal is a recommendation everyone can understand and evaluate against the business’s needs.
Open the checklist linked above, choose a finance owner and an agency owner, and make the first conversation about what information is missing.
Hiring a paid social agency means trusting someone with two things: your advertising budget and the decisions that determine where it goes.
The pitch usually sounds good. Better creative. Smarter targeting. More growth. But when every agency promises performance, how do you evaluate who can actually help your business?
Start with five things: how they understand your margins, measure results, develop creative, approach scaling, and explain their work.
A strong e-commerce paid social agency should be able to connect those pieces into a clear plan for your brand. Here are the questions to ask—and what useful answers look like.
1. Do they understand what you can afford to spend to acquire a customer?
Before recommending a budget, an agency should understand the economics of an order.
That includes your average order value, product costs, discounts, shipping subsidies, fulfillment costs, and returns. Repeat purchases matter, too, but an acquisition plan should distinguish between repeat revenue you’ve measured and repeat revenue you’re hoping for.
Consider a simplified example: a customer places a $100 order, and you have $40 left after variable costs, before advertising. Spending $40 to acquire that order leaves nothing to cover agency fees, fixed overhead, or profit.
That’s why a ROAS target needs context. ROAS—return on ad spend—compares attributed revenue with advertising spend. It doesn’t tell you how much money the business keeps.
Ask a prospective agency:
“How would you determine our acquisition cost target, and what information would you need from us?”
Look for an answer grounded in your business. A useful conversation will include product margins, first-time versus returning customers, and how quickly you need to recover acquisition costs.
An agency needs a way to check whether the numbers guiding its decisions are dependable.
Ask how it will review conversion tracking, compare ad-platform reporting with store results, and account for differences between reporting systems. It should explain which numbers inform daily campaign decisions and which help evaluate the overall business.
For example, platform-reported ROAS and store revenue divided by total advertising spend answer different questions. Neither should quietly substitute for the other in a performance report.
Pip Pop Post: building the measurement foundation before scaling paid social.
At Best Practice Media, our work with Pip Pop Post began with the measurement foundation. The account had inconsistent conversion tracking and a fragmented campaign structure. We established tracking, rebuilt the campaign approach, and introduced structured creative testing before expanding spend. The published case study reports that managed ad spend grew 14-fold in just over a year while ROAS held at 3.36. Read the Pip Pop Post case study.
The useful hiring question is:
“What would you check before trusting the performance data in our account?”
A good answer should describe specific checks and explain what happens if the data is incomplete.
3. Is there a clear plan for creative?
“Creative testing is included” can mean very different things.
One agency might produce new concepts, write scripts, and coordinate production. Another might resize assets your team supplies. Both can be valid arrangements, but you need to know which one you’re buying.
Ask who owns each step: customer research, concepts, copy, production, approvals, launch, and analysis. Find out what your team will need to provide and how often.
Then ask:
“Show us how a finding from one creative test shapes the next.”
A useful answer might explain how the team would test a product demonstration against a customer story, identify which buying concern each addresses, and use purchase performance to guide the next round.
Our Cacao & Cardamom case study illustrates the connection between creative and campaign performance. The work included a creative refresh tailored to a luxury gifting audience alongside changes to campaign optimization. The published results include a 34% improvement in ROAS and a 13% reduction in cost per purchase while managed spend more than doubled. Read the Cacao & Cardamom case study.
Those results reflect the combined program. When evaluating an agency’s e-commerce case studies, ask the agency to separate what it tested from what it can confidently attribute to a particular change.
4. What earns a budget increase?
Increasing spend should follow a decision process you understand.
Before recommending more investment, an agency should consider performance against your targets, the amount of evidence available, inventory, promotional plans, and your capacity to fulfill additional orders.
Ask:
“What would make you increase our budget—and what would make you hold it steady or reduce it?”
Look for clear decision criteria. You should know what success means, how the team will evaluate it, and how it will respond if efficiency changes as spend grows.
For Drip EZ, BPM’s work combined campaign management, creative and copy changes, and audience strategy. The published case study reports a 430% increase in managed ad spend alongside a 25% improvement in ROAS and a 15% reduction in cost per purchase. Read the Drip EZ case study.
When an agency presents results like these, ask about the comparison period, starting budget, attribution settings, and any changes to pricing or promotions. That context helps you understand how relevant the example is to your situation.
A case study demonstrates experience. Your own scaling plan still needs to be built around your numbers.
5. Will you understand what’s happening in your account?
Before signing, ask to see an example of the reporting and communication you’ll receive.
A useful update should explain what happened, what the team thinks drove it, what remains uncertain, and what it plans to do next. It should also identify decisions or materials needed from your team.
For example, “ROAS declined this week” tells you very little on its own. You need to know whether spend changed, a promotion ended, product availability shifted, or the campaign reached a different customer mix—and what the agency will investigate.
Clarify these responsibilities before the engagement begins:
Who manages your account and who is your primary contact?
How often will you discuss performance and next steps?
Who approves creative and budget changes?
Who owns the advertising accounts, data, and creative assets?
What happens during onboarding and if the relationship ends?
The answers should make the working relationship easy to picture. Our guide to your first 90 days with a paid social agency outlines the onboarding, testing, and reporting milestones to discuss.
Choose the agency whose reasoning you can evaluate
The right paid social partner should help you understand how your budget becomes a test, how that test produces learning, and how the learning informs the next investment.
Bring your margins, recent store performance, current advertising results, and growth goals to the conversation. Ask the agency to explain what it would investigate first—and why.
At Best Practice Media, our paid social services bring together campaign strategy, creative testing, measurement, and ongoing optimization. If you’re evaluating support for your e-commerce brand, book a free strategy call to discuss your current program and where to focus next.
The cost of an e-commerce paid social agency includes more than its management fee. To compare proposals fairly, separate the agency retainer, the money paid to ad platforms, and creative production. Then check what each fee actually covers.
At Best Practice Media, we charge a retainer rather than a percentage of ad spend. Our fee does not automatically grow when your media budget grows. That matters because sometimes the strategic recommendation is to spend less: pause a weak offer, fix a conversion problem, or wait until inventory can support demand.
What are you actually paying for?
Media spend: The budget paid to platforms such as Meta. This buys distribution; it is separate from the agency fee.
Agency management: Strategy, campaign setup, optimization, analysis, communication, and the specific services listed in your agreement.
Creative production: Concepts, copy, design, editing, shoots, or creator content. Ask which are included and which are additional.
Supporting work: Tracking implementation, landing pages, product feeds, and reporting tools may have separate scopes.
A low management fee can become an expensive engagement if the work you need sits outside the proposal. An all-inclusive fee can also be poor value if you are buying services you will not use. Compare the scope before comparing the total.
Retainer versus percentage of ad spend
A percentage model links the management fee to the media budget. A retainer prices an agreed scope of work. Neither model tells you, on its own, whether an agency will make good decisions.
We prefer a retainer because it removes an automatic fee increase from the decision to increase spend. We want to be able to recommend a budget cut without that recommendation mechanically cutting our management fee.
A retainer still needs clear boundaries. If you add a platform, a market, or substantially more creative work, ask how a scope change would be handled. “Retainer-based” should not mean “everything, forever.”
How to calculate the full monthly investment
Use this starting point:
Total monthly investment = media spend + agency retainer + separately billed creative + other agreed costs.
For illustration only, imagine $12,000 in media spend, a $3,000 management retainer, and $2,000 in separate creative production. The monthly investment is $17,000. Those are hypothetical figures, not Best Practice Media rates or an industry pricing benchmark.
If a proposal shows only the $3,000 fee, it leaves out most of the cash you need to plan for. Ask about onboarding charges, minimum terms, software costs, and production commitments before you sign.
Can your margins support the investment?
Start with what remains from an order after discounts, product costs, payment fees, shipping subsidies, fulfillment, and an allowance for returns. That amount has to cover acquisition costs and contribute to overhead and profit.
Do not judge affordability using platform ROAS alone. Platform ROAS divides attributed revenue by media spend; it generally does not deduct the agency retainer or creative costs. A campaign can look healthy in Ads Manager while the full acquisition program costs more than the business can support.
Ask your prospective agency how it will connect platform reporting with store revenue, customer mix, and your margin assumptions. A useful proposal should make that conversation easier.
Seven questions to ask before comparing quotes
Which platforms, markets, and accounts are included?
How much new creative is included, and what counts as a revision?
Who handles tracking, product feeds, and landing-page issues?
What is the full cost in month one and in a typical ongoing month?
What work would trigger an additional fee?
How do you decide when to increase, hold, or cut media spend?
What do we retain access to if the engagement ends?
What does Best Practice Media charge?
Best Practice Media uses retainer-based pricing. The scope of an engagement determines the proposal, so this article does not quote a universal monthly fee. Our paid social services cover areas such as strategy, creative, campaign management, tracking, and testing; your proposal should specify exactly which work is included.
If you are evaluating partners, bring your current media spend, target markets, creative resources, and business goals to the conversation. For the broader selection process, read how to choose a paid social agency for e-commerce.
A good ROAS for e-commerce is a return that covers your advertising costs and leaves enough contribution for agency fees, creative, overhead, and your profit goal. The right target depends on your product margins and customer mix. A 4X ROAS can be workable for one brand and too low for another.
Start by calculating your break-even ROAS, then work backward from the dollars you need to keep. The examples and worksheet below show how to set that target without borrowing another brand’s benchmark. If you want to run the numbers alongside the guide, use BPM’s break-even ROAS calculator.
What is a good ROAS, and what does it measure?
ROAS = revenue attributed to advertising ÷ advertising spend.
If a platform attributes $30,000 in revenue to $10,000 in ads, the reported ROAS is 3.0. That does not mean the business made $20,000 in profit. Product costs, fulfillment, fees, returns, creative, and management still need to be paid.
Always name the revenue source and attribution window when reporting ROAS. A platform’s attributed sales and your store’s total sales are different measures. Do not add revenue attributed by multiple platforms and assume every purchase is unique. If the reports disagree with store orders, use our duplicate-purchase tracking checklist to separate duplicated events from overlapping attribution.
How to calculate break-even ROAS
First, calculate contribution margin before ads: net sales minus variable costs, divided by net sales. Variable costs can include product costs, payment processing, fulfillment, shipping subsidies, and an allowance for returns. Use consistent definitions and avoid counting the same cost twice.
Advertising break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ contribution margin before ads.
For example, suppose an order generates $100 in net sales and has $60 in variable costs. That leaves $40 before advertising, or a 40% contribution margin. Dividing 1 by 0.40 gives a 2.5 ROAS.
At 2.5 ROAS, all $40 is consumed by media cost. Nothing remains from that order for agency fees, creative, overhead, or profit. This is an advertising break-even calculation, not a whole-business profit target.
Break-even ROAS at different contribution margins
These examples assume revenue and costs use the same basis. Enter 40% as 0.40 in the formula. They cover media cost only, before management, creative, overhead, and profit:
If contribution before ads is zero or negative, a positive advertising budget cannot make that first order profitable on these assumptions. Revisit the offer, costs, or a separately evidenced repeat-purchase plan.
Set a profitable ROAS target from the dollars you need
Continuing that hypothetical example, suppose you allocate $5 per order to agency and creative costs and want to keep $10 as contribution toward overhead and profit. Your allowable media cost is now $25: $40 minus $5 minus $10. The corresponding target is $100 divided by $25, or 4.0 ROAS.
The $10 is not necessarily net profit; overhead still has to come out of it. And the $5 allocation changes if order volume changes. Revisit those assumptions as you scale.
Higher margin: More room to pay for acquisition.
Heavier discounts or returns: Less room, even if the platform revenue number looks strong.
Higher creative or management costs: More acquisition expense to cover beyond media.
Different product mix: A different blended margin, even at the same revenue.
Use our product-selection worksheet to compare which products can support acquisition costs before allocating the budget.
A ROAS worksheet you can copy
Use one product or a consistent order mix. Fill in these lines with your own figures:
Net revenue per order: after discounts and expected refunds, excluding tax collected for remittance.
Variable order costs: product, fulfillment, payment fees, shipping support, and any other applicable selling costs. Avoid subtracting a refund twice.
Contribution before ads: line 1 minus line 2.
Management and creative allocation: the amount per order you plan to cover, using a realistic order volume.
Required contribution after those costs: the amount reserved for overhead and your profit goal.
Allowable media cost per order: line 3 minus lines 4 and 5.
Planning target ROAS: line 1 divided by line 6, when line 6 is positive.
For the $100 example above, the worksheet yields $40 before ads, $5 for management and creative, and $10 to retain: $25 available for media and a 4.0X target. This is a planning calculation, not a promise that a platform can acquire every order at that cost.
Match the revenue basis to your reporting before comparing the target with a dashboard. A target calculated from net sales can be misleading when the platform records gross order value including amounts you do not retain. Google’s target ROAS guidance expresses the return as a percentage: 4.0X is 400%. A bidding target remains distinct from the profit your business actually records.
Why another brand’s ROAS is not your benchmark
Best Practice Media’s Pip Pop Post case study reports a 3.36 ROAS while managed ad spend grew 14X in just over a year. That is evidence about a particular engagement, not a universal profitability threshold.
The public case study does not provide the brand’s full cost structure or an attribution window. You cannot use its ROAS alone to infer net profit or predict what your store should achieve.
A more useful question is whether your agency can explain performance against your economics, using consistent measurement as budgets change.
Separate new customers from existing customers
An account can show a strong blended ROAS while relying heavily on people who already know the brand. Review new-customer acquisition cost and returning-customer revenue alongside the platform number.
Use our ecommerce CAC worksheet to document which costs belong in the numerator and which customers belong in the denominator.
Repeat purchases can justify a longer payback period, but use observed customer cohorts and contribution after costs. A projected lifetime value is not cash available to pay this month’s bills.
Where budget and data allow, incrementality tests can help investigate how many sales advertising actually caused. Attribution assigns credit; it does not, by itself, prove causation.
In the hypothetical 40%-margin example, 4X leaves room for the specified management, creative, and retained-contribution amounts. At a 20% contribution margin, 4X would not cover media cost on the same revenue basis: the advertising break-even point is 5X. Judge the ratio against your own costs before increasing spend.
Also separate branded and nonbranded search where relevant. A strong combined return can hide an acquisition campaign that does not meet its target.
A practical scorecard for your next agency call
Platform ROAS, with the attribution settings stated.
Store revenue and total media spend for the same dates.
Contribution margin assumptions, including promotions and returns.
New-customer acquisition cost and customer mix.
Total acquisition costs, including management and creative.
Cash-flow constraints and the next decision: increase, hold, reduce, or test.
At Best Practice Media, we use retainer-based pricing rather than a percentage of ad spend. Our fee does not automatically rise when your media budget does. That supports a straightforward conversation about whether additional spend makes sense.
To evaluate an e-commerce agency case study, look past the headline result. Check the starting point, measurement period, spend level, attribution method, and work the agency actually performed. Then ask whether the example is relevant to your business.
A big percentage can get your attention. It should also start a conversation. “ROAS increased 25%” tells you something useful, but it does not tell you the starting ROAS, the brand’s margins, or whether the result is likely to carry over to your store.
1. Start with the problem, not the percentage
Was the brand struggling with tracking, creative fatigue, a weak offer, inconsistent campaigns, or an inability to scale? A case study is more useful when it shows that the agency understood the constraint before changing the account.
Look for a connection between the diagnosis and the work. If tracking was unreliable, what changed before the team started making budget decisions? If creative was the bottleneck, what new ideas were tested?
Be cautious when the entire explanation is “we optimized.” You want enough detail to understand the agency’s judgment.
2. Ask what the result is being compared with
A 25% increase is a relative change, not an absolute result. For example, increasing ROAS from 2.0 to 2.5 is a 25% improvement. Increasing it from 4.0 to 5.0 is also a 25% improvement. Those outcomes can mean very different things for a business.
Ask for the starting value, the end value, the comparison dates, and any major promotions or seasonal differences. If the client cannot share exact figures publicly, ask what context can be discussed privately.
3. Read spend and efficiency together
Maintaining efficiency while spending substantially more is a different achievement from improving efficiency after cutting most of the budget. Neither is automatically the wrong decision. They solve different problems.
Best Practice Media’s Drip EZ case study reports a 430% increase in ad spend alongside a 25% improvement in ROAS, a 43% increase in click-through rate, and a 15% reduction in cost per purchase. Those paired measures give more context than the ROAS improvement alone.
The public page does not specify the comparison dates or attribution window. A buyer should ask about those before treating the figures as a forecast.
4. Check which metric actually improved
Click-through rate: Did more people click? That is useful creative feedback, but it does not establish profitability.
Cost per purchase: Did acquisition become less expensive under the stated measurement method?
ROAS: How much revenue was attributed relative to media spend?
Contribution or profit: What remained after the relevant costs?
New-customer growth: Did the business acquire more first-time buyers, or mainly reach returning customers?
Do not let a click metric quietly stand in for a business outcome. Ask how the reported metric connects with what you need the engagement to achieve.
5. Separate documented facts from assumptions
Our Cacao case study reports a 34% ROAS improvement while spend increased by more than 100%. It describes creative work around a premium gifting product and purchase-focused optimization.
That supports a discussion about relevant experience with luxury e-commerce. It does not establish the client’s net profit, prove that one specific creative change caused the entire result, or promise the same outcome for another brand.
A credible agency should be comfortable making those distinctions about its own work.
6. Look for a relevant challenge, not an identical product
An agency does not need a case study for your exact product to be a fit. Similar economics and constraints can be more useful than a matching category.
Consider average order value, repeat-purchase behavior, sales cycle, creative requirements, budget, seasonality, and inventory. A team that understands premium gifting may have relevant experience for another considered purchase, even if the product is different.
Ask: “Which parts of this approach would carry over to us, and which would you change?” The answer reveals more than a familiar logo.
A short checklist for the sales call
What were the baseline, dates, and spend levels?
Which data source and attribution settings produced the results?
What did the agency do, and what did the client or other partners do?
What did not work, and how did the plan change?
Which details are not available in the public case study?
Your first 90 days with a paid social agency should establish reliable measurement, produce a focused testing plan, and turn the results into clear budget and creative decisions. A sensible sequence is to learn and validate in month one, test in month two, and refine in month three.
This is a planning framework, not a promise that every account will be ready to scale on day 91. Access delays, budget, conversion volume, production timelines, and your store’s starting point all affect the pace.
Your agency needs more than an Ads Manager login. Share your margins, best-selling products, inventory constraints, promotional calendar, customer insights, and previous creative. Explain what success means for the business and which tradeoffs you can afford.
Keep ownership of your business assets and grant the access needed for the work. Confirm who owns approvals, who can fix tracking or site issues, and how quickly creative feedback can happen. A campaign can wait days for a ten-minute decision if those responsibilities are unclear. Use our client and agency handoff checklist to assign those responsibilities before launch.
Days 1–30: understand the account and establish the baseline
The first month should answer two questions: what is happening, and how confidently can we measure it?
Review campaign history, audiences, offers, creative, and landing pages.
Check purchase events, product feeds, and relevant tracking connections.
Compare platform reporting with store data and document differences.
Agree on primary business measures and the attribution settings used in reports.
Identify the most important constraints and build an initial testing backlog.
Useful deliverables include a baseline report, a prioritized audit, a measurement plan, and a creative brief. You should know what the agency will change first and why.
Best Practice Media’s Pip Pop Post case study describes inconsistent conversion tracking and fragmented campaigns as starting problems. Establishing a stronger tracking foundation was part of the work before scaling. That is a useful reminder that the first task is not always spending more.
Days 31–60: run focused tests
The second phase should turn the diagnosis into experiments. Each test needs a question: does a product demonstration address a buying objection? Does a different offer improve the economics? Does a landing-page change reduce friction?
Make the creative ideas meaningfully different. A new background color is not the same as a new reason to buy. Test concepts rooted in customer needs, objections, use cases, and product benefits.
Agree on the budget and evidence needed to evaluate a test. Low-volume accounts may need longer observation periods. Avoid calling a winner after a handful of purchases or changing several major variables without a way to interpret the outcome.
Useful deliverables include a test log, new creative, clear observations, and the next round of decisions. The report should explain what the team learned, including what did not work.
Days 61–90: refine the plan and decide what earns more budget
By the third phase, the agency should be able to explain which approaches deserve further investment, which need revision, and which should stop. “More budget” is one possible decision, not the required conclusion.
Compare performance with the original baseline using consistent definitions.
Check whether margin, customer mix, promotions, or inventory changed.
Develop new variations of promising creative ideas.
Review the pace of creative production and approvals.
Set the next quarter’s priorities, budget assumptions, and open questions.
Agree on a communication rhythm at kickoff. That might include a short weekly working update and a deeper monthly review, depending on the engagement. The important part is a predictable place for decisions, blockers, and accountability.
A useful update answers: what changed, what happened, what remains uncertain, and what we are doing next. A dashboard is helpful, but it cannot replace those explanations.
What if the first 90 days are not profitable?
Ask whether the gap was anticipated, what evidence has been gathered, and what would need to change. Compare the actual investment with the agreed testing budget and payback expectations. Do not keep spending indefinitely because an account is supposedly “still learning.”
At the same time, avoid treating a calendar deadline as proof that a sound test failed. Judge the work against the starting point, available data, and agreed decision rules.
What to agree on before you sign
Ask for the onboarding steps, scope, deliverables, reporting cadence, approval responsibilities, and approach to budget changes. Best Practice Media’s paid social services span strategy, creative, tracking, testing, and campaign management; the proposal should identify the work included in your engagement.
