Agency Horror Stories

Season 4 kicks off with the episode we've been wanting to do for a long time. Meredith and Caitlyn walk through four real horror stories from contractors who came to FatCat after getting burned by other agencies — names left out, lessons left in. From the agency that held a contractor's website, ad accounts, and Google Business Profile hostage, to the "lead inflation" reports that counted every wrong number and telemarketer as a win, to the revolving door of account managers, to the agency quietly running a contractor's closest competitor. The episode closes with a lightning round of eight red flags to watch for the next time you're shopping for a marketing partner.

What you'll learn:

• The four ownership questions to get answered in writing before you sign (website, domain, ad accounts, tracking numbers and data)
• Why "leads are up and cost-per-lead is down" can be a mirage — and how to demand real definitions
• How account-manager churn quietly erodes your campaigns
• Why service-area exclusivity protects you from subsidizing a competitor's education
• An 8-point red-flag checklist for vetting any agency

Got a horror story of your own? Email us (address in the show notes) and we may feature it anonymously in a future episode.

Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.

Transcript

Intro: Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.

Meredith: Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors. I'm Meredith Medlin.

Caitlyn: And I am Caitlyn Noble. Today, we are doing something that we have wanted to do for a long time, which talk about agency horror stories.

Meredith: Yeah. These are real stories from contractors who came to us after working with other agencies. We're gonna keep names out of because the point is not to call anybody out.

Caitlyn: We've been our own horror story at times.

Meredith: You know, a journey of life we're all learning. the point of this, though, is to help you walk through and be able to spot the warning signs before you actually sign anything with an agency and get into these situations.

Caitlyn: Yeah, exactly. And we are not the only great agency out there, by the way, FatCatStrategies.com. There are a lot of really solid people doing this work, a lot, but there are also some bad actors. We do get a bad rap, and I have, you know, prospects come to me all the time like, "Oh, da-da-da, I was burned" and it's, it's embarrassing. And there... So, so there are also just some agencies that are unfit for home improvement, and contractors get burned because they don't know what they're looking for.

Meredith: So today, we're gonna walk through four of those stories, and then we're gonna close with a list of red flags that you can use for the next time you are out there shopping for a new marketing partner.

Caitlyn: I am pumped for this.

Meredith: All

Caitlyn: Okay, so story number one. We're gonna call this contractor Mike. A lot of y'all's names are Mike. Mike runs a window replacement company in the Midwest, doing a few million a year, solid operation. He hires an agency that promises him the moon. SEO, Google Ads, a brand-new website, the works.

Meredith: And this is a national agency. This is a big name, and a lot of contractors are on their roster.

Caitlyn: Right. So Mike signs a contract. He pays them to build the website. He's running ads through them for about 18 months. That's a year and a half. Leads are okay, not great, but he's busy enough that he doesn't really dig in. Then one of his competitors hires us. We have a conversation. Am I reading this right? Yeah. Mike's friend says, "Hey, you should call these people." Mike calls us.

Meredith: And the first thing that we always do on a discovery call is ask about their existing setup.

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: Who owns what? Where do things live? Who has access? And Mike couldn't answer any of those questions.

Caitlyn: Not a single one. He paid for a website. He didn't have a login. He paid for the ads. He didn't have access to the Google Ads account. The call tracking routed through a number the agency owned. Even his Google business profile, the agency had taken primary ownership.

Meredith: Yeah, so we tell him, "Look, before we can even talk about working together, you need to get your own house in order. Like, we need you to get your own assets."

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: So at that point, he goes back to the agency and says, "Hey, I want admin access to everything."

Caitlyn: And they ghosted him.

Meredith: His own agency, for four weeks or sorry,

Caitlyn: Four weeks?

Meredith: Maybe four weeks. I don't know. I can't remember exactly how many.

Caitlyn: Ghosted? What?

Meredith: after being ghosted for weeks, they finally get back to him and say, "Oh, actually, we can't, because it's against our company's policy to share our account access."

Caitlyn: Which is such a wild thing. I mean, that is not a thing. There is no legitimate reason an agency should refuse to give a contractor admin access to assets the contractor paid for.

Meredith: None, and we see this all the time.

Caitlyn: shocking.

Meredith: I mean, and the reason for it is probably 'cause it was buried in the terms and conditions somewhere when they signed it.

Caitlyn: Yep.

Meredith: But we really do see this more often than is reasonable.

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: It's not always that bad, but there's some version of it a lot, where agency will build your website on their own hosting account, or their domain, or with their CMS license and the Google Ads account is in the agency's MCC, and you're only a sub-account, and they can pull that out at any time. Call tracking lives in their WhatConverts or their CallRail, and all the numbers on your website are porting back to them when you try to leave.

Caitlyn: And honestly, a lot of what you just said, like, I knew what that meant, but that might have just sounded like a bunch of just like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: That's part of it. That's part of what these agencies do, is they don't educate you on what they're doing.

Meredith: Right.

Caitlyn: And it is essentially a ransom situation. They are betting that the cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying, so you stay, and it works on a lot of people.

Meredith: Yeah, and so what ended up happening with Mike? Remind me.

Caitlyn: Yeah, he had to rebuild from scratch.

Meredith: Ugh.

Caitlyn: New website, new domain, because the agency owned the original. That's y'all's... That's your website. That's your website

Meredith: that

Caitlyn: Yes

Meredith: bleed.

Caitlyn: New Google Ads account, new tracking. He lost about four months of momentum and probably six figures in revenue during the transition.

Meredith: Yeah. So there's a lot of lessons here. One of the main ones, and we're gonna repeat this a lot today, is ownership.

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: Ownership, ownership, ownership. Before you sign anything with an agency, you need a written answer to four questions. One, who owns the website? Two, who owns the domain? Three, who owns the ad accounts? And four, who owns the tracking numbers and the data inside them?

Caitlyn: And the answers to all four should be you. The contractor, the agency manages those assets, but they belong to you. And during, my discovery calls, that... I ask those questions upfront.

Meredith: Right

Caitlyn: Like, like when I'm talking, like that's just what I do

Meredith: Yeah

Caitlyn: get the conversation going.

Meredith: For sure. All right, now we got story number two.Um, this one is the lead inflation scam.

Caitlyn: Ooh.

Meredith: this one... Ooh, spooky.

Caitlyn: Spooky.

Meredith: This one is about a roofer in the southeast, I believe.

Caitlyn: Yes. I love this one. Well, of course, I don't love it, but it is a great example.

Meredith: Yeah, so the roofer is paying for an agency about 12,000 a Paid search and SEO. That's it. And the reports that he's getting back are beautiful. They look great. There's beautiful charts, and it looks like the lead count is going up every quarter, and the cost per lead is trending down. It just looks like a miracle.

Caitlyn: On campaign, like, the campaign of the

Meredith: Yeah

Caitlyn: on paper, it looks like the campaign of the year.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: Y'all, we're busy. It's a good busy, but we are tired, so bear with us.

Meredith: Yeah, so it looked like the report was magical, and it was the best campaign that's ever happened, and it was a total winner. But his sales team comes to him and is complaining, and they're saying the leads are garbage. They can't get any of those leads to answer the phone. The people who do answer aren't qualified, and half of them are saying they never even filled out a form.

Caitlyn: So he calls us, Fat Cat Strategies, for a second opinion, and we do an audit, and what we find is that the agency was counting almost everything as a lead. And when I say everything, I mean every form fill, no matter how spammy, every phone call over 30 seconds and under 30 seconds, including wrong numbers and telemarketers, which there are a lot of those these days.

Meredith: Mm-hmm.

Caitlyn: Every chat session, even the ones where someone typed one word and bounced.

Meredith: So they were also double counting leads, if I'm not mistaken.

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: So if a person filled out a form and then they called the track number, that was two separate leads, and if they came back the next day and filled out another form, that was a third lead.

Caitlyn: Ugh. When we cleaned up the data and looked at actual qualified leads, real homeowners with real projects in the service area, the cost per lead was about four times what the agency had been reporting.

Meredith: And he had been making business decisions based around those numbers. So he had even gone out and hired a second sales rep because the lead volume looked so good.

Caitlyn: Now, to be fair to agencies for a

Meredith: Yeah, be fair to even though we don't do this.

Caitlyn: Some of this is honest disagreement about what counts as a lead.

Meredith: True.

Caitlyn: I've been there. I have sat

Meredith: Yeah

Caitlyn: had that conversation. There is no universal definition. Different agencies will count things differently, and that's not always malicious.

Meredith: Right, and, you know, a contractor needs to know what's being counted, and the definitions need to match what actually drives the business.

Caitlyn: Exactly. If your sales team thinks a lead is a homeowner with a project who is ready to talk to a salesperson and your agency thinks a lead is anyone who fills out a contact form, you are going to have a problem. The metrics will tell two different stories.

Meredith: Yeah, this is why we tie reporting to revenue whenever whenever we can. We wanna know not just how many leads we generated, but how many appointments were set how many of those sat, how many of those jobs sold, what was the average ticket price.

Caitlyn: Mm-hmm

Meredith: if you can connect your ad spend to revenue, you really can't fudge the numbers.

Caitlyn: I wish you had said the other F word. You can't

Meredith: almost.

Caitlyn: You can't.

Meredith: attempted.

Caitlyn: And tools do exist that help with this, Housecall Pro, Lead Perfection, ServiceTitan, just to name a few. You can pipe that data back into your reporting through Zapier or a direct integration. There is no excuse in 2026 for a home improvement contractor to be making decisions on top of the funnel metrics alone.

Meredith: None. So the lesson on this one, demand definitions. What counts as a lead? What doesn't? What is the qualification process? And then push to connect the data all the way through to some closed revenue.

Caitlyn: I am loving this podcast episode topic.

Meredith: It's, it's a little bit of PTSD. But, I mean, at least we don't make these mistakes

Caitlyn: It is. Well, we, we, I

Meredith: learned

Caitlyn: we, you learn. You learn and you learn,

Meredith: Mm-hmm

Caitlyn: and I hope anybody who's listening to this goes back and takes these exact questions to whoever they're working with or considering.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: Okay, third story. This is a kitchen and bath remodeler. We'll say they're somewhere in the Mountain West.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: Where is the Mountain West?

Meredith: The, the the It's maybe Colorado-y?

Caitlyn: Oh, sorry, y'all.

Meredith: I don't know.

Caitlyn: We love Mountain West

Meredith: West, yeah. I

Caitlyn: Kitchen and bath remodeler, yes

Meredith: of

Caitlyn: Yes

Meredith: spooky tale, is the vanishing account manager.

Caitlyn: Yes.

Meredith: This one is a little bit less dramatic, but I don't know, it might be the most common.

Caitlyn: Mm, it is so common. So this contractor signs with an agency. The pitch was great. The salesperson was sharp, obviously, knew the industry, asked great questions, talked about strategy. They sign, they kick off, and the salesperson hands them off to an account manager.

Meredith: Who they never speak to again.

Caitlyn: What?

Meredith: Well, I mean...

Caitlyn: I guess they speak to her once. Onboarding call, nice person, then radio silence for two months. Oh my gosh, that's insane. Then she leaves the country. Then they get a new account manager, who doesn't know anything about their business, has to be re-onboarded, asked the same questions the first one asked.

Meredith: And then,

Caitlyn: Oh my God

Meredith: three months later, that one leaves too.

Caitlyn: We're at five months now.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: By the time we talked to this contractor, he had had four account managers in 11 months. Four. That's so upsetting.

Meredith: That... Yeah, and I mean, think about it. Every time you switch, you lose context.

Caitlyn: Definitely.

Meredith: Especially if there's not processes in place to train the new account manager, you know. The new person doesn't know that you don't service that particular ZIP

Caitlyn: Mm

Meredith: because the drive time kills your margin. They don't know that you stopped doing tub surrounds last spring. They don't know which of your competitors is an actual threat, so they make decisions that just don't fit your business.

Caitlyn: Or worse, they don't make decisions at all. The account just sort of drifts. Campaigns that worked six months ago are still running even though seasonality has shifted. New keyword opportunities are missed. Negative keyword list don't get updated. Bid strategies don't get tested. Y'all, I hope you're not getting treated like this.

Meredith: Oh my God, and this is, like

Caitlyn: Oh

Meredith: what happens at a lot of agencies, is they will hire account managers at entry level positions and give them too many accounts burn them out in a couple of months, I mean, in some of these cases, and then they wonder why their client churn is so high.

Caitlyn: Mm. The contractor is paying for senior strategy and getting a junior person managing 40 accounts. There's just no way that person can do good work, even if they are smart and motivated.

Meredith: When you're evaluating an agency, it's okay to ask how long the average account manager has been there.

Caitlyn: Yep.

Meredith: It's okay to ask what their caseload looks like. How many accounts will that person have that is gonna be managing my account as well? It's okay to ask to meet that person before you actually sign the contract.

Caitlyn: And if the salesperson cannot or will not introduce you to the actual people who will work on your account, that's a flag. You should know who is going to be in your business every day.

Meredith: Okay, so what happened with said kitchen and bath guy?

Caitlyn: And we love the Mountain West. He left, came over to us. We've had him for about a year now, same account manager the whole time. We love our account managers. Performance is up, leads are up. He's added a second showroom, but he lost a year of growth getting jerked around.

Meredith: Yeah. Well, the last story, we're gonna call this one the competitor conflict.

Caitlyn: Mm.

Meredith: This is about a bath remodeler.

Caitlyn: Mid-sized market, maybe a million people in the metro.

Meredith: So they sign with an agency, and things are going fine. Leads are decent. But about six months in, they notice that one of their direct competitors, like the closest possible competitor, on the same street, offering the same services, with the same target customer, has gotten really aggressive online, like showing up everywhere that they used to show up. They're even bidding on their brand terms, outranking them, and it's on all of their best money keywords.

Caitlyn: And so the contractor calls his account manager and says, "Hey, what's going on with this competitor? They've gotten a lot better, and we are losing share." And the account manager kind of dances around it.

Meredith: Until eventually it comes out that the same agency is also running the competitor's marketing.

Caitlyn: Makes me sick. And not only that, they had been pitched some of the same strategies, the same keyword targets, the same geographic priorities. The agency was essentially using one client's playbook to grow the other.

Meredith: This is the cleanest argument for working with an agency that has a non-compete or service area exclusivity policy.

Caitlyn: Yep.

Meredith: You know, we don't take competing clients that are in the same location and same market, period. If we have a roofer in Toledo, we're not gonna take another roofer in Toledo, even if they're offering us however much money. Like, we're just not gonna do it.

Caitlyn: Because the math doesn't work for the client. You cannot give your best work to two people who are trying to beat each other in the same service, same arena. You just, you can't.

Meredith: Yeah,

Caitlyn: doesn't make sense.

Meredith: No. You're... Yeah.

Caitlyn: I mean, it does, but like, why would you do

Meredith: Right

Caitlyn: anyways?

Meredith: And I mean, some agencies are gonna say, "Well, our teams are

Caitlyn: Yep

Meredith: so it's different

Caitlyn: Yep

Meredith: working on different accounts, and the data's separate."

Caitlyn: It's

Meredith: And that might be true in some cases, but honestly, the strategic learning is not separate inside of an agency. The agency learns what works in your market by spending your money,

Caitlyn: Mm-hmm

Meredith: then they apply those learnings somewhere else for your direct competitor.

Caitlyn: And even if everyone is acting in good faith, you are subsidizing your competitor's education.

Meredith: So ask the question, "Do you work with any other companies in my service area that are doing what I do?" And get the answer in writing if you can. If they say yes, walk away, or get a clear exclusivity agreement.

Caitlyn: Yes. Preach.All right, lightning round. We've got a few minutes left. We're gonna go through, just some red flags, things you should that, things that should make you pause when you are evaluating an agency.

Meredith: Number one, they guarantee a specific number of leads or a specific ranking position. Ain't nobody legitimate gonna guarantee that. Their platforms, they just don't allow it. The math doesn't support it, so that's a lie.

Caitlyn: Yeah. If we have to re-record this one day because that is possible, I'll let you know, but as of right now, you're spot on. Number two, they want a long contract up front, and the early termination fee is huge. A reasonable agency will ask for 90 days to prove themselves, and then go month to month, or have a reasonable exit clause. If the contract is built like a trap, y'all, it's because it's a trap.

Meredith: Yeah. Number three, they cannot show you actual results from contractors in your specific niche. Roofing is not the same as windows, and it's not the same as bath. If they say they work with home services and then they show you results from a plumber and an HVAC company and a landscaper, they don't specialize.

Caitlyn: Yeah. Completely agree. Number four, they are vague about what they actually do each month. If you ask, "What work is being done on my account this month?" and the answer is fluffy like, "We're optimizing the campaign. We're working on the SEO," run away. You should get specifics. "Here are the keywords we added. Here are the negatives we built out. Here is the page we published. Here are the citations we cleaned up."

Meredith: Number five, they mark up everything. The ad spend has a markup. The hosting has a markup.

Caitlyn: Mm-hmm.

Meredith: The call tracking has a markup. Some markup is normal, yes, but stacked markup on every single line item is not. So ask for a clear breakdown of fees versus pass-through costs.

Caitlyn: Yeah. Number six, the reporting is white labeled software with no human commentary. A dashboard is fine, but a dashboard alone is not analysis. You should be getting a human regularly walking you through what the numbers mean and what is being done with it.

Meredith: Number seven, they pitch you on AI tools as the whole strategy.

Caitlyn: Mm.

Meredith: And we love AI tools. We use them every day.

Caitlyn: Have you listened to the last 20 podcasts?

Meredith: I mean, you can't miss it if you've ever listened to one. But AI is just part of the toolkit. It is not the strategy. So if somebody is selling you on the AI silver bullet, they probably don't have a real strategy underneath it.

Caitlyn: Mm. And last but not least, number eight. This may be the simplest one. Trust your gut on the discovery call. If the salesperson is talking more than asking, if they don't seem curious about your business, if they cannot name three things that are specific to your market or your operation, they are not going to suddenly get curious after you sign.

Meredith: So that was our lightning round and a couple of our horror stories that we have experienced secondhand from our clients. And honestly, I feel like we could do a whole series on

Caitlyn: Yeah

Meredith: 'cause we have quite a few more.

Caitlyn: We probably will, and it makes me proud to, you know, own this agency that we own, to be honest with you.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: 'Cause I, I can stand by and,

Meredith: Yeah

Caitlyn: stand by every single

Meredith: We differently

Caitlyn: we talked through. Yeah.

Meredith: Exactly.

Caitlyn: That makes me proud. So.

Meredith: and the point of this was all not to say agencies are bad, all agencies are bad. Obviously. We're an agency. Why would we do that? The point is that your money and your business, the decision of who you trust with that in your marketing, it all matters just as much as who you're hiring to install your roofs, your windows, your bathrooms, whatever you sell. So take it seriously and ask hard questions and get those answers in writing.

Caitlyn: And own your stuff.

Meredith: Oh my God, please.

Caitlyn: Own the website. Own the ad accounts. Own the data, data, wow, and the data. Own,

Meredith: Own all of it

Caitlyn: own all of it. If your agency is not okay with that, find an agency that is.

Meredith: Right. Also, if you've got a horror story that you've experienced, please send it to us. We would love to share it on a future episode, anonymously of course. You can email us the address that we're gonna put in the show notes.

Caitlyn: Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, guys. We'll see you next time.

Meredith: Later.

Outro: Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.