Maintaining an in-house marketing team can financially burden small businesses, medical spas, or professionals. This is where professional digital marketing agencies come into play, offering lower and often more cost-effective solutions for your brand. A reputable agency can create a strong growth strategy at a fraction of the cost of hiring and maintaining internal staff.
Investing your resources in the right place is critical to finding the best fit for your brand. However, finding the perfect marketing team can be time-consuming and, honestly, stressful for some. So, how do you navigate this decision?
The first step is meeting prospective marketing partners to evaluate their services and prices. Knowing your marketer’s vision, ethos, and objectives is important. During your discussions, it is also important to be vigilant and watch for common red flags. But what are the red flags when it comes to marketing agencies?
With over 60,000 digital marketing companies in the US, less than 10 aesthetics agencies have a proven track record. This means 99.98% of agencies will not get the job done (and they all think they can). In this article we teach you exactly how to identify the red flags. We’ve saved the biggest red flag for last!
Red Flag #1: Mandatory 12 Month or Longer Contracts
When long contracts, 12 months or longer, are involved, agencies often perform because they’ve signed the dotted line. Yes, they can be fired for handing in shoddy work, but there will still likely be a “notice period” where they’re tied to you while you’re paying them.
However, the agency often proves its value when long, lengthy contracts are left out of the equation. They know that the only way to get more work from a client is to do the best job possible and get optimal results.
Long contracts introduce a formal, legal structure that creates distance when you should be fostering a collaborative partnership. While we understand that long, complicated contracts are beneficial in some industries, we argue they may not be the best fit for a digital marketing agency striving for SEO results and paid ad performance.
Without contractual obligations, a marketing agency can become a creative, collaborative partner rather than simply fulfilling a predetermined quota.
Red Flag #2: Lack of Transparency
Transparency is key to fostering the best relationship with a digital marketing agency. You should always be wary of agencies that withhold information or lack clear guidelines or objectives. Transparency ensures mutual understanding, minimizes wasted efforts, and leads to satisfaction. In the beginning, open communication channels should be established so both parties can work together towards the same goals.
It raises concerns if a digital marketing agency hesitates to share its methods, progress reports, such as monthly reports, or analytics data. Instead, you should find an agency that prioritizes openness and is eager to discuss its approach.
For example, if your digital marketing agency handles direct payments for ad spend on platforms like Google, Facebook, or Instagram, you should receive the receipts. You have the right to full transparency regarding the amount spent on these platforms.
The wrong agency may allocate most funds elsewhere, resulting in minimal ad investment. Lack of leads may stem from inadequate resource allocation.
Red Flag #3: They Make Bold Claims
No marketer can guarantee success. Why? Because there is so much that goes into play when it comes to marketing. Most agencies are also only involved in bringing in leads but are not involved in the sales process. If your business doesn’t provide good customer service or know how to sell or cross-sell, then no agency can help you.
At Medstar Media, we pride ourselves on providing the right tools for you, your front desk members, and your entire team. Our dedicated client success managers are your personal cheerleaders who cheer you on and educate you every step of the way.
Educate? What do we teach? Well, we teach you and your team exactly how to nurture leads with our innovative front desk training. In addition, our agency also has an app available for all our clients where you can easily check in with your success, get a broad overview of how your business is performing, see potential leads, and so much more.
Don’t fall for a team that makes bold, useless claims. Trust the experts who actually have the tools and knowledge to help you see the type of success and growth you deserve!
Red Flag #4: They Promise Fast Results
Another big red flags is an agency that promises supersonic success. Any company guaranteeing quick results, whether a flood of leads, instant outcomes, or securing the top search rankings in a specific time frame, should raise a red flag. These types of claims often lead to untrustworthy tactics like purchasing a lead list or acquiring low-quality backlinks, which can actually damage your personal brand’s performance.
A trustworthy marketing agency does not guarantee fast results. Since the market is always changing, marketing efforts must also adapt and change until a certain level of success is met. This can sometimes take 1-3 months to begin seeing visual results you can trust! For instance, effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns typically require several months to yield significant results, and even then, there’s no assurance of swiftly attaining the coveted top spot in search rankings.
For example, our marketing agency increased the number of clicks on one of our VIP clients from 2,869 in July 2023 to a staggering 7,592 in July 2024.
This level of success took time for our marketing team to learn everything we needed to know about the client and their personal brand, countless hours of keyword research and SEO work, and continuous monitoring and tweaking to ensure optimal results like this.
Success does not happen overnight. And if an agency is selling you that, they are often up to no good and do not have your best interests in mind.
Red Flag #5: The Agency Does Not Show You Results of Their Work With Other Clients
If you are working with a marketing agency that claims they cannot share current client successes or results with you, whether due to client confidentiality or a similar reason, they are feeding you nonsense. As a marketing agency, you want to show off your clients’ success and spread their happy testimonials everywhere. If an agency is telling you they cannot share that type of information with you, call their BS.
A good agency with experience can show client rankings, their experiences, and often visual or vocal testimonials.
Medstar Media is always proud to showcase the results we have provided to our clients!
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Red Flag #6: They Don’t Check or Use Updated Data to Make Decisions
If they only rely on their experience in the marketing industry, they aren’t going to deliver the results you want or deserve. As a small business owner, you understand the importance of studying and evaluating data multiple times before making decisions. Your marketing agency should have the same philosophy.
It’s important to use real-world data before making decisions instead of relying on intuition. Your marketing team should consistently analyze data points like website content analytics, sources of site traffic (e.g., referrals or search engines like Google), SEO trends, and other similar analytics to focus their strategies properly.
In our digital world, where consumer trends continuously evolve multiple times in a single day, sticking to outdated methods can cause poor marketing results. Data drives and empowers businesses to adapt quickly by identifying new trends, keeping them relevant, and optimizing content accordingly.
A reputable agency recognizes the significance of data-driven decision-making and has the methods and expertise to text and implement those innovative strategies based on evidence gathered from… you guessed it, DATA!
Red Flag #7: They Don’t Let You Make Changes to Your Website
Regrettably, it is not uncommon for some small businesses to meet an agency that creates websites and withholds access. This practice creates a kind of dependency on the agency’s services, limiting the client’s freedom. —a tactic we find manipulative, particularly if you possess the interest and ability to manage updates yourself.
Websites need regular updates and refreshing. That’s why we provide our clients with the resources they need, empowering them to maintain their websites effortlessly and keep their content current.
While we’re always available to assist with updates, we understand that not every client has the resources for ongoing maintenance. That’s precisely why we view offering this capability as essential for small business clients.
The right agency recognizes the importance of fostering a mutually beneficial relationship with clients rather than seeking to gain more than their fair share. After all, as fellow small business owners, we understand the value of trust and transparency in everything.
Red Flag #8: They Have No Visible Case Studies
Case studies!! Never underestimate the importance of visible case studies, and be wary of an agency that does not have any!
Anyone can create a certain persona online by creating a clean, crisp website, investing in their own form of marketing, and eventually making their way to your home screen when you search for the best digital marketing agency in your area.
This is dangerous! You have to be very vigilant when it comes to vetting prospective agencies. They can appear great, but they only sell false promises and give you no visible results.
Medstar Media is a digital marketing agency that loves to showcase our clients’ incredible success. As we said before, our team of experts essentially becomes your biggest fan base—we are there for you morning, noon, and afternoon in the face of technical woes and when you need us the most.
We are proud to showcase all of the incredible case studies we have compiled over the years.
Hire a Digital Marketing Agency You Can Trust!
If there is one thing you can take away from this article, it’s the importance of researching before hiring a marketing agency.
MedStar Media is proud to be a fully transparent marketing agency responsible for the country’s top body contouring and medical aesthetic accounts. We don’t need to hold our clients hostage with long contracts, own and control their websites, or sell them bogus “social media management” packages. We just like to see them succeed. We use trustworthy strategies at the forefront of a successful digital marketing campaign.
To learn more about our marketing services or to schedule a complimentary consultation, call or text (801) 890-3847 or email us at support@medstarmedia.com.
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