It’s the middle of the night. You wake up in a cold sweat. Your mind is racing. That feeling they once gave you is gone. They simply no longer excite you. The spark has simmered to a soft glow. Your heart just isn’t in it anymore. You know what you have to do.
It’s time to break up with your agency.
All of the moments leading up to this epiphany about parting ways were filled with either frustration — they missed another deadline — or disappointment — the work was just meh…subpar and boring. You’re bummed. The agency team isn’t bringing their A-game anymore. Your marketing feels stale and the team you pay to help you level it up seem disinterested.
Like any relationship, it’s good to be excited from time to time. It’s good to have that spark with your marketing partner. But there comes a time when the spark fades and the signs your agency may not be a good fit start becoming abundantly clear.
If any one of the following situations apply to you, it might be time to break up with your agency partner:
THE A-TEAM IS GONE
Remember that team that rolled out the red carpet during the kickoff meetings and the early stages of your partnership? Yeah, they’re nowhere to be found.
You got sold by a pitch team who told you that you’d only be getting the A-team, and they hung around a while until they knew you were happy. Then poof.
All of a sudden you’ve been assigned a new project manager to handle your account.
What happened to Sarah? You really liked her. Your new project manager is working at her first agency and you can tell. And to make matters worse, that strategy you were told was top notch isn’t working and your sales are starting to show it.
TOO MUCH FAT
Your agency has an answer for everything. That’s a good thing. Or is it?
Access to strategic thinkers is great until you start getting passed around to strategist after strategist and you realize they’re all saying the same things over and over again.
This is a common theme for larger agencies trying to keep their clients happy.
Your strategists will recommend audit after audit and you’ll get mired in analysis for months on end, but what you really need is action. You need less fat and more winning.
A Neverending BUDGET Boogie
You’ve done this dance before. You have a set budget and your agency keeps making recommendations that have you doing the Cha Cha when you know what you really want to do is the Tango.
An agency partner that doesn’t treat your budget like it’s their own is really no partner at all.
Offering ideas that are trendy, spending frivolously without results, and making recommendations that aren’t aligned with your goals can lead to an empty dance floor.
You need an agency that understands your budget constraints and offers custom solutions to spend every dime in the right place.
COLLABO…WHAT?
Your agency is doing just enough to keep you engaged. There’s the occasional phone call…the routine check-in…the monthly metrics report and that’s about it.
There’s no added value. There’s no collaboration.
Agencies that operate in a silo and fail to communicate new ideas are giving you exactly the type of transactional relationship you don’t want.
You signed up for someone who is ready to go to war with you — ready, willing, and able at a moment’s notice to do what needs to be done to win.
SAME OLD, SAME OLD
Boring. Mundane. Meh.
All words used to describe the latest round of creative the agency sent for the launch of your upcoming ad campaign.
And come to think of it…most of what your agency team has sent over lately doesn’t excite you. Yikes.
If your agency isn’t challenging you with new and disruptive ideas and instead is mailing it in with status quo, same-old, same-old stuff…welp. You know what you need to do.
Looking for a new agency partner
that promises
Less Fat, More Results, Crazy Ideas and Zero BS?
Look no further.