Marketing Agency Red Flags: 10 Warning Signs You're Being Taken for a Ride

Not every bad agency experience starts with obvious warning signs. Most start with a good pitch meeting and slowly deteriorate. But there are patterns. After reviewing hundreds of agency relationships for our directory, these are the warning signs that consistently predict a bad outcome.

If you're seeing three or more of these, it's time for a serious conversation with your agency. If you're seeing five or more, it's time to start planning your exit.

Your Google Ads account, your Meta Business Manager, your Google Analytics, your Search Console. These should be set up under your business with the agency added as a user. If the agency insists on running everything through their own accounts, they're building a dependency. When you leave, you lose all your campaign history, audience data and optimisation learning. That's not an accident. It's a retention strategy disguised as operational convenience.

What good looks like: You own every account. The agency has management access that you can revoke at any time. All historical data stays with you if the relationship ends.

Impressions up 200%. Engagement rate increasing. Content views are strong. These numbers tell you the agency is doing something. They don't tell you whether that something is working. The metrics that matter are leads generated, cost per acquisition, revenue attributed to marketing and return on investment. If those numbers are absent from monthly reports, the agency is either not tracking them (incompetent) or not sharing them (hiding something).

What good looks like: Monthly reports lead with business outcomes. Leads, revenue, pipeline value. Activity metrics are supporting evidence, not the headline.

The senior strategist who wowed you in the pitch meeting isn't involved in the day to day work. Your account is managed by someone more junior who you've never met before signing. This is standard practice at many agencies and it's one of the biggest drivers of client dissatisfaction. The strategic thinking that sold you on the agency isn't being applied to your account.

What good looks like: The person who pitched is involved in strategy throughout the engagement, even if they're not executing every task. You have regular access to senior strategic thinking, not just junior task execution.

A 12-month contract isn't inherently a red flag. But a 12-month contract with no break clause, a 90-day notice period and a requirement to pay out the remaining term if you leave early is. Agencies that are confident in their work don't need contractual lock-ins to retain clients. They retain clients through results. Aggressive contract terms are a hedge against underperformance.

What good looks like: Reasonable notice periods (typically 30-60 days), no punitive early exit fees and clear terms about what happens to your data and accounts when the contract ends.

Marketing is iterative. What you learn in the first three months should fundamentally shape what you do in months four through twelve. If the content calendar looks the same, the ad strategy hasn't evolved, and the reporting format is identical to month one, nobody is actively thinking about your account. They set it up, it's running on autopilot, and the monthly retainer keeps coming in.

What good looks like: Regular strategic reviews where the agency presents what they've learned and how they're adapting the approach. The strategy evolves based on data and results.

Jargon is the enemy of accountability. If your agency can't explain their strategy, their metrics or their recommendations in language that a non-specialist can understand, one of two things is happening. Either they don't fully understand it themselves, or they're using complexity as a shield to prevent scrutiny. Neither is acceptable.

What good looks like: The agency explains everything clearly and welcomes questions. They want you to understand what they're doing because informed clients make better collaborators.

Some marketing channels genuinely take time to build. SEO won't deliver overnight. Brand building is a long game. But there's a difference between "this takes time and here's the leading indicators that show we're on track" and "just trust us, it's coming." If your agency can't point to specific progress indicators after three months, the results probably aren't coming.

What good looks like: Clear milestones and leading indicators from the start. Even when the big results take time, there are measurable signals of progress along the way.

Your money, your business, your right to ask. Any agency that responds to legitimate questions about performance, strategy or costs with defensiveness or deflection is telling you something important. Confident agencies welcome scrutiny. They see tough questions as an opportunity to demonstrate their value and deepen the relationship. Insecure agencies treat questions as threats.

What good looks like: The agency actively encourages questions, provides thorough answers and treats your involvement as a positive rather than an inconvenience.

Check the agency's blog. When was the last post? Check their social media. Is it consistent and strategic or sporadic and generic? Check their search visibility. Do they rank for terms relevant to their services? An agency's own marketing is the only honest preview of their work quality. If they can't be bothered to do their own marketing properly, what standard do you think they're applying to yours?

What good looks like: The agency practises what they preach. Active blog, consistent social presence, strong search visibility, evidence that they use their own services effectively.

The ultimate red flag. Agencies that hold your data hostage, charge transfer fees for accounts they should never have owned, or make the offboarding process deliberately difficult are confirming that they knew you'd eventually want to leave. If an agency's exit process is designed to punish rather than facilitate, they built the relationship around retention not results from the start.

What good looks like: Clean, professional offboarding. Full handover of all accounts, data, content and credentials. Reasonable transition support. No punitive fees.

Count the red flags. If you're seeing patterns rather than isolated incidents, start by having a direct conversation with your agency. Show them this list if it helps. Their response will tell you everything you need to know about whether the relationship is fixable.

If you're ready to explore alternatives, browse our agency directory to find agencies that have been evaluated on transparency, reporting quality and client outcomes. Or read our guide on 15 questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign your next contract.