Digital marketing is a crowded space. Believe me, I’m in the thick of it.
Every city in North America has an agency or two (or ten) and agencies will often compete for space and visibility online.
While there are a lot of top notch agencies out there with great track records, others are, for lack of a better work, terrible
And so, with so many options, it can be difficult to know which agency knows their bread and butter and which are no better suited to manage your ads than a travelling snake oil salesman.
Fortunately, having been in the industry for a long time, I’ve grown able to recognize a terrible marketer when I meet them. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so much), they’ve often got quite a bit in common, including with what they promise.
Here are five things that terrible marketing agencies will often tell you (along with what they often really mean).
1 – “You need to spend way money more before you see any results from our ad campaigns.”
Let’s start off with a classic scenario: you’ve been working with an ad agency for a few months, waiting for the results to come in. When you question them about it, they hit you with one variation of this refrain or another.
“Send us more money.”
Asking for more money with no results is rarely a good thing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are times when spending more money is the right call – when your campaigns are doing well and need to be ramped up, when you’re looking to purchase additional services, and so forth.
However, if you’re already spending money and getting nothing in return there’s a safe bet that spending more money isn’t the solution.
Unfortunately, this often spoken refrain is a favourite from marketers either in over their head or taking you for a ride. If it sound fishy, in cases like this, it’s usually best to trust your gut.
2 – “Look at how clicks, impressions and CTR are all doing amazing this month!”
Another classic.
Clicks, impressions, and CTR all have their place in advertising and understanding how campaigns are performing. What they don’t do, however, is tell you anything about your advertising return on investment (ROI)
Only metrics like conversions, cost per conversion, and conversion rate do – and this is true whether you are looking for sales, leads, bookings, anything with an action your customerss should take.
When an agency spends too much time on those first few metrics it usually means there’s not a lot going on where it matters.
This happens pretty much like clockwork when an agency either doesn’t understand the fundamentals of web tracking and analytics, or knows their ads are not working (but pretends they are).
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spoken with prospects or clients who worked with an agency that cannot tell them how their ads are actually contributing to the bottom line.
If your agency doesn’t mention conversions and its related metrics: bring it up.
3 – “We work with numerous colleagues from across the globe.”
Here’s one that’s gotten more common since the pandemic.
In the old days, agencies primarily worked in house, with everyone sharing a large open-concept office. With the remote work boom, people started being able to work from anywhere.
There are definitely pros to this – both my colleague Nichollas and I work from opposite ends of the country – but there’s also the darker side.
Namely, when an agency brags about having colleagues from all over, there’s a good chance it’s because they’re outsourcing to cheaper labour elsewhere.
In the worst of cases (and this happens) the only local person is the owner or other frontman who you deal with directly while they farm out your project to the lowest bidders they can find.
There are of course talented marketers across the globe, but there are a far greater number of lowest bidder options out there that are probably best being avoided.
4 – “You only pay us for the leads we send you.”
This is one of the staple unique selling propositions (USPs) from the pay-per-lead (PPL) segment of digital advertising.
The hook is basically that they will provide you with whatever type of lead, inquiry, booking, etc. that you are seeking and you only pay per lead that comes in.
On the surface, this sounds great – you’re not paying for the clicks and advertising that doesn’t deliver results. However, in order for this model to work for the PPL provider they need a certain edge.
Notably, PPL providers often don’t have qualms sending you massive volumes of cheap, low-quality leads to pair along with your handful of good leads. You might still be coming out on top overall, but terrible PPL providers love sending you a lot of leads they know will never convert just to keep their numbers up.
As I mentioned in another post about the dark side of PPL, a good question to ask yourself is: if the PPL provider can get me leads cheaper than I’m paying, can I also do that?
5 – “We’re a fully AI-powered marketing agency.”
We’re now at a curious time when the AI in marketing boom has cooled off. A few years ago, people were going nuts at the prospect that AI will replace human marketers.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen, because AI is nowhere ready to replace people who know what they are doing.
Still, you’ll probably notice how there’s a lot of agencies with a slick message about being AI-powered or AI-driven, hoping that the word “AI” will make them seem cutting edge.
The sad part is that a lot of the time it means they lean too heavily on ChatGPT doing their work.
To be clear, AI tools have value but only when they are used as tools and not the solution.
An agency that over-relies on AI tools is one that’s going to be producing a lot of work for you, but also nothing remarkable.
Looking for more out of your agency?
Are you currently working with an ad agency that isn’t delivering the goods?
It happens, but it doesn’t have to be that way for much longer.
Give us a shout using our contact form today. I’m sure we can do better together.
