Welcome back, friends! It’s been quite a long time since I last wrote. In fact, longer even, because if we’re being brutally honest, my last blogs were probably written with the help of Chat GPT. Yikes!
However, this one is written by me, I promise lol. Full transparency!
I felt compelled to write this one today, actually, because over the last 10 years or so that I’ve been in this marketing game, I’ve noticed something come up often. I have clients who come to me reluctantly after they’ve just had a bad experience with another marketer or agency (or other small business owners in St.George), telling me about the horrors of marketing agencies they’ve experienced. Now they’re burnt on the whole institution of it.
And gosh, but this chafes me!!
It bums me out, man. So I want to talk about this for a minute, and then I will give you my best tips for how to avoid having these experiences in the first place (or ever again):
Why does this happen?
In my experience, 70% of marketing agencies are out just for the money. They’re big agencies with hundreds, if not thousands, of clients, but that does not equal quality. How many times have we heard quality over quantity? This is one of those times when this rule also applies.
Almost every large agency I run into locks its clients into crazy contracts, charging them outrageous amounts of money. Maybe this works for other large companies, but this is not feasible for us small business owners.
Their marketers are paid the bare minimum and are loaded with so many accounts that they couldn’t possibly give each account the attention it needs. & why would they care enough, if they’re barely making enough money for it to matter? They don’t get paid by percentage or per account (which they should); they just get paid a low hourly rate. They’ve got no skin in the game.
Adding to that, and I hesitate to say this… the marketers they hire are either interns, or fresh out of college.
And let me tell you this – I went to college and took marketing classes, and I did not learn a damn thing.
I learned everything I know and use today from EXPERIENCE. College teaches theory, framework, and terminology. It does not teach execution.
I digress. And if you’ve been reading or following me for a while, this information might not be new to you.
Regardless, let’s actually talk now about how you can avoid this by asking the right questions of your prospective marketer or agency, and some red flags to look for.
Questions to Ask Your Prospective Marketer
Alright, this is my favorite part. Let’s take this step by step. Literally. If you ask this first question, and the answer is NO, you run. Understand? Run and don’t look back.
If the answer is YES, then proceed to the next question. So on so forth. Make sure that this entire checklist is a YES from your prospective marketer, or you don’t sign.
Alright, let’s do this:
1. Will you own your accounts?
BIG ONE!!! Most agencies will create accounts and campaigns under their company umbrella.
This means you will not be given access to it during or after service with them. You won’t be able to look at the account, see the ads with your own eyes, and verify that the information matches with the data they’re showing you.
If the answer is NO and they create and own the accounts, you RUN. Period.
This includes all Google assets (Ads, analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager), the Meta Business Suite (ad accounts, datasets, manager, pages), the website (the domain and the hosting too), the blogs – everything and anything you’re paying for should be housed under YOUR company’s Facebook, or your company’s name and information.
You would think that this is a no-brainer. It seems like a silly thing to mention here, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I see this happen 9 times out of 10. When I take on new clients who have previously worked with another company, I often have to re-create their entire asset library from scratch, because their last company refused to give them access to their accounts.
2. How do the payments work?
After you verify that you are going to own your proprietary information (reference the previous section), your next make-or-break question is – how do they require payment?
Let me tell you first what the average and reasonable number is to spend on marketing, okay? And it’s important to note that typically a marketing package is charged monthly, because it’s an ongoing service.
However, certain parts of marketing can be charged by the hour as well. So we’ll talk about a ballpark for both here. These are ballparks for small businesses like ourselves.
Know that if you’re a large company, marketing agencies will charge you significantly more than this, and it’s often because they can, but it also could be just sheer volume, right? (For example, if the marketer is managing a small monthly ad spend budget of say $500-5,000 then these rates below would apply to you. If your budget is higher than $5,000, even getting into the 5 or 6 digits, the monthly rate will reflect that.)
Social media posting
This will likely be a per post rate ($10-20 per post) or a flat monthly rate ($200-500/mo). If you’re considering a monthly rate, you need to ask how many posts you’ll be getting for that cost. That price I mentioned is typically for 2-3 posts per week.
Decide if you want to put eyes on these before they’re posted or not. Ask if they are going to manage messages and comments for you. Does that price include stories too? Is it image posts or reels?
Facebook/IG/TikTok Marketing
Typically a flat monthly rate ($500-1,000). This is just for the ads on these platforms, not the organic posts. This is where it might start to get more expensive, because this requires more know-how.
Ask how many campaigns you are going to get for this number (this price should include 2 campaigns minimum). Ask for approval before publishing. Are they going to require content from you, or do they make the content for you?
Google Advertising
Typically a flat monthly rate ($1,500-2,500). This will vary based on your monthly ad spend budget.
Again, ask how many campaigns you are going to get for this number. Ask for approval before publishing. Make sure they are not intending to charge you on a percentage or by lead (unless of course this is something you’re looking for).
SEO
Typically a flat monthly rate ($1,500-5,000). I’ve seen some pretty outrageous prices here.
Ask how they actually handle SEO. Are they working on both the front and back end of your site? This might sound like Spanish to you, but ask these questions: Are they optimizing site structure, page hierarchy, and internal linking? Are they updating things like meta descriptions, alt tags, and on-page keywords?
Are they consistently creating content—like blogs or new pages—to support growth? If so, how many are you getting per month? A good SEO plan would include 2-4 SEO-optimized blogs per month, 800-1500 words in length.
If the answer is yes to all of those, then you don’t have to run this time lol. But, back to the reporting bit, make sure they are doing what they say they are, even if you don’t understand it, make them guide you through it so you can see it with your own eyes.
Blogs
This will likely be a per blog rate ($150-300 per blog) or a flat monthly rate ($200-500/mo).
Ask how they deliver these – a document or do they post it right to your website? Does it include the cover photo image?
Is it SEO-optimized (because that’s the whole point of blogs in my opinion)? Do they even know how to write for SEO? Does it include internal and external links? Do they do keyword research or do you provide the keywords to them? Are there headers, and are they properly tagged? Will they include the meta title and description along with it?
How many words for that price? A good SEO-optimized blog should be between 800-1,500 words.
Ensure they aren’t using AI to write these blogs, because if that were the case, you could just go on Chat GPT and write them yourself! Which I do not recommend – using AI written content on your website can actually hurt your SEO rankings – don’t do it.
Again, this might sound like Spanish, but ask these questions, and if the answers are yes, then you’re cruisin!
Website Creation
Unfortunately, it’s expensive now ($3,000-6,000 per website).
This is one rate I’ve seen inflate significantly over the years. Sites used to be $1,500, and now they’re getting up to 6k.
Would I pay that? Hell no. I would keep looking until I found someone between the rates of $1,500-3,000 personally. But again, this is if you’re a small business only.
I’ve seen someone pay 35k for a website… can you imagine? Please don’t pay that much for your website, There’s no reason for it, not unless you’re Nike or the President of the USA.
*Important note: make sure you own the website hosting and domain. This goes back to you owning your accounts yeah? Like we talked about above? Don’t let a company dupe you into a monthly maintenance fee unless you absolutely know you need it.
Full Marketing Package
This would include all of the things listed above (minus the website creation), wrapped up into one neat little package. A good company will know its value, and charge you somewhere between $3,000-5,000 for ALL of these things. A freelancer will likely charge $1,500-3,000. An outrageous company would charge 10-50k.
Ad Spend Vs. Monthly Retainer
Now back to the overall monthly cost, specifically, are they charging you one flat fee that pays for both the work and the ad spend? RUN.
This is a huge red flag. 🚩
I have seen this so many times. They charge you a ridiculous amount of money, and put themselves in charge of how much money they put towards the ads, and how much they pocket. No no NO. This is absolutely fraudulent.
Make sure that you put your own card information into the ad platforms and pay for that separately, outside of the monthly flat rate that you’re paying for service. For example, say your monthly package is $2,000, which goes to the marketer via an invoice. Then you pay a separate $500 a month directly to Google, and that pulls right out of your credit card like a regular charge.
Never let them pay for your ads directly.
You set the budget directly, or if the marketer is handling this for you, make sure you put eyes on this to verify it. AGAIN – if they refuse to show you this information, you need to fire them immediately. And possibly change your credit card information.
3. How do they do reporting?
And finally, how often do they report to you, and how do they obtain the data?
Now, while this one is important, it’s not necessarily a deal breaker, if and only IF, they meet all the criteria I’m going to outline for you.
Oftentimes, companies put together a report manually using a spreadsheet – yuck. I mean, we’re being honest here lol. How easy do you think it is to fib that data? They could put any old number they want in there & convince you to believe it. I’ve SEEN this. Many. Times.
However, this would potentially be okay, IF you get to own your accounts (reference the above section). Because if you own your accounts and have access, you can peek at the backend and verify the information they’re giving you matches up with the data provided directly from the platform itself. Make sense?
Now, how often do they report to you? Do they just pull up this sheet once a month in your video call, read you the numbers, and call it a day? Do they even do that, bare minimum?
Here is what you do:
You ask for weekly video walkthrough reports – I want this to show the entire backend of the ads platform. Show me what the ads look like, talk to me about what locations and demographics we’re hitting, show me the budget and how much we’re spending.
IF they say no to this? RUN.
That means they are going to be lying about something at some point, and they want to protect their ass. If they can’t show you, at any given time, what they are doing on your ads, there is a disconnect.
Maybe they’re paying someone overseas. Maybe they aren’t putting your money where they say they are (we talked about this in the step before, so if you followed my suggestion, this shouldn’t be a problem for you, riigghhhttt?) I only say this in case you’re already working with a company, you’re not sure if you’re getting what you’re paying for, and then you happened upon this blog to find out. If that’s the case, again – RUN. Fire them immediately.
And it’s okay if you ask for this video walk-through, but don’t know what exactly you’re looking at/for. I know that for most business owners, they see this platform or this data, and it’s a whole other language. That’s okay! The point is that they are being transparent with you, yeah? You can verify the rest later.
In conclusion
I hope this little checklist helps you a bit on your journey to finding a digital marketing agency in st.george, utah. Or anywhere really! I’m calling this checklist Part 1, because there is certainly more I could say, but I’ll leave you here for now.
I’m always happy to answer questions if you have them, or if you want to know whether or not your current agency is scamming you – feel free to book a Consultation and Diagnosis. Let’s look at it together!
If you’re tired of all the bulllshit & you just want a guarantee of transparency? Let’s partner up. Book a free Discovery Call with me & let’s talk about your business goals & how Copper Content can help nurture your brand.