When to change your marketing agency

First, know what slow looks like when it is normal

Each marketing service has its own clock. Judging local SEO on a paid-search timescale, or paid search on a brand-building timescale, produces the wrong verdict in both directions.

The table below gives realistic windows for a UK trade in a typical local market. Dense cities run slower; small towns faster. If your agency has told you something very different, ask them to explain why.

Eight signs the problem is the agency, not the clock

Slow results alone are not grounds for leaving inside the windows above. The signs that matter are about behaviour, because behaviour predicts whether the results will ever come.

• Reports describe activity ('we optimised, we posted') with no outcome numbers and no baselines
• Your questions take more than a few working days to answer, repeatedly
• The same recommendation appears in three consecutive reports and is never actioned
• You discover work went live without approval, or approved work never went live
• Ad spend is rising but cost per enquiry is not being reported or is getting worse
• The person you were sold to has vanished and you now deal with someone who does not know your trade
• You are being upsold new services before the original scope has delivered
• You cannot log in to your own website, ad account or Google profile

The 'is it us?' check

Before blaming the agency, ask three honest questions. Did you supply what was asked for on time, including photos, approvals and customer lists? Are you answering the enquiries that do arrive, quickly and well? And did you change the brief midway?

Agencies cannot fix a phone that goes to voicemail or quotes that take a week to send. If the leads are arriving and not converting, the problem may be downstream of marketing. Check your own side first, because a new agency will inherit the same bottleneck.

The fix-it conversation

If the signs are there but the relationship is salvageable, have one structured conversation before deciding. Put it in writing afterwards.

Set out what the proposal promised, using the document you kept when you signed. State what has been delivered and what has not. Ask for a 60-day plan with specific deliverables and dates, and a report format that includes baselines and outcomes. Make clear that the 60 days is a trial, not a reset.

A good agency will welcome this, because it clarifies what success looks like. A poor one will respond with reasons and a request for more budget. The response tells you most of what you need to know.

Leaving cleanly: the asset checklist

If you decide to go, the order of operations matters. Secure your assets before you give notice, not after. An agency that has been difficult while being paid is rarely more helpful once it knows the money is stopping.

Work through this list and confirm each item is in an account you control.

• Domain name: registered to you, at a registrar you can log in to
• Website files and database: a full backup in your possession
• Hosting: either in your name or with a documented migration plan
• Google Business Profile: you are primary owner, agency is a manager you can remove
• Google Ads and Meta ad accounts: yours, with the agency as a user, not the other way round
• Google Analytics and Search Console: you are the owner
• Social pages: you hold the admin role
• Review platform, CRM and call tracking logins: in your name, with exported data
• Any content, photography or video produced: copies held by you

If the agency owns your website

This is the hardest case and a common one in trades, where rental sites remain widespread. If the agency owns the site, you cannot take it with you. You can take the content if your contract allows it, and you can take the domain if it is registered to you.

Start the new site before you cancel the old one. Point the domain across on launch day. You will lose any ranking history tied to the old pages unless the new site mirrors the URL structure, which a competent new agency will plan for. The guide to how trades agencies price their work explains how to avoid being in this position next time.

Giving notice

Read your contract for the notice period and the method required. Many specify written notice to a particular address. Give it in that form and keep a copy. If you are mid-way through a minimum term, you may owe the remaining months; weigh that against the cost of continuing to receive nothing.

Be factual and brief. You do not owe a critique. 'We are giving notice under clause 9 with effect from this date. Please confirm the handover of the following assets by this date.' Then list them.

Choosing the next one so you do not repeat this

Write down why you left in one sentence. Then make that the first question you ask every candidate. If the answer was 'no outcome reporting', ask for a sample report. If it was 'nobody answered', ask who your contact is and how many clients they manage. If it was 'they owned the site', put asset ownership in the brief.

The guide to reading an agency proposal and the guide to what to send before a quote are both built to stop a second bad hire. And the buyer's guide to trades marketing agencies is the place to begin the new shortlist.

Frequently asked questions