10 Things To Hate About Your Marketing Firm

While average marketing agencies are busy creating love/hate relationships, Sol Marketing is committed to building love/love relationships in our never-ending quest to create Irrational Loyalty for our clients. 

That’s why we are revealing all of the things that marketing agencies do that make you hate them. We’re exposing all this shitty stuff because we have an answer for it.

1 - The Bait and Switch

When they first pitch you on their marketing, you meet the brilliant minds at the agency - ALL TWO OF THEM! They’re the biggest brains in the room and seem to have all the answers. It’s in this first meeting that you fall in love with them and their ideas, and you picture yourself advancing in your own career by just being in their presence. 

That winning business meeting and the project kick-off meeting are the last time you see them. 

After you’ve signed, you and your account are relegated to that junior account executive in charge of a team of interns. The Bait and Switch makes you feel like you’re getting their absolute best talent, but instead you end up with no strategic input, no new ideas, and no good ideas.  

The best marketing agencies have people at every level of the organization who can add value to your account. 

2 - Unfashionably Late

Most agencies never met a deadline they didn’t want to miss. They claim to love them (at least in initial meetings), but when those deadlines arrive, your inbox is strangely empty and your phone is uncommonly quiet.  

Agency people are notorious for not being able to confine their creativity and “big ideas” to a reasonable timeline. Late work has a trickle-down effect that reaches into other areas of your business, and it makes working with your marketing agency that much harder.

The most loved agencies are those that don’t just meet timelines; they drive you to keep your projects on time, on budget, and on strategy. 

3 - Daddy Knows Best

Ever met that marketer who thinks they’re the only one in the room with a good idea? They’re so in love with their concept or stunning creative that they want to ram it down your throat. 

That’s a great way to end up with marketing deliverables that completely miss the mark. 

They’re also great at selling the “Big Idea” at a too-good-to-be-true price and not being truthful about what it takes to deliver on it. These marketers are more experts at executing scope increases than they are at making good on websites, ebrochures, etc. 

When you have a true partnership with your agency, they listen to you and want to achieve a win for you -- but they’re also willing to tell you the truth about what it really takes to achieve your objective or vision. 

Alignment and collaboration are crucial to form good agency relationships, and working together toward a shared goal is what ultimately delivers the win. 

4 - Address the Mess

Picture it: You’re standing in front of a room full of people about to deliver your keynote with your beautifully designed presentation deck. It’s going great so far, until you get to slide 8 and see an entire paragrph wth spellling errers and ,typos. 

Too often we give agencies a pass on the finer details because they’re, well, just so cool and creative. After all, it’s their job to come up with the big ideas. 

Quality assurance shouldn’t be an afterthought. Mistakes like these make your business look bad. 

You deserve an agency partner that treats your brand as if it were their own, and thinks about every aspect of your project - not just the parts they find fun.

5 - Lost in the Shuffle 

Large marketing firms seem very attractive. They’ve got a slick pitch, a sexy website, and the kind of successful clients that make you drool a little with envy. 

You eagerly jump into a relationship where you feel like you’re the only one. Then reality sets in. You’re not the trophy client you thought you were, and you have a sneaking suspicion that your agency has someone on the side. Or worse -- you’re the side piece.

Regardless of the size of your account, you should feel like you are your agency’s most important client. That’s often easier to achieve with smaller boutique firms that still place a premium on that personal touch. 

6 - Black Hole Marketing

Whatever business you’re in, you expect your marketing firm to have immersed themselves in your company, researched your top competitors, and achieved more than a basic understanding of your industry so they can design an approach specifically tailored to your goals. 

You need marketing that sells, not marketing for marketing’s sake. 

It feels disrespectful when a marketing agency tries to squeeze your project into a one-size-fits-all approach of generic marketing that isn’t designed to produce measurable results. You can’t fix what you can’t measure, and you can’t scale what you can’t fix. End Black Hole Marketing forever! 

7 - Post and Ghost

For having so much to say, marketers sure know how to disappear when you need them most. 

That email they said you’d have on Monday never came. The voicemails you’ve left have gone unanswered. The presentation deck you’re waiting for still hasn’t arrived, and you don’t know why. 

Too often, agencies go quiet when they have bad news - and you’re left guessing. 

These are the same people that are responsive at the beginning and when they need payment, but otherwise leave you to manage your own project. 

Good communication is the hallmark of a strong relationship. If that piece is missing, everything else is destined to fail. 

8 - Trophy Chasers

Some marketing firms are more focused on their image than yours, so they prioritize award-winning creative over strategies that connect to your business objectives. 

Sacrificing what’s best for your business in the endless pursuit of elevating themselves leaves you out of the equation entirely. Clients want to work with marketers that help them sell more and grow their business rapidly, not those that chase a flashy campaign. 

Beware of those agencies that measure their success by the number of Addys and Clios in their trophy case. 

9 - Buzzkill

Are you having difficulty understanding the omnichannel advertainment gurus who are gamifying your AI influencers? If that question gives you PTSD, you might be partnered with a marketing firm that’s obsessed with buzzwords. 

Agencies sometimes use big words to obscure the fact that they don’t actually know anything about your business. Other times they make up their own bullshit and then try to make their clients believe it.

The best marketing partners don’t speak their language, they speak yours. 

10 - By All Accounts

Agencies hate accountability. They love to point fingers at their clients, their vendors, and each other. 

It’s important for both clients and agencies to be open and honest with one another and have critical conversations when necessary, instead of hiding behind excuses and accusations. 

The best relationships are ones in which every single person is encouraged and rewarded for owning the good - and the troubling - at every point over the life of an account. 

If these sound familiar to you, you might be in a love/hate (or hate/hate) relationship with your marketing agency. 

The one common theme that unites these 10 things is that each one makes life easier for the marketing agency, and unbearable for you. You deserve better. We all deserve better.