8 Warning Signs Your Marketing Agency Is Letting You Down
Think your marketing agency might be letting you down? Discover eight warning signs – from unclear reporting to hidden handovers – and how to fix fading results before it’s too late.
As a contractor and marketing agency founder, I have hired, collaborated with and also replaced other marketing agencies. It still surprises me how some agencies neglect their clients. In this article, I’m going to lay out the 8 warning signs that your marketing agency is letting you down and what to do about it. Additionally, you´ll get priceless advice on how to spot agencies that are in it for the long haul.
Sound familiar?
You hire a digital agency to grow your business. At first, things look promising – reports full of upward arrows, upbeat calls, and confident talk about “momentum.” Then, slowly, something changes. Replies take longer. Results flatten. You can’t quite tell whether progress is being made or just being presented.
It’s not that all agencies are bad. Most start with good intentions. But somewhere between handovers, competing priorities and the pressure to scale, focus begins to slip. The good ideas fade, the strategy gets diluted, and the care that once drove results quietly disappears.
Below are eight warning signs your marketing agency might have lost its way – and what each one reveals about what’s really happening behind the scenes.
1. Poor Discovery Phase
The seeds of disappointment are usually planted before the contract’s even signed. A weak discovery process – or worse, none at all – means your agency never truly understood your business, audience or goals from the outset. You’ll notice it later, when the strategy feels generic or the messaging misses the mark. A strong discovery phase should feel like therapy: deep, curious, and specific to you. If it’s rushed, scripted, or surface-level, expect shallow results.
2. Your main contact keeps disappearing
If the person who normally handles your account is often unavailable or slow to respond, it’s not just bad communication – it’s a sign your project isn’t a priority. In well-run agencies, communication is responsive because it keeps momentum alive. When silence becomes the norm, it usually means your contact is juggling too many clients, or firefighting problems elsewhere. Either way, your progress is what suffers.
3. Your account manager gets promoted or reassigned - and doesn't tell you
Promotions are good news for them, but not necessarily for you. The account manager is the keeper of your history – your goals, tone, audience, and learnings. If that knowledge walks out the door without a proper handover, you’re paying for an expensive reset. When it happens once, it’s unfortunate. When it happens repeatedly, it’s a sign of a poor internal culture – one that values hierarchy over continuity.
4. Your Google Ads are being managed by someone who isn’t certified
Here’s an industry trick worth knowing: agencies only need one certified individual to display the “Google Partner” badge. The rest of the work can be handled by juniors under that badge – people who’ve never taken the certification exam or run a large-scale account. You’ll know it’s happening when performance fluctuates wildly or your reports feel hollow. Always ask who’s managing your account and what qualifications they hold. The right answer will be direct and confident.
5. You don’t have access to your own Google Ads account
If your agency hasn’t granted you full admin access, that’s a serious red flag. It means you can’t see how your money is being spent or what changes are being made. Some agencies do this to retain control, but transparency should never be negotiable. You’re the client – not a spectator. If you can’t log in and verify what’s happening, you’re effectively paying blind.
6. They blind you with jargon
CTR, CPA, ROAS, MQL, KPI – these metrics matter, but only if they’re connected to your goals. When your agency starts flooding you with acronyms and charts without context, it’s usually to obscure one thing: stagnation. Great agencies explain, simplify, and empower. If you leave meetings more confused than when you joined them, something’s wrong.
7. Reporting feels unclear or inconsistent
When reports arrive late, look different every month, or don’t match what you see in your own analytics, it’s a signal that the agency doesn’t have a consistent process. Good reporting should make performance obvious at a glance – what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next. Anything less, and you’re probably looking at smoke and mirrors rather than strategy.
8. Your results are fading - and no one can explain why
Acquisition costs rise, leads fall, and the reasons sound vague: “seasonality,” “algorithm changes,” “buyer fatigue.” In reality, results fade because curiosity fades. The agency stopped testing, stopped optimising, and started coasting. Growth doesn’t decline overnight – it unravels slowly through neglect.
Why Results Fade - and How to Stop It Happening
Most agencies don’t set out to disappoint clients. The problem starts with structure. The senior strategist who wins the pitch is rarely the one who does the day-to-day work. After the kickoff, the project gets passed down – from strategist to account manager, to SEO “specialist,” to a rotating cast of freelancers – each inheriting only fragments of the full picture. It’s the marketing equivalent of a game of Telephone: by the time the message reaches the person actually running your campaigns, the meaning has warped beyond recognition.
This kind of handover decay shows up everywhere
In SEO, it’s keyword strategies that never evolve, content written without understanding the audience, or site migrations that quietly break years of progress.
In PPC, it’s bloated campaigns left to run on autopilot, wasting budget on irrelevant clicks while everyone assumes “the algorithm’s just adjusting.”
In both cases, the problem isn’t usually the work itself – it’s the disconnect between strategy, execution, and accountability.
One of our clients as an example
One client came to me after exactly this. Their PPC account had been passed between multiple people in just a few months. Nobody could explain why costs kept climbing or why the reports didn’t match reality. Within a month of rebuilding everything – structure, tracking, creative – we cut wasted spend by roughly a quarter and improved cost per conversion by around forty percent.
The difference wasn’t luck. It was continuity.
When the person who plans your growth is the same person who measures it, refines it, and stays in the loop, you don’t lose momentum. You keep learning from your own data instead of starting over every few months.
So if your website or ads once showed promise but have since plateaued, it’s not necessarily your market – it’s probably the missing link between ownership and execution.
Results fade when accountability fades.
And they endure when someone stays close enough, long enough, to make sure good ideas don’t get lost in translation.
Let’s Talk About Doing Things Differently
At Somuna, we don’t hide behind jargon or handovers. The same experts who plan your growth are the ones who build it – we stay accountable, transparent, and close to the work.
If you’ve lost confidence in your agency, we can help you get clarity on what’s really holding things back – starting with a free audit and quick call.
John Anderson has 15+ years experience in online growth and SEO. He helps organisations get found and make sense to customers through clear messaging, sustainable acquisition strategies, and a grounded, practical approach to AI.
