Marketing agency contract red flags: 8 for contractors

Why do contractors get burned by marketing agency contracts?

Because the contract is usually the only place the real terms are written down, and most owners sign it without knowing what should be in it. If you have been burned before, the usual pattern is an agency that sold big promises, then went quiet once the paperwork was signed. You were trusting someone on work you could not check yourself, and the contract was the one thing you could have checked.

This article is for a contractor about to sign with a contractor marketing agency, or one who already did and wants to know what went wrong. The eight flags below are general and checkable. You can hold any agency to them, including us, and the section near the end says where Rega stands on each one. Nothing here is legal advice, so have a lawyer read anything you are unsure about before you sign.

Is a long lock-in a red flag?

Yes, when the length is the point of the contract. A six or twelve month term is not automatically wrong, but it moves all the risk onto you: if the work is poor in month two, you still owe months three to twelve. The fair question is what you get in return for being locked in. If the answer is “a discount”, the discount is paying for your inability to leave.

Look for three things in the exit terms. How long is the minimum term, what does cancelling early cost, and is there a written way out if the agency misses what it agreed to deliver? If the contract has no exit for the agency’s own failure, the lock-in is one-sided.

What should you check about automatic renewal?

Check when the renewal happens, how much notice you must give, and how you give it. Automatic renewal is common and not sinister by itself. The trap is a notice window that is long, buried in the terms, or only accepted by registered mail, so that the first you know of it is the next invoice.

Put the renewal date and the notice deadline in your own calendar the day you sign. A good contract states the notice period in plain words near the top, not in a schedule at the back.

Should an agency guarantee results?

An agency that guarantees a lead count, a sales figure or a ranking is promising something it does not control. Leads depend on your offer, your market, your capacity and how fast you answer the phone. Search rankings depend on what Google decides. A number in a contract that nobody can deliver is either a sales line or a setup for an argument later.

Read guarantee language as a warning, and ask what happens when the number is missed. Often the fine print turns the guarantee into credit toward more work with the same agency. What a contract can fairly promise is conduct: what will be built, by when, how fast they reply, and what they fix at their own cost.

Where does your ad spend go?

It should go straight to the ad platform, on a card or billing account you can see, and never be folded into the agency’s fee. If you run Facebook ads for contractors or Google ads for contractors, the platform bills for the clicks. The agency’s fee is for managing them.

Red flags here are a single monthly figure that mixes the two, a markup on spend that you cannot see, and an ad account that belongs to the agency instead of to you. If the agency owns the account, the ad history, the audiences and the pixel data stay with them when you leave. Ask to be the account owner, with the agency added as a partner.

Who owns your website, your domain and your content?

You should, and the contract should say so in a sentence. A common trap is a site built on the agency’s own platform and hosted on their account, so that cancelling means starting again with nothing. The domain name is the same problem: if it is registered in the agency’s name, they hold the address your customers type.

Before signing, ask four things. Who is the registered owner of the domain? Can you get a copy of the site files or an export at any time? Are the photos and written content yours? What happens to hosting if you leave? A contractor website design job should leave you holding what you paid for. At Rega, you own the site and the code at the end of it.

Does the agency report on leads or on closed jobs?

Insist on reporting that goes past clicks, impressions and form fills. A cost per lead tells you how cheaply people filled in a form. It does not tell you whether any of them became a job. Reports that stop at the top of the funnel let an agency look busy while you cannot tell if the money is working.

The fix is tracking you can see yourself. A lead system puts every call, text and form in one place, with call tracking so you can see where each one came from. If the leads you do get never answer, read why Facebook leads don’t answer. Ask any agency where you would log in to see that, and whether the data stays yours if you leave. Value and revenue only show up if jobs get recorded, which is the owner’s part of the work. A report you cannot check against your own phone is a report to be careful with.

What does “scope” hide?

Vague scope hides surprise charges. “Full-service digital marketing” is not a scope. A scope says what is built, how many pages or campaigns or posts, what is included each month, and what counts as extra. Without that, every change request becomes a new invoice and every disagreement becomes a judgment call in the agency’s favour.

Two distinctions are worth asking for in writing. First, which work is a fixed quote and which is an estimate: a quote is the price, an estimate is a best guess that can move. Second, who pays when the agency makes a mistake. A contract that bills you for fixing the agency’s own errors is telling you how it will behave.

Can you actually reach anyone?

Check this before you sign, not after. Many burned owners describe the same thing: the person who sold the work is not the person doing it, calls go to a queue, and a simple question takes days. A contract rarely mentions response time at all, so the test is to ask who your contact will be, how they prefer to be reached, and how quickly they normally reply.

Ask a current client, not a reference the agency picked for you. Better still, notice how they treat you before the sale. Tibor Okros of Forest City Eavestrough, in his Google review, put it like this: “Aidan answers my calls or texts within a few minutes, not too many companies with good communication like Rega Marketing.” You shouldn’t have to chase down your marketing company.

Should an agency work for your competitor?

Not if you want it to work hard for you. An agency that takes both you and the contractor down the road is choosing between you on every budget and every good idea. Ask directly whether they take on other clients in your trade and your market. A straight answer is a good sign, and a vague one is the red flag.

This is not in most contracts, so it has to be asked and then written down if the agency says yes. Rega works with one client per trade per market.

How does Rega handle these terms?

We run month to month, and you cancel with 10 days notice before renewal. There is no lock-in and no long contract. That is how we operate, and you should still ask every agency, us included, to put its terms in writing before you pay anything.

The other points match up this way:

• Ad spend: paid to the platform, never inside a Rega fee. Any spend figure we list is a ceiling on what we manage, not spend included.
• Ownership: you own the site and the code at the end of it.
• Quotes: a fixed quote is the price, not an estimate. Our own mistakes are fixed at our cost.
• Results: we do not promise a lead count, a sales figure, a ranking or a return, and we do not sell any guarantee of results.
• Competitors: one client per trade per market.

The same questions apply to us. If an answer here does not match what you are told on a call, the written version is the one to hold us to.

Common questions

Is a 12 month contract always bad? No. It is bad when the exit terms are one-sided or when the length is the main thing being sold. If you choose a long term, get the agency’s obligations and a way out written down alongside yours.

Can I cancel an agency contract early? It depends on the contract. Read the termination clause, the notice period and any early cancellation fee before you try. If you are already locked in, a lawyer can tell you what your contract actually allows.

What should I ask before signing with any agency? Who owns the domain, the site, the content and the ad account. What the monthly fee covers and what counts as extra. Where the ad spend is paid. How you will see results, and who you will talk to. Whether they work for your competitors.

How do I know if an agency is overselling? Watch for promised numbers, urgency to sign, and a package that includes things your business has not said it needs. Nobody can promise a lead count or a return, and an agency that does is selling.

Check whether your market is open

If you want to see how a month to month arrangement works, start with the market check. Tell us your trade, your city, your average job value and what you run now, and we will tell you whether your market is open.