E35: Marketing Agency Red Flags Every Business Owner Should Avoid
Are you working with a marketing agency that isn’t delivering real results? Or maybe you’re about to hire one and want to make sure you don’t get burned. In this episode, Sean Garner exposes the biggest red flags he’s seen in the agency world, from shady contracts and hidden fees to vague promises that leave business owners frustrated and stuck.
Sean explains why you should always own your digital assets, what to watch out for with “proprietary” CMS platforms, and how agencies sometimes use templated websites or recycled strategies that don’t serve your unique business. He also dives into pricing traps, SEO exclusivity issues, and how to tell whether your agency is really working for you—or just keeping you dependent.
If you’re a small business owner, this episode will give you the clarity and confidence to evaluate your current agency or choose the right partner moving forward.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
Introduction
Sean Garner: [00:00]
Okay, here we go for audio sync.
Sean Garner: [00:08]
Marketing agency owners are probably not going to like this episode, but I really don't care. If you're a small business owner and you are working with an agency now, or you're looking to hire your next one, this video is going to cover the red flags you should look for to evaluate your current marketing agency and what to look for in your next one, so you make sure they're actually serving your small business.
The Biggest Red Flag
Sean Garner: [00:52]
At our marketing agency, Sean Garner Consulting, we have the opportunity to serve dozens of small business owners with their marketing to help their businesses grow so they can dominate and stand out online. Unfortunately, what makes me want to create a video like this is seeing how many of them are being taken advantage of. I don’t think most people are malicious; I think there are a lot of misunderstandings with what business owners are signing up for and what they are paying for.
As I go through this list today, know this: just because your marketing agency is doing some of these things doesn’t mean they’re bad people or intentionally taking advantage of you. Well, in some cases they are, but there should always be transparency about exactly what services and deliverables you’re getting. As the business owner, you should know what those things mean and how they will affect your business.
These are things to be aware of before you hire your next marketing agency or when evaluating your current one. They are also things to watch out for if you ever decide to separate from your marketing agency.
Here’s the first thing, and this one frustrates me more than anything: the marketing agency keeps ownership access of things like domains, websites, Google Ads accounts, Google Analytics accounts, and similar assets. They remain the actual owners, while giving the client or business owner only admin access.
I know, because I own a marketing agency, what they’re going to say if you go to them about this. They’ll say, “We do it to protect you. It’s for security reasons. We want to make sure you don’t go in there and accidentally mess something up.” They’re going to say those things, and some of that could be true.
But here’s the analogy I give clients, because we don’t do this. We make sure our clients own everything and give us access. You wouldn’t build a physical location, a brick-and-mortar building, and then let the contractor keep the ownership and keys, while only letting you walk in as a guest.
Proprietary CMS Platforms and the Risk of Losing Your Website
Sean Garner: [03:45]
And let the general contractor and the real estate agent keep the keys and let you in the front door every day. But when it comes to the digital side of businesses, small business owners do that all the time. They’ll hire an agency to build everything out for them and then expect to be let in the back door every time they want to see something or make an edit. It shouldn’t be like that. This is your digital storefront. You need to make sure that you have ownership access of all your digital assets, ad accounts, and everything else.
As an agency owner, I know why agencies do this. It is difficult and frustrating when clients go in and accidentally break something or mess it up. But unfortunately, it’s their business to break and mess up. If they have ownership access, I always let my clients know, “Hey, this is yours. We are here to help you manage it. But if you go in there and start knocking down walls and you’re upset because the building falls down, that’s not on us.” At the same time, you’re a mature, responsible business owner.
The main thing is that you want ownership of these things. You don’t want to just be an admin. You want to make sure that you own everything and give the agency admin access.
Another thing to look out for with agencies is when they build your website on something called a custom CMS. Technically, yes, you own the website, but because it’s built on their proprietary platform, you’re not actually able to move your website to another platform or another agency without losing the site completely.
This just happened with a client we were working with in the insurance space. They were told, “Yeah, you own your website, it’s yours.” But a lot of times people misuse terminology because they know business owners are confused. When they said the client owned the website, what they meant was that the client owned the images, the words, and the URL, but not the actual website itself. So whenever they wanted to move it from the proprietary CMS to a popular one like Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress, they weren’t able to because the site wasn’t truly theirs. It was built on a proprietary CMS, and there was no way to export it to another platform.
That’s what I see happen a lot with large national agencies or industry-specific ones. For example, agencies that focus only on plumbers, insurance agents, attorneys, or dentists. They build everything on a proprietary CMS so that technically it’s “yours,” but if you stop paying the agency, they shut your website down. You don’t actually own it. It would be like someone saying, “Yes, we built a building for you and you own it, but if you don’t pay us each month, we’re going to take it back.” You’re essentially leasing it.
Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a site built on a custom CMS, but you need to know what’s at stake if you ever want to separate from your agency.
Private Client Lists and Shady Portfolio Practices
Sean Garner: [06:07]
The next red flag I have with marketing agencies is when their client list is private. Some say, “We can’t release our client list.” I’m not saying you have to share everyone’s name and personal cell phone, but if you’re coming to work with our agency and you want to see who we’ve worked with, I’ll connect you with anyone you want. I’m not saying you’ll become best friends or get their personal info, but I believe it’s shady when an agency doesn’t want to let their clients know who else they’ve worked with.
For me, that usually means one of a couple of things. One, they don’t work with many clients and they’re embarrassed. Maybe they’re a brand-new agency trying to puff up their experience. We’re a boutique agency and don’t work with thousands of clients, and I’m fine with that because it means I get to work one-on-one with all of them.
The other possibility is that the clients listed in their portfolios or case studies may not actually be current clients. Maybe they worked with those businesses in the past, but the clients left after a bad experience, so the agency doesn’t want anyone reaching out.
So anytime an agency keeps its client list private, I start thinking, “Have you actually helped anyone?” Before working with an agency, ask for case studies or testimonials. Look at the work they’ve done in the past—especially if they’ll be designing your website. See what their sites actually look like.
The other thing I don’t like, and I go back and forth on this one, is I go both ways with this.
Industry-Specific Agencies and the Dangers of Over-Templatization
Sean Garner: [08:26]
I don’t like when agencies are overly industry-specific. When I see that, they often over-templatize things so they can scale, and I don’t like that. I do like when an agency has industry knowledge and customizes their work, but typically they don’t. They need to either have real experience with the industry they’re serving or at least research it.
For example, we work with local service-based businesses, but we’ve also worked with many other industries. We don’t hyper-focus on just accountants, law firms, med spas, or gyms. We work with all of them, but we take the time to dive in and understand the specifics of each business and industry. That’s another red flag—if the client list is private and they’re not diving in or caring about your industry and business, you really need to take that seriously and consider finding another agency.
The next one is transparency and reporting. For us, one of the things I’m proud of with our agency is the speed at which we deliver and our ability to communicate. We over-communicate to the point where clients sometimes say, “Okay, we’re good, we don’t need anything else.” But I’d rather over-communicate than have clients paying us each month and wondering what we’re actually doing.
When it comes to transparency and reporting, you don’t want fluffy vanity metrics. This happens a lot with clients who think they’re buying SEO services. I can’t tell you how many clients we’ve worked with who thought they were doing SEO, and when I ran the initial audit, there were tons of issues because of misunderstandings. SEO has two sides: there’s SEO that you do and SEO that is done.
For example, there are certain technical aspects of how a website is structured—site titles, meta descriptions, heading structures, URLs. That’s search engine optimization, but it’s a one-time setup. Once it’s done, it’s done. Then there’s the ongoing work: reporting, link building, writing content, working on your Google My Business profile. That’s the part you actually do consistently.
Sean Garner: [10:48]
What I’ve found is that a lot of businesses are paying ongoing retainers for SEO work that was only done once. They’re paying an agency thinking they’re getting SEO, but all they’re really getting is keyword reporting and analytics data.
Most business owners don’t know that because Google is constantly re-indexing and crawling the internet, domains naturally gain some power over time. The longer your site is online, the more backlinks will naturally occur. It’s slow growth, but you’ll see some keyword movement even if you do nothing at all. So what happens is agencies do the initial SEO, then just send monthly reports to make it look like they’re doing something when they’re really not.
If your agency isn’t adding new content to your website monthly, building new backlinks regularly, and updating your Google My Business profile consistently—at least monthly—you’re not actually getting retainer SEO services. Don’t pay for that, because it’s not moving the needle for you. You need to be very clear on what those deliverables are.
Another issue is reporting. I often see agencies show tons of data, but in such a complicated way that nobody knows what’s actually being done or what’s making an impact. That’s why you need a clear reporting cadence. I personally like to update clients monthly with an auto-generated report showing changes and progress. Then, depending on the work, we’ll do monthly or quarterly calls and send a Loom video walking clients through the work we’ve done.
Another big red flag—and this one really frustrates me because it feels shady and malicious—is when there’s no exclusivity with SEO. I see this a lot with industry-specific marketing agencies.
SEO Exclusivity and Competing Against Yourself
Sean Garner: [13:08]
You hire an agency to do search engine optimization for your business. Let's say you're a plumber. The reason you do that is because you want your business to rank number one for "Plumber Dallas," let's say. Well, how can a marketing agency ethically work with multiple clients in the same network or the same region to get them to rank for the same keywords? You can't, because you're just competing against yourself.
I unfortunately see this a lot. And this is where, to me, the shadiness of a lot of marketing agencies shows up. They will classify a region way smaller than the actual service area is, or they'll give certain keyword variations and allow excuses for that. So this is what I mean. I'll give you a very specific example. Let's say one client signs up for "Plumber Dallas" and the agency says, "Man, we're going to get you to number one for Plumber Dallas."
Then they’ll find another client in the exact same market and say, "We're going to get you to number one for Plumbing Dallas." And because there’s a variation in the keyword, in their mind, it’s not the same keyword they're trying to rank for. First off, the agency owners very much misunderstand how keywords and the search engine optimization landscape even work. It's not that specific for a keyword. Yes, it can be, but obviously if somebody's trying to rank number one for "Plumber Dallas," they also want to be number one for "Plumbing Dallas."
Or what they’ll do is give them a very specific city where one person could be "Plumber Dallas" and then another person could be just outside in a smaller suburb, not realizing those are still in the same service area. And so they’re still going to be competing against each other. For me, this is a no-go. You should have exclusivity with SEO or at least have an option for it.
I know for us, we have a very inexpensive SEO retainer package that is not exclusive, but we’re upfront with our clients about it. We say, "Hey, we’re going to work with other people in the area." But for our standard SEO packages, you have to give exclusivity. Because if not, you’re taking advantage of the client. You’re not truly serving the client—you’re just taking money from people to do SEO. The goal of SEO is to help serve the small business owner and get them to rank higher.
Sean Garner: [15:25]
So they can be found by more of the people they’re called to serve. And if you're working with multiple entities that are serving the same area for the same service, you’re not truly serving your clients. That one does get me fired up.
So make sure if you're doing SEO, the agency is clear on what the deliverables are. They should be deliverables that actually move the needle, and you should have exclusivity for your service area for all the key terms. And make sure they are very, very specific on what exclusivity means, so they don’t try to create any gray-area shadiness.
Another thing that to me is a red flag is very vague offers. They don’t have a clear contract, or they’ve got shady fine print. Typically that happens when the client deliverables are vague—like "social media management" or "SEO services." Well, what does that mean? Like I explained earlier, there’s a lot that goes into doing SEO properly.
Or they want to lock you into long-term contracts. I’ve seen contracts locking people in for 24 to 36 months with no buyout. That’s crazy, especially if you’ve never worked with this agency before. Don’t sign a two-year contract or anything like that. Make sure it’s very clear what you’re getting from the agency and what that means in return for the growth of your business.
Another thing—this isn’t necessarily a red flag, and I’ve already mentioned it once—but it is something I do want you to understand: big national agencies or industry-specific agencies. It’s not a red flag, but there are things you need to consider when working with those types of agencies.
Typically with big national agencies, they’re locked into their way of doing things. They’ve got tons of account managers, so you’re usually working with somebody different on different aspects of your business. And it’s very corporate and templatized—that’s why they’re able to scale to a big national agency.
The other thing with industry-specific agencies is you see very minimal personalization. It’s a lot of copy-paste templates, a lot of the same clients. I’ve seen it so bad that when we were in the backend of another client’s website, that client was working with a big national, industry-specific agency—specifically for plumbers.
Sean Garner: [17:48]
On the backend of one of the pages, it was so bad that it literally said: "At our [insert plumbing business name here], we love serving [insert city name here] with [insert service here]." It was still that exact block of text. So what happens is whenever you hire this marketing agency—which is a very, very popular, large, trade-specific marketing agency—all they’re doing is swapping out logos, swapping out names and services, and everything else. But it’s the same copy-and-paste template for everyone. They’re just changing the business name, the services, and the city name.
That’s what I don’t like about those bigger agencies that are overly templatized. It’s a lot of copy-paste, and it’s not personalized to you and your business. So again, that’s not necessarily always a bad thing, but here’s a humble brag: we have not taken on a client from a national or industry-specific agency that we haven’t crushed. Actually, we haven’t taken a client from any agency that we haven’t crushed. But very specifically, we get the quickest results for clients coming from big agencies or industry-specific agencies because everything is so templatized and not customized.
We can come in, make a few simple tweaks to how the site is structured and to the overall SEO plan, and we get really quick results because it’s customized to the individual. It’s not the locked-in, "we only work with plumbers" approach where they just copy and paste the city name, services, and swap out logos. That’s something to consider. If you’re not getting good results and you’re working with one of those big agencies, that could be why.
The other thing is pricing. To me, this is a red flag: if the service is really cheap, you’re probably getting what you pay for. If it sounds too good to be true, it typically is. Another issue with pricing—two things I hate—are hidden fees and marking up ad spend.
A lot of agencies will sneak in surprise charges for extra service hours, premium tools, or extra strategy calls. I don’t like that. I prefer to be upfront with what our offers are and what they include. Yes, if you want to do something outside of our normal agreement, we can, but agencies shouldn’t be sneaking in hidden fees that force you to spend more money than what your retainer or project scope actually is.
Pricing Red Flags
Sean Garner: [20:10]
Another personal pet peeve—and I understand the business model side of this—but it’s something I don’t like: when marketing agencies mark up ad spend. Typically, a marketing agency will charge you a percentage of your total ad spend. Maybe it’s because I also own this marketing agency, and my wife and I also own several local service-based businesses ourselves. Maybe I’m a little too soft here, but this is what I don’t like.
At our agency, we’re called to serve small business owners. I can’t truly serve them best if I make money by telling them to spend more money. I believe I should make more money based on the results I provide or the work I’m doing.
Most marketing agencies—if you’re spending, let’s say, $10,000 a month on paid ads—they might take 10%, 20%, or sometimes even 30–40% of your ad spend as their cut, on top of your ad spend. So if you’re spending 10K a month on Google, and the agency takes 20%, you’re paying $10K to Google plus another $2K to the marketing agency.
I don’t think it should be based on a percentage of ad spend. I think it should be based on the number of campaigns they’re managing. I shouldn’t punish a business owner for spending more money. If I’ve done my job right and the ads are performing well, they shouldn’t have to pay me more just because the ads are working. That’s already where I stand. Again, that’s just my way of doing things. I don’t think there’s necessarily a right or wrong way, but to best serve the business owner, you shouldn’t punish them for spending more on ads.
Now, if they want to create a ton more ads, with a ton more creatives and campaigns, that’s one thing. In that case, yes, the cost can go up. But I prefer to charge a flat fee, and I don’t care how much you spend on ad spend. My goal is simply to make sure the ads perform well for you.
So again, that’s my view—but it’s something to think about and consider.
We also talked about this with communication. If it’s difficult to reach your agency—except when it’s time for payment—that should be a big red flag. The agency owner is there to serve you. They work for you.
Defensive Agencies, Lack of Collaboration, and “Secret Sauce” Excuses
Sean Garner: [22:25]
And also, have realistic expectations. Don’t expect them to be on 24/7 standby calls for you. But if they’re slow to respond, that should be a pretty big red flag. The other thing—and this typically happens with larger national agencies—is that you don’t have a dedicated account manager. You’re always being passed around to somebody else, which means they really don’t know what’s going on with your business. They don’t have a good pulse on your business, so they’re not going to be able to make good decisions. They’re just funneling information to someone else who does the actual work.
You want the person you’re talking to at least to have a pulse and know what’s going on in your business. Another thing: sometimes the reason why you’re being passed around is because they have high staff turnover. It’s kind of like restaurants—if the bathroom is dirty, what’s going on in the kitchen? If the staff turnover is high and they’re supposed to be running your business or helping to market your business, but inside their business there are crazy issues, maybe that’s something to consider.
Like I said, these are red flags you should pay attention to before hiring your next agency—or maybe it’s time to get rid of the one you currently have.
Last few quick rapid-fire things, guys: if you ask your agency owner, or the agency you’re working with or considering working with, any questions and they get super defensive or offended, that’s a red flag. Especially if you ask about results and push back a little.
I love over-communicating. I love teaching my clients this stuff. I want them to ask questions. I want them to understand and know what we’re doing. Also, if they don’t want any collaboration—if they don’t want your input or your ideas and they just want you to stay out of it—that shouldn’t be the case. It’s your business. They’re there to help and serve you so your business grows.
Another thing: if everything is about their “secret sauce,” like, “Well, we really can’t tell you what we’re doing because it’s our proprietary system,” that should be a huge red flag. It probably means they’re not doing anything. If they can’t share it, either they’re doing some crazy black-hat SEO techniques that could damage your business and reputation, or they’re just making it up as they go.
Choosing the Right Agency
Sean Garner: [24:44]
Or, unfortunately, like a lot of marketing agencies, they outsource everything. They can’t tell you what they’re doing because they don’t know. A lot of agencies just outsource everything. They don’t have an in-house team like we do at Sean Garner Consulting. They’ve just got a salesperson collecting leads, and then they white-label it out to someone else who’s fulfilling the work. Again, not necessarily wrong, but as the business owner, you should at least know what’s going on.
Ultimately, guys, a big red flag is if it’s all hype and not delivery. If you’ve been working with an agency that shows several of these red flags and it’s just not driving results, it might be time to separate—especially if you don’t see them going the extra mile.
I’ll be the first to admit, it takes work for some of our clients. Most of the time we hit it right out of the park, and we’re really blessed to crush it for clients. But some take more work. If the agency owner is proactive—trying new things, testing new things, overly communicating—that’s a good thing.
But if they’re constantly overpromising and underdelivering, and you’re not seeing results, you need to make the best decision for your business. Hopefully, this video gives you some things to think about as you evaluate your current marketing agency or choose your next one—making sure they don’t have these red flags.
I hope this helps you make better decisions so you can continue to grow your business. And if you’re looking for an agency that doesn’t do these things, that’s red-flag-free—maybe I’m a little biased—but our agency, Sean Garner Consulting, does a pretty awesome job of serving our clients.
We’d love the opportunity to talk through what you’re looking for and see how we can best serve you. Or, if you’re working with another agency now and just need somebody to evaluate the work they’re currently doing, we’d love the opportunity to connect with you, review exactly what you’re getting done, and make sure it’s the best decision for your business.
Thanks so much, guys, for watching. Have an awesome day, and we’ll see you soon.
