Ads & SEO

Red flags when hiring a marketing agency

Twelve warning signs when hiring a marketing agency, from guaranteed rankings to ad accounts you don't own, and the question to ask instead for each one.

October 21, 20266 min read

The biggest red flags when hiring a marketing agency are promises nobody can keep (guaranteed rankings, guaranteed leads), accounts and assets held in the agency's name instead of yours, and reports that measure activity rather than customers. Any one of these can cost you a year of budget. Below are twelve warning signs, what each looks like in practice, and the question to ask instead.

Promises and pitch

They guarantee first place on Google

"We guarantee page one in 60 days." Google's own advice to business owners hiring an SEO is direct: no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and if someone guarantees their changes will put you first in search results, find someone else. Rankings depend on competitors, Google's systems and your own site. An honest agency can commit to work it will do, not to positions it doesn't control.

Ask instead: "What exactly will you do in the first 90 days, and how will we know whether it's working?"

They guarantee a number of leads or a return on ad spend

Lead volume depends on your offer, your prices, your reviews and how fast you answer the phone. An agency that guarantees "50 leads a month" either hasn't looked at your business or plans to count low-quality form fills as leads.

Ask instead: "What results have similar businesses seen, what ranges should I expect, and what would make it worse?"

They found you by cold email about your site's "errors"

An unsolicited email that says your site has "critical SEO errors" and offers a fix is a sales template, not an audit. Google's hiring guide specifically tells site owners to be wary of SEO firms and web agencies that email out of the blue.

Ask instead: "Show me the three issues you found on my site and why each one matters for my business."

The method is "proprietary" and they won't explain it

Some know-how is legitimately confidential. But Google also warns against companies that are secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do. You should understand, in plain language, what is being done on your behalf, especially when it touches your website or your reputation.

Ask instead: "Walk me through what you'll change, where, and what the risks are."

Ownership and access

The ad accounts are in their name

If the agency creates your Google Ads or Meta ad accounts under its own business and only gives you a report, you don't own your history, your audiences or your conversion data. When you leave, you start from zero.

Google Ads has defined access levels for this reason. Admin is the level that can grant and remove access and link accounts; Standard can edit campaigns; Read-only can view and run reports. The account should be yours, with the agency added as a user or through a manager-account link. Google also recommends having more than one administrator so access isn't lost if one person becomes unavailable.

Ask instead: "Will I have admin access to every account from day one?"

They hold your domain, website or Google Business Profile

Your domain name, website hosting, analytics property and Google Business Profile are core assets. If they are registered to the agency, leaving becomes a negotiation. Registering them yourself, or having them transferred to you in writing, is standard practice.

Ask instead: "Whose name and email are the domain, hosting, analytics and Business Profile registered to?"

A long contract with no exit

A 12-month lock-in with no performance review and no way out shifts all the risk to you. Marketing takes time, especially SEO, so a minimum commitment can be reasonable. But a fair contract states what happens if agreed work isn't delivered and how much notice you need to give.

Ask instead: "What's the notice period, and what do I get back when I leave?"

Measurement and reporting

Reports full of impressions, reach and clicks

Impressions and clicks are inputs. What matters is calls, booked appointments, quote requests and, eventually, sales. A monthly report with colourful charts and no cost per lead is a warning sign.

Ask instead: "What did each lead cost last month, by channel, and how many became customers?"

No conversion tracking, or the wrong conversions

Google Ads can measure website actions, calls from ads, calls to the number on your site, clicks on your mobile phone number and offline conversions you upload later. An agency that runs campaigns without setting these up, or that counts page views as conversions, is flying blind and reporting numbers that look better than reality.

Ask instead: "Which actions count as a conversion in my account, and can we track which leads became paying customers?"

Ad spend and fees are blended together

"You pay us $3,000 a month, ads included" can hide how much actually goes to Google or Meta. You should see the platform invoices, or at least the platform's own spend figure, separately from the agency's fee.

Ask instead: "How much of my money goes to the ad platform, and how much is your fee?"

Ethics and people

They offer to "boost" your reviews

Fake reviews, reviews from staff without disclosure, and reviews bought through reputation firms are all on the wrong side of the line. Google's Business Profile policy prohibits paid reviews, incentives for reviews, and selectively asking only happy customers. Canada's Competition Bureau has warned that anyone who writes or allows reviews that create a false or misleading impression could be liable under the Competition Act, and that businesses can be responsible for undisclosed employee reviews. If it goes wrong, the legal and reputational risk lands on your business, not on the agency.

Ask instead: "How will you help us get more genuine reviews from real customers?"

The senior person sells, a junior person (or a subcontractor) does the work

The person who pitched you is often not the person who will touch your account. That isn't automatically bad, but you should know who does the work, how experienced they are, and whether it is outsourced.

Ask instead: "Who will manage my account day to day, and can I meet them before signing?"

What a good agency looks like instead

The opposite of the list above is simple:

You own every account and asset, and the agency is a user on them.
The proposal says what will be done, by whom, and when, without promising rankings or lead counts.
Conversion tracking is set up before money is spent, and reports show cost per lead and, where possible, cost per customer.
Fees and ad spend are separate and visible.
The contract has a reasonable notice period and a clear handover.
The agency is willing to say "not yet," for example when your website should be fixed before ads are turned on.

If you are hiring for paid search specifically, our list of questions to ask a Google Ads agency goes deeper on the account itself.

Where PNE fits

These are the standards we hold our own digital marketing work to. Clients own their ad accounts and control their spend; we manage strategy, creative and optimization. Monthly reports show leads, cost per lead and next month's plan. We don't guarantee marketing results, because no honest agency can, but we commit to transparent reporting and to transferring every asset if you leave.