The most useful question to ask a marketing agency has nothing to do with strategy. It is this: if we stopped working together on Friday, what would I still have on Monday? We are an agency, so we have an obvious interest in you not asking it. Ask it anyway, and ask it before you sign rather than on the way out.
The accounts that must be in your name
- The domain. The registrar account should be yours, with your card on it. Everything else can be rebuilt; a domain you do not control can be held.
- The website and its files. Ask where the site is hosted, whether you can have access, and what you would receive if you left. “We host it for you” is fine as long as leaving means a copy rather than a rebuild.
- The Google Business Profile. You are the owner, the agency is a manager. It is a two-minute setting and it is the most damaging thing on this list to lose, because the reviews go with it.
- The Google Ads account. It should be your account, with the agency granted access through their manager account. An account created inside an agency’s manager account and never transferred is one you may not be able to take with you, along with the conversion history that makes it perform.
- Analytics and Search Console. Your property, your verification, agency added as a user. Otherwise the whole record of what has worked walks out with them.
- The call tracking numbers. Numbers can be ported, but only if the account is in your name. A tracking number printed on a fleet of vans and held by somebody else is the oldest lever in this business.
- Social accounts and review platforms. Same rule: you own, they manage.
“We’ll transfer it later” is a negotiation you will lose
Later means the moment you have decided to leave, which is exactly when goodwill is at its lowest. At the start it costs nobody anything, so a good agency will simply do it, and a reluctant one has told you something useful for free. You do not need a lawyer for this. You need a list and confirmation in writing that every item on it is in your name.
Contract length is a proxy for confidence
Twelve-month agreements exist because the first three months of most engagements produce very little, and a firm expecting to be judged on that period would rather have the other nine locked in. There are honest reasons for a term: a build being financed, a paid migration, but for ongoing marketing, a month-to-month arrangement means the work has to be worth paying for each month. We work that way, which is not a neutral thing for us to say, but the reasoning holds whoever is saying it.
Reporting that tells you nothing
Impressions, reach, followers and a chart of keyword positions are all genuine numbers that answer no question you actually have. Your questions are how many people called, how many of those became jobs, and what each job cost to win. A report that cannot connect spend to booked work is a report about the agency’s activity rather than your business, and the remedy is joining the marketing data to what your CRM already knows.
Then ask the harder version: show me the calls we missed. An agency willing to show you leads that were generated and then dropped by your own office is measuring the whole path rather than the half it gets credit for.
The strongest signal is an agency that talks you out of something
Advice that costs the person giving it money is worth more than advice that does not. A firm that tells you your budget is too thin for the market you asked about, or that the rebuild you want will cost you rankings for a quarter, or that you do not need the extra line on the proposal, is a firm whose recommendations you can weigh. If every conversation ends with something else to buy, you are not being advised.
Frequently asked questions
Should I sign a twelve-month marketing contract?
Only if something in it is genuinely being financed over the term, such as a website build. For ongoing work, prefer month-to-month and judge it on results you can see.
Who should own my Google Ads account?
You should. The agency needs access to it, not custody of it, so that the account and its conversion history stay with the business when people change.
The agency built my website. Is it mine?
That depends entirely on what was agreed, which is why it should be agreed in writing at the start. At minimum, insist that the domain is yours and that you can be given a working copy of the site.
How do I tell whether the marketing is working?
Count booked jobs by source over a quarter and set that against what you spent. If nobody can produce that comparison, the reporting is not doing its job.
Where to start
Try to log in to your own domain registrar today. If you cannot, or you do not know where it is, that is the first thing to sort out, and it has nothing to do with who you hire next.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our search optimisation or book a strategy call.
