Picking a marketing, design or web agency is a bit like picking a builder. You take a look at projects they have done before. Maybe they show you the lovely ‘after’ pictures of the new kitchen extension or loft conversion. But it is still a leap of faith. How do you see what the process was like? How did they deal with challenges and issues? What was their communication like? Did they have the attention to detail? What is happening behind the wall?
We’ve picked up plenty of clients over the years who’ve come to us after a bad experience elsewhere. The story is often the same. Money spent, with not much to show for it, and a nagging feeling they weren’t being told the whole story.
So here’s some of the red flags to look out for that could mean you are getting yourself and your business into a toxic relationship.
They won’t hand over the keys
If an agency owns your domain, your hosting, your Google Analytics or your social accounts, and gets cagey when you ask for access, that’s a problem. It means if you ever want to leave, or if the relationship goes sour, you’re starting from scratch.
Everything we build sits in accounts you own. We’ll manage it day to day if that’s what you want, but the keys are always yours. This is such a common problem that we’ve written specific blog about why this matters so much, because we’ve seen the mess that happens when businesses lose track of who has access to what.
The reports are full of jargon and short on answers
A monthly report stuffed with impressions, engagement rate and reach, with no explanation of what any of it means for your business, isn’t a report. It’s a smokescreen.
Ask what a term means and you should get a straight answer, not a shrug or a longer word. Marketing has more than its fair share of jargon, and we made it our mission to translate it properly.
The numbers look good, but the phone isn’t ringing
Followers and website visitors are going up, but sales are staying exactly where they were. If nobody’s connecting the marketing activity to actual enquiries, bookings or orders, you’re being sold vanity metrics.
We’d rather show you fewer numbers that mean something than a dashboard full of ones that don’t. Every campaign should tie back to a business outcome you actually care about.
You meet the top team, then never see them again
One of the most common scenarios we find is the ghosting of the top team once the pitch is done and the business won. The people who impressed you with their ideas and passion are suddenly nowhere to be seen, and you are left dealing with a junior account handler who’s relaying messages back and forth to people you never actually speak to.
We don’t employ account handlers. When you talk to us, you’re talking to the people actually doing the design, the build or the marketing, not someone passing your feedback along a chain. It means fewer people in the room, and fewer things getting lost on the way.
It’s a template with your logo on it
If your new brand or website looks suspiciously like everyone else’s in your sector, with the same layout, the same stock photos and the same tone of voice, there was no strategy behind it; it’s just a template.
Good design and marketing should come from understanding your business, your customers and what makes you different, not from a folder of presets. So there shouldn’t be a ‘house style’; every design should reflect your brand and customers, not the agency’s preferences.
They go quiet after the invoice is paid
The website launches, the branding’s delivered, and then… nothing. No check-in, no advice on what to do next, no answer when you email with a question three weeks later.
A website or a brand isn’t the finish line; it’s the starting point. We stick around because that’s when the real work of making it earn its keep begins. That’s why we have had clients who have stayed with us for many years as we have helped their businesses grow.
You’re locked into a contract you can’t get out of
Long tie-ins, automatic rolling renewals, and eye-watering exit fees are all designed to keep you paying even if the work isn’t working. If an agency is confident in what they do, they shouldn’t need an onerous contract to keep you there.
We’d rather earn the right to keep working with you every month than trap you into it. We will have an honest conversation about how long we need to see results (and this does differ client by client and project by project), but we won’t tie you into long contracts and unreasonable notice periods. We want our clients to stay with us because it is mutually beneficial, not because they are’hostages’ to a contract.
What to actually ask
Before you sign anything with a new agency, consider some of these red flags and ask some questions about how they work in these specific scenarios. It may save you a whole load of frustration and wasted marketing spend.
If you’re weighing up an agency or wondering whether the one you’ve got is doing right by you, we’re always happy to have an open and honest chat.
