Judging an agency
12 MSP marketing agency red flags, and how to check each one yourself
The warning signs that a marketing retainer is not producing anything, with the specific check for each. Most take under five minutes and need no tools.
Most MSP owners who suspect their marketing agency is underperforming cannot prove it, so they wait for the contract to end instead of acting. Every red flag below has a check attached, and most take under five minutes with no tools at all.
None of these prove bad faith on their own. Agencies do real work that never shows on a website, and some of the excuses below are genuinely true. The point is that you should be able to tell the difference, and right now most owners cannot.
1. Nobody can name what changed last month
Ask which pages on your website changed in the last thirty days. Not strategy, not a plan. Pages.
The check. A real answer arrives in one message with URLs. If it takes a meeting, that is the finding.
2. The report is full of numbers you cannot act on
Impressions, reach, and a slide about the algorithm. Fourteen numbers, none of which change a decision.
The check. Pick any number in the last report and ask what you should do differently because of it. If there is no answer, it is reassurance rather than reporting.
3. "SEO is a long game" past month twelve
This is true. It is also the sentence that covers eighteen months of nothing, and from the outside the two look identical.
The check. Long games still have milestones. Ask what should be measurably different in ninety days, in writing, then check in ninety days.
4. The content could belong to any MSP in the country
Swap your logo for a competitor's on your last blog post. If it still works, you paid for filler, and filler neither ranks nor gets cited by an answer engine.
The check. Read your last four posts and count the sentences that could only have been written about your company. If the answer is zero, that is your answer.
5. The same article went to their other clients
Agencies commonly run one content calendar across the whole client base and change the town name.
The check. Find two other MSPs the agency works with, usually listed on their site, and open the equivalent post. Two independently written articles on the same topic share about 4 percent of their phrasing. Anything above 30 percent is the same article with edits.
6. Your Google Business Profile has not been touched
For an MSP the map pack is where "IT support near me" resolves, and it is the surface agencies touch least.
The check. Open your profile. When was the last post? How many photos are from this year? How many reviews are unanswered? A profile nobody has opened in a year is common and it is cheap to fix.
7. Nobody has ever mined your search terms report
If you run Google Ads, some of your budget is going to job seekers, students, and people fixing a home printer.
The check. Download the search terms report and read the bottom half. Every query there that could never buy from you is spend you did not need to make.
8. There is no baseline
If nobody recorded what the site looked like on day one, nobody can prove anything changed since.
The check. Ask for the baseline. Date, page count, what was measured. Its absence is the finding, because it means every claim of progress is unfalsifiable.
9. You are the one supplying the content ideas
The agency asks you what to write about, you send bullet points, they format them.
The check. Look at who sent the last three topic ideas. If it was you, you are paying a retainer for formatting.
10. The account manager has changed twice this year
Every change restarts the context, and the person who understood your business is gone.
The check. Count how many people have owned your account since you signed. Ask who writes your content, by name. "Our content team" is not a name.
11. Free tools that keep everything you type
Some agencies provide a free content writing tool or social media tool as part of the package. To get anything useful out of one you have to feed it how you price, why deals are won and lost, and what your buyers ask on the first call.
The check. Read what the terms say happens to your inputs, and ask whether other MSPs use the same platform. Your operating knowledge is the one thing a competitor cannot copy, right up until you type it in.
12. You do not know whether you own your website
Plenty of agencies build on a platform they own and host. Leaving means starting the site from nothing, which is why so few clients leave.
The check. Ask directly: if we cancelled tomorrow, do we keep the site, the domain, the content and the analytics history? Find out before it becomes the reason you stay.
What to do with this
Work through the list before the next review and bring the results rather than the feeling. Twelve checks, most under five minutes, and the conversation changes from a disagreement about strategy into a list with URLs on it.
Several landing badly still does not automatically mean fire them. It means you now have specific questions, and a competent agency will welcome them. The ones that do not are telling you something too.
Choosing a new one is a different job, covered in how to choose an MSP marketing agency, and the pricing ranges are in how much MSP marketing costs.
Why this matters more for an MSP than for most businesses
Two things make managed IT unusual as a marketing problem.
Your buyer is local and there are not many of them. An MSP in a metro of two million is realistically selling to a few thousand businesses of the right size, and perhaps a few hundred that will change provider in any given year. A campaign that would look acceptable for an ecommerce brand, with impressions in the millions and a low conversion rate, is meaningless here. Ten of the right conversations beats fifty thousand impressions.
Trust is the entire product. Nobody switches IT provider because of clever copy. They switch because the current one stopped answering the phone, and then they spend weeks quietly checking whether the alternative is credible. That means the assets that matter are the unglamorous ones: a profile with recent reviews and answered complaints, service pages that explain what actually happens when something breaks, and named credentials that check out.
This is also why generic content fails so completely for MSPs. A post that could belong to any provider in the country signals exactly the thing a nervous buyer is trying to rule out, which is that you are interchangeable.
The three that matter most
Twelve checks is a lot to run before a meeting. If you only do three, do these.
- Ask which pages changed last month. It is the single fastest read on whether work is reaching the website at all.
- Open your Google Business Profile. For a local service business it is usually where the fastest available gain is sitting untouched.
- Read your last four blog posts and apply the swap-the-logo test. It takes ten minutes and it tells you whether you are paying for content or for filler.
Those three cover output, local, and quality. Everything else on the list refines the picture.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my marketing agency is doing anything? Ask which specific pages on your website changed in the last thirty days. A real answer arrives in one message with URLs. If it requires a meeting to produce, that is the finding.
Is it normal for an agency to use the same content across clients? It is common and it is not defensible. Two independently written articles on the same topic share roughly 4 percent of their phrasing. Above about 30 percent it is the same article with the town name changed.
Should I fire my marketing agency? Not on suspicion. Run the checks, bring the results to the review, and give them a defined ninety days with something measurable attached. Some agencies are doing real work that a website audit cannot see, and firing a good one is an expensive mistake.
Do I own my website if I leave my agency? Sometimes not. Plenty of agencies build on a platform they own and host, which means leaving costs you the site. Ask before it becomes the reason you stay.
What should I check first? Which pages changed last month, then your Google Business Profile, then whether your last four blog posts could have been published by any other MSP.
How long should I give a new agency before judging? Ninety days for technical and local work to show, six to twelve months for content and rankings to compound. Insist on a baseline in week one, because without one no claim about progress can be checked either way.