Most firms hire a digital agency with the same hope: more qualified leads that convert into signed cases, without blowing up cost. When that doesn’t happen, the culprit is rarely a single tactic. The gap usually hides in the seams, where strategy and execution meet handoff and measurement. An effective audit brings those seams into the light. It is not a witch hunt, and it is not a vanity slide deck. It is a practical investigation into whether your digital marketing services, budget, and team are aligned to produce profitable case volume.
Below is the audit framework I use with legal practices and other high-intent professional services. It is built to answer one hard question: where are we losing money between impression and retained client, and what should change this quarter to fix it?
What “more signed cases” actually means
Most digital marketing agencies report leads and cost per lead, sometimes blended across channels. That metric hides the truth. If intake converts only a sliver of those leads, or if the average case value drops, your firm can grow top-line leads while shrinking profit. A useful audit starts by anchoring to signed cases and realized revenue.
I ask for three months, six months, and trailing twelve months of the following, segmented by channel where possible: ad spend, platform-reported conversions, marketing qualified leads, consultations set, consultations held, signed cases, average case value, refund or churn rates, and total marketing cost. If a digital marketing firm cannot map at least 80 percent of signed cases back to a channel or campaign cohort, you are flying with fogged instruments. We can still audit, but we’ll have to lean on directional signals and controlled tests to rebuild attribution.
Two ratios matter most for decisions you make this quarter. First, cost per signed case by channel. Second, marketing efficiency ratio, the ratio of new case revenue to total marketing cost. When those two lines diverge, you often find either wasted budget or poor lead handling. The audit’s job is to pinpoint which, then prescribe fixes with a clear dollar impact.
Data integrity before diagnosis
Every audit begins with plumbing. You cannot optimize what you cannot see. Tracking rarely fails in dramatic ways; it drifts slowly. Pixels drop off after a landing page refresh, UTMs get overwritten by a chat widget, or call tracking numbers get reused without session stitching. The result is familiar: platforms take credit they did not earn, organic and direct swell mysteriously, and everyone argues from a different truth.
I verify four layers. First, account access and ownership: ad accounts, analytics, tag managers, CRM, call tracking, and heat maps should be in the firm’s ownership, not the internet marketing agency’s. Second, event quality: conversions must reflect revenue-generating intent, not low-friction interactions. A form submit is useful, a button click is not. Third, deduplication: remove double counting across systems, and ensure server-side events are not cloning browser events. Fourth, attribution sanity checks: use UTM frameworks consistently, defer consent banners correctly if you operate in regulated environments, and confirm that call tracking numbers persist through the session.
On two occasions this year, simply repairing conversion tags and call routing cut the reported cost per signed case by 25 to 40 percent without changing a single ad. The agency looked better after the fix, and the firm made better decisions. Good measurement is not a favor to your digital promotion agency. It is the only way to stop mistaking noise for pattern.
Strategy fit: the right channels for your intake reality
A full service digital marketing agency can sell you everything: search ads, social, programmatic, SEO, content, video, email, even OTT. The question is not what they can do, but what your intake can absorb. Search works when you can answer the phone within seconds. Social works when your nurture machine is excellent. Programmatic and video work when you have time and budget to build reach and lift. If your team answers calls within 30 seconds during business hours and within two minutes after hours, search is nearly always your highest-confidence lever for high-intent categories. If your after-hours coverage is thin, pay-per-click performance tends to degrade after 7 p.m. local. Your digital media agency should model spend curves against staffing, not vanity reach.
Local reality matters. A local digital marketing agency will often outperform a big network on geo nuance, such as county-level exclusions, municipal name variants, and language split testing across neighborhoods. I have seen a 15 percent drop in cost per signed case by separating “accident lawyer” traffic in Spanish from English and routing it to native speakers at intake. That change required no new creative, only a recognition that callers speak the language of the ad and deserve digital promotion agency the same when they dial.
If your digital consultancy recommends a heavy display buy for a high-intent service line without a brand-lift test or incrementality plan, that is a red flag. When budgets are finite, incremental signed cases per dollar should dominate the conversation.
Account structure that survives the auction
Platform algorithms want clean signals and consistent budgets. Human buyers want control. The best structures balance both. In Google Ads, a tight match-type structure with duplicates across campaigns invites cannibalization and budget dilution. On the other hand, collapsing everything into a single performance max campaign without real conversion data turns your account into a black box that chases cheap clicks.
In an audit, I map queries to themes, themes to intent, and intent to landing experiences. I look for three failure patterns. First, intent mixing, where “free consultation” and “pro bono” queries sit alongside “best injury attorney near me.” That combo inflates lead counts while shrinking close rate. Second, geographic bleed, where campaigns reach beyond viable service areas, especially in border metros and radio DMAs. Third, budget starvation, where high-intent ad groups never exit the learning phase because spend is split across too many experiments.
On social, the mistake is the inverse: overbroad audiences with creative that promises instant help, then routing to a generic landing page. If your digital strategy agency cannot show a sequence from thumb stop to value exchange to scheduled consultation inside 48 hours, paid social will feel like a money pit.
Creative that mirrors intake reality
Prospects sign when they recognize themselves in your message and believe you can act. For law and professional services, this is practical more than poetic. The best performing ad lines I have seen are specific about time, cost, and next steps. “Speak to a case manager within 2 minutes, 24/7” will beat “We care, we fight” nine times out of ten. If a digital marketing agency resists including operational promises because “legal won’t approve,” surface the operational truth and adjust it. If you can only answer 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., advertise that window and offer a call scheduling widget after hours rather than a false promise.
Landing pages should feel like a continuation of the ad, not a homepage detour. Remove navigation for high-intent pages, display a clear phone number with call tracking, and present a short form with two progressive questions to qualify, not to interrogate. On mobile, the thumb’s journey matters. Heat maps often show thumb hovers and scroll breaks around blocky hero sliders and trust badge clusters. Replace the slider with a single static proof point and a one-line differentiator. If you lack social proof, publish process proof: number of cases handled, average response time, jurisdictions served.
Intake: the hidden multiplier
You can double lead volume and still miss your revenue target if intake loses callers. The audit must follow leads the whole way. I listen to a random, statistically meaningful set of recorded calls across time windows and channels. I am not looking to catch anyone out. I am listening for the caller’s first question, the team’s first response, the time to empathy, and the handoff to a scheduled consult.
Three patterns show up constantly. First, slow pickup and long IVRs. If the first voice arrives after 25 seconds, your cost per signed case is worse than you think. Second, form follow-up delay. The open rates for first emails fall off a cliff after 10 minutes. If your digital marketing firm says “we delivered 250 leads,” and your CRM shows first contact happens hours later, conversion will suffer. Third, script mismatch. Marketing promises a quick, no-pressure case review, but intake opens with a five-minute data capture. Leads exit.
Fixes are simple and not always expensive. Route paid search calls to a priority queue. Implement round-robin or skills-based routing for Spanish or specialty lines. Use short-form to schedule the consult first, then collect details. Add SLA commitments to agency contracts so the marketing and intake teams share targets. A digital consultancy agency that shrugs at intake is not a growth partner.
SEO with a business spine
Organic search can be a workhorse if it earns its keep. Audits often uncover content programs that produce traffic without qualified intent. I have seen firms rank for “what to do after a minor fender bender with no damage” while chasing catastrophic injury cases. The traffic looks good, the cases do not. Tie your editorial plan to revenue priorities. Build deep, interlinked clusters around specific claim types, statutes of limitations by state, and insurer behavior. Publish calculators, checklists, and decision trees that answer questions only a practitioner can answer.
A digital marketing consultant worth their fee will give you a 90-day, 180-day, and 12-month plan that blends technical fixes, content that maps to intake topics, local SEO hygiene, and link acquisition with real editorial value. Beware of generic audits that highlight 200 H1 errors and missing alt tags while ignoring the fact that your Google Business Profiles are inconsistent or your top pages load in 5 seconds on mobile.
The money map: budgets, caps, and pacing
A smart digital agency treats budget like fuel allocation in a race. You want the right mix of reliable laps and calculated pushes. The audit looks for daily capping that throttles winning campaigns at 10 a.m., bid strategies that force the algorithm to chase a target CPA based on junk conversions, and end-of-month spend sprints that signal poor pacing.
I model diminishing returns curves per channel and location, then set a testing tax of 10 to 20 percent for new ideas. If your market is small or highly competitive, push search to the point just before marginal cost spikes, then shift incremental dollars to conversion rate optimization, intake staffing, or remarketing sequences. I have redirected 15 percent of paid search budget to a live 24/7 answering service for a regional firm and watched signed cases climb with flat media spend. Your internet marketing agency should welcome that reallocation if they are focused on your profit, not their fees.
Contracts, transparency, and the right roles around the table
The best relationships with digital marketing firms read like joint ventures. Ownership of data and accounts must sit with you. Fees should separate management from media so you can see where money goes. Avoid contracts that lock you into platform-owned landing pages or proprietary call tracking without an export path. If your digital agency resists giving read access to raw ad accounts, that’s a sign to pause.
Decide which roles you want internally versus externally. A digital marketing firm can run media well, but you benefit from keeping brand, legal review, and intake leadership close. A hybrid arrangement often wins: agency runs paid media and analytics, you own content approvals and intake SLAs, and a digital marketing consultant or fractional CMO keeps the strategy honest.
What a strong quarterly plan looks like after the audit
I like to leave an audit with a one-page operating plan and a supporting appendix. The operating plan includes three or four commitments with dollar impacts, clear owners, and start and end dates. The appendix holds the granular fixes, test matrices, and measurement changes.
Here is a compact version of the plan structure that works in practice.
- Measurement fixes with deadlines: consolidate primary conversion events, repair server-side tagging, and unify UTMs across channels within 14 days. Outcome: credible cost per signed case by channel. Intake improvements with SLAs: implement a 60-second answer goal for paid search calls and a 5-minute follow-up for forms, including after-hours coverage, within 21 days. Outcome: improve consult set rate by 10 to 20 percent. Budget reallocation: shift 15 to 30 percent of spend from mixed-intent keywords and broad social to high-intent search and remarketing. Outcome: lower cost per signed case by an estimated 15 percent over 45 days. Conversion rate optimization sprints: deploy two landing page variants that mirror top ad promises, add Spanish-language paths where relevant, and install session replay tools to inform the next sprint. Outcome: raise page-to-call or page-to-form conversion by 20 to 30 percent over 60 days.
That short list looks modest. In practice, it moves numbers.
A brief case example to ground the numbers
A mid-sized injury firm in a three-metro footprint hired a digital agency to grow case volume by 25 percent within six months. Spend increased from 60,000 to 95,000 dollars per month. Leads rose by 40 percent, but signed cases barely moved. The agency insisted the issue was intake. The firm suspected the agency’s keywords.
The audit surfaced three issues. First, the primary conversion in Google Ads counted every click to a phone number as a lead, even if the number never dialed. Second, 22 percent of the budget flowed to “no win no fee” queries that skewed toward price shoppers, while high-intent “best injury lawyer near me” and brand-plus-service terms were capped by noon. Third, call recordings revealed an average answer time of 31 seconds during business hours and over two minutes after hours.
We fixed measurement in week one, split intent buckets, and paused mixed queries temporarily. Budget reallocation pushed an extra 12,000 dollars into high-intent search. Intake shifted to a dedicated paid search queue with a 15-second answer target and hired an answering service for nights and weekends. The agency revised ad copy to promise “speak to a case manager in 60 seconds” and mirrored that line on new landing pages.
Within 45 days, cost per signed case fell from roughly 3,200 dollars to 2,350 dollars, and signed cases rose by 28 percent on similar spend. The agency kept the account. The firm kept the agency, and both signed an intake SLA addendum. Nothing exotic, just the basics lined up.
How to evaluate your current digital agency without drama
Audits work better when they are collaborative. Tell your digital marketing agency you are auditing the system, not just their work. Ask for a working session with the account strategist, the media buyer, and the analytics lead. If your partner is a digital consultancy, invite their strategist and data person. Set a tone that the goal is to redirect dollars toward profit. Defensive partners hide. Good partners lean in and help fix what they do not own, like intake or CRM plumbing.
You can usually tell in a week whether the relationship is salvageable. Signs it is: they share raw data, they propose sensible changes that cut their own fees if it raises your profit, and they willingly tie part of their compensation to agreed outcomes within your control. Signs it is not: they insist the platform’s black box will figure it out, they report only top-of-funnel metrics, or they cannot articulate how their digital strategy agency plan increases signed cases specifically, not just traffic.
If you are changing agencies, manage the transition
Switching partners can cost you two to four weeks of efficiency while the new team learns. Reduce the friction. Retain ownership of ad accounts, audiences, and conversions. Freeze structural changes for a week while tracking stabilizes. Ask the outgoing digital media agency for a clean export of shared assets: negative keyword lists, ad copy archives with performance notes, creative files, and landing page code. Offer a reasonable transition fee if it keeps goodwill; the cost is lower than rebuilding from scratch.
Decide whether you want a single digital marketing firm for media and SEO or whether you prefer specialists. A full service digital marketing agency offers convenience, but only if you have an internal operator to hold the pieces together. Otherwise, a small roster with a lead digital marketing consultant who sets the quarterly plan and arbitrates trade-offs often leads to clearer accountability.
Edge cases and judgment calls
Not every tactic fits every category. If your cases rely on referrals or court appointments, digital marketing may function as insurance rather than a primary engine. The right metric becomes cost per qualified inquiry, not cost per signed case. If your firm handles sensitive matters where anonymity and privacy are paramount, expect lower conversion rates on direct calls and higher importance for chat and encrypted forms. Align expectations upfront.
In rural markets with thin search volume, geofencing or awareness video can prime the pump, but only if you can measure downstream lift. Use holdout geographies or flighting to separate signal from wishful thinking. If you operate in multilingual markets, resist machine-translated ads. A local digital marketing agency or bilingual staffer who understands dialect and idioms will save you money and embarrassment.
Finally, beware of autopilot. Platforms change rules and defaults. New match types and privacy settings can materially alter performance in a single quarter. The audit cadence should be quarterly for plumbing and strategy, monthly for pacing and creative, and weekly for search term reviews and intake feedback.
Working vocabulary for clean conversations with your agency
Jargon muddies meetings. Define a few key terms with your marketing agency, then hold everyone to them. A lead is a person who submitted a form, called for longer than 30 seconds, or scheduled a consult. A qualified lead is someone who meets basic criteria for your service area and practice area. A consultation set is a time on the calendar with a named person. A consultation held is an attended meeting. A signed case is an executed agreement. Map those events in your CRM and in your analytics stack, then use them in every conversation. When a digital advertising agency says “conversions,” ask which of those events they mean.
The audit, condensed into a practical checklist
- Verify ownership and access for all platforms, fix conversion events, and unify UTMs so you can see cost per signed case by channel within two weeks. Right-size your channel mix to your intake reality and local market. Prioritize high-intent search until you see diminishing returns, then add remarketing and carefully measured top-of-funnel. Restructure campaigns to separate intent, tighten geos, and feed algorithms consistent, high-quality signals. Avoid mixing low and high intent in the same budget. Align creative and landing pages with operational promises, including response times and language. Measure form and call conversion separately. Install intake SLAs and routing that match the promises in your ads, and listen to calls weekly for trend feedback, not blame.
What to expect after a serious audit
If you implement the fixes with discipline, you should see a few things quickly. Reported leads may drop as you stop counting junk, but consults set and signed cases rise. Your budget will move toward fewer, higher-performing campaigns. Intake will gain respect in marketing meetings, and marketing will become more honest about what it promises. The relationship with your digital agency will either strengthen under shared metrics or end faster and cleaner.
Digital marketing is not magic. It is industrial. The machines are fast, but they still need clear targets and clean fuel. When your digital consultancy, intake team, and partners point the same direction, more of your spend turns into clients. That is the point of the audit. Not slides, not new buzzwords, just more signed cases at a price that grows, not shrinks, your firm.