5 Signs Your Marketing Company Isn't Actually Doing Anything

You’re writing a check every month. What are you getting for it?

That’s not a trick question. It’s the one question every business owner paying for marketing should be able to answer in one sentence. “We got 14 qualified leads last month.” “Our Google Ads drove 38 phone calls at $22 each.” “We ranked on page one for three new keywords.” Something concrete. Something that connects to your bottom line.

If you can’t answer that question, you have a problem. And the problem probably isn’t you.

We talk to business owners in the Pittsburgh area every week who are coming out of bad agency relationships. A contractor in the South Hills who paid $2,000 a month for a year and couldn’t name a single thing that changed. A medical practice in Cranberry Township whose “SEO agency” hadn’t updated their website once in eight months. A restaurant owner in the Strip District who found out his agency was running the same generic blog posts they ran for a dentist in Ohio.

These aren’t outliers. This is shockingly common.

Here’s how to tell if your marketing company is actually earning that retainer, or just cashing it.

The Buzzword Salad Problem

Ask your marketing company a simple question: “What did you do for my business this month?”

If the answer sounds anything like “We optimized your digital presence and enhanced your brand visibility across multiple touchpoints,” hang up the phone. That’s not an answer. That’s a smoke screen built out of words that sound impressive but mean absolutely nothing.

You know what a real answer sounds like?

“We published two blog posts targeting ‘plumber near Mt. Lebanon’ and ‘emergency plumbing South Hills.’ We adjusted your Google Ads bids because the cost per click on your main campaign jumped 15%. We added three new photos to your Google Business Profile and responded to two reviews.”

That’s specific. That’s accountable. That’s what you’re paying for.

Here’s a test: after your next monthly call, try to explain to your spouse or business partner what your marketing company actually did. If you can’t, that’s not because marketing is too complicated for you to understand. It’s because your agency gave you nothing concrete to repeat.

A good agency should make you feel smarter after every conversation, not more confused.

Vanity Metrics Are a Distraction

Your agency sends you a slick PDF every month. Beautiful charts. Lines going up. Big numbers with percentage signs. Impressions. Reach. Engagement.

Feels good, right?

It shouldn’t. Not unless those numbers connect to something that actually matters to your business.

Let’s be blunt: impressions mean your ad was shown to someone. It doesn’t mean they looked at it, cared about it, or even noticed it existed. “Reach” sounds great until you realize 95% of those people will never need your service. “Engagement” could mean two people liked your Facebook post. Two. That’s your big win for the month.

The metrics that pay your rent are leads, cost per lead, and conversions. Everything else is supporting data. It has its place, but it’s not the headline.

If your agency leads with impressions and buries the lead count (or doesn’t mention it at all), ask yourself why. The answer is usually that the lead numbers aren’t impressive enough to feature.

You Don’t Own Your Own Stuff

This one makes my blood boil.

Some marketing companies set up your Google Ads account under their credentials. They register your domain under their name. They build your website on a proprietary platform you can’t take with you. And they do it quietly, without telling you, so that by the time you want to leave, you realize you can’t. Not without losing everything.

This is not a gray area. This is predatory.

We had a business owner in Robinson come to us after leaving another agency. They lost two years of Google Ads campaign history, all their quality scores, and had to start from scratch because the agency owned the account and refused to transfer it. Two years of data, optimization, and spend. Gone.

Here’s what you should own, personally, under your own email and accounts:

Your domain name. Your Google Ads account (the agency gets manager access, not ownership). Your Google Business Profile. Your website files and hosting. Your Google Analytics and Search Console. Every single pixel, tag, and tracking code on your site.

If you’re not sure whether you own these things, find out right now. Not tomorrow. Log in to each one. If you can’t, that’s your answer.

Six Months In and Nothing’s Different

Marketing takes time. We say this to every client we onboard, and we mean it. SEO is a long game. Ad campaigns need data to optimize. Content strategies build momentum gradually.

But six months is not “just getting started.” Six months is halfway through a year. If you’ve been paying an agency for six months and you can’t point to one meaningful change, you’re not being patient. You’re being taken advantage of.

By six months, you should see something. Keyword rankings moving in the right direction, even if they’re not on page one yet. More traffic than you had before. Some leads that you can trace back to the marketing work. Content on your website that didn’t exist before. An optimized Google Business Profile pulling in new reviews.

Not miracles. Movement.

The agencies that underperform love the “it takes time” excuse because it buys them more months on retainer. And they’re half right. It does take time. But it also takes work. And if the work is happening, you’ll see signs of it well before the six-month mark.

Here’s what we tell our clients on day one: at 90 days, here’s what you should expect. At six months, here’s the benchmark. At 12 months, here’s the goal. If we’re not hitting those markers, we’ll tell you why and what we’re changing. That’s not special. That’s basic accountability.

If your agency never set milestones with you, ask yourself: is that because they’re confident in their work, or because they don’t want to be measured?

The Cookie-Cutter Strategy

Every agency says they have a “strategy.” It’s right there in the pitch deck, probably on slide six, right after the testimonials.

But here’s the question that separates real agencies from template factories: would they give the same pitch to a roofer in Mt. Lebanon that they’d give to a personal injury lawyer Downtown? What about a bakery in Lawrenceville versus a B2B software company in Cranberry?

If the answer is yes (and it usually is), that’s not a strategy. That’s a script.

Your marketing strategy should be built around your business specifically. Your competitive landscape. Your customer’s buying journey. Your budget. Your local market. A plumber competing for “emergency plumber Pittsburgh” needs a completely different approach than an accounting firm going after “small business CPA near me.” Different keywords, different channels, different content, different timelines.

You should be able to explain your marketing strategy to a friend over coffee. Not the technical details, but the big picture. “We’re targeting these types of customers through these channels, and here’s why.” If you can’t do that, your agency hasn’t given you a real strategy. They’ve given you a contract.

So What Do You Do About It?

If you read this and recognized your situation, don’t panic. But don’t wait around either.

Start with questions. Send your agency a direct email. Not aggressive, just clear: “I need a breakdown of every deliverable completed on my account for the last three months, with the results tied to each one.” Their response will tell you a lot. A good agency will appreciate the clarity. A bad one will get defensive or vague.

Audit your account ownership this week. Log into your Google Ads, Google Business Profile, domain registrar, website hosting, and Google Analytics. If you can’t access any of them, request access in writing immediately. Not a phone call. An email, so you have a record.

Get an outside opinion. Have someone else look at your campaigns, your analytics, your website. A second set of eyes will spot problems you’ve gotten used to. We do this all the time for business owners who aren’t sure if they’re getting what they pay for. Sometimes the answer is “your agency is doing fine, here’s why.” Sometimes it’s not.

Document everything before you make a move. Screenshot your analytics, your current rankings, your ad account performance. This becomes your baseline, the “before” picture that lets you measure whether things actually improve with a new partner.

And if you do decide to move on, do it strategically. Secure your accounts first. Get access to everything. Then make the switch. Don’t let frustration push you into burning bridges before you’ve protected your assets.

The right agency won’t just tolerate your questions. They’ll welcome them. They’ll show their work every single month and prove their value with numbers that actually matter to your business. That’s not asking for too much. That’s the bare minimum.

If you’re not getting it, you deserve better.