Ethics & Marketing: A Rant

In eight years of business, I can no longer count the number of times a client has come to me after being burned by an agency that was less than transparent.

Countless times, I've been approached by small businesses who have engaged one of several well-known local marketing teams. But as the client opens up to me, it comes out that:

1. The client pays the agency a flat fee, and does not know what percentage of that actually goes to advertising spend.

2. The client does not have access to the advertising account running their ads.

3. The client must rely solely on reports from the agency, without access to their own analytics data.

4. The agency owns the ad account. This means that if the client ever leaves the agency, they lose all of their historical data.

Small and medium businesses NEED access to their advertising accounts. The freedom to take your data, audiences, and ad sets with you when/if you part ways with a marketing agency is a must. That data takes months and years to build. Starting from scratch can cause major disruptions. Imagine being a small business, relying on the expertise of a company you pay a large fee to each month with the promise of sales. One client was paying $2,500 a month strictly for social media advertising. They were disappointed that they had been receiving limited results. Without access to any of their ads' back-ends, the client couldn't tell me what exactly they were paying on advertising. For $2,500 a month, the few clicks coming in simply didn't line up. We discovered in the end that the advertising agency had been dedicating less than a quarter of that total fee to actual advertising spend. The client had been under the impression it was closer to 2/3.

Ownership of an advertising account should ALWAYS stay with the client. Ethical advertising agencies utilise partner accounts to access a client's ad account. This gives the client direct access to their advertising results at all times. It ensures that the client is responsible for paying the actual ad spend amount directly, so that they KNOW what is being spent where.

When a business is running ads, it should have full access to its website's analytics and reporting tools. This data proves the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns a business is running. While agencies should be sending out reports on the ads to the client, it is ideal that the client be able to pull up that data directly from the source.

When a marketing agency promises the world, ask them how they back that up. Ethical marketing agencies will be up front about the entire process. What will your actual ad spend be? What is the management fee? What's included in that: content, graphic design, copy, research, maintenance? How do they share the data? Who owns the ad account? Look past the buzz-words to the nature of the agency themselves.

When interviewing a marketing agency, don't be afraid to ask. Your business needs a team you can trust. Whoever you decide to work with should be able to answer your questions clearly and openly, and should be up front that you will have access to what you're paying for.

Questions? Don't be afraid to reach out. I am happy to talk with you about your concerns. Contact me by email, the website message form, or drop a comment below!