Two clients this year left, admitting they might regret it, but they wanted to try a full-service agency.
As long as they’re past their minimum contractual obligation, I never fight them leaving and wish them good luck. If they have something better, good for them. If not, they’ll learn a hard lesson and usually come back for life.
Both have since returned.
I don’t know what the other agency did outside of SEO for the client that came back today, but in the SEO scope they burned everything to the ground.
When the client left they were at around 17,000 visitors per day. They’re now at 2,500.
Not only did they gut everything we did that was working, they layered in crap that wasn’t working, wrecked their leadgen funnel, and broke automations.
They also bought links. Tons of spammy links.
The screenshot shows the direct timeline of their spike in backlinks mirroring a trailing decline in traffic.
The client is back with us now, and in good hands.
I don’t take this for granted or poach on the vulnerability. I offered to grandfather his previous rate, but he does have to pay one-time extra for the clean up.
The other guy he hired he admitted was more expensive than us. Not only did he throw good money at bad service, but he lost countless sales, and now has to pay more to clean up what he volunteered to pay more for that didn’t work out.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Especially with marketing.
Good full-service agencies that do SEO, PPC, social, email, CRO, all the things might exist. And it sounds sexy… but I’ve never seen one pull it off.
