Agency rescue · Metro Detroit
Burned by a marketing agency?
Read this before you rehire.
We’re the agency clients come to when they’ve been burned by other agencies. This is the playbook we walk them through: figure out what actually happened, secure what you’re owed, and make sure the next agency can’t do it again.
Fix my marketing leaks30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
- Your domain, site and ad accounts in your name
- Scoped builds, no lock-in contract
- Metro Detroit, office in Birmingham
Why this page exists
You’re not the problem. The incentive structure is.
A monthly retainer rewards activity, not outcomes. The agency gets paid whether the phone rings or not, so the deliverable quietly becomes the report about the work instead of the work. It’s almost never one big mistake. It’s four small leaks, compounding every month.
- 01
A site the agency controls
Your domain, hosting or admin login sits in their account, so leaving means starting over.
- 02
Ad spend nobody tracked
Campaigns ran without conversion tracking, so nobody can say which dollar brought in a customer.
- 03
Reports built on vanity numbers
Impressions and reach every month, and never a line about leads.
- 04
A contract that made leaving expensive
Auto-renew, a long notice window, and billing that kept going after the work stopped.
Sound familiar?
You’ve asked for your own logins and waited a week.
- The renewal notice
“Twelve more months? I can’t even log into my own website.”
- Asking for access
“They said they’d have to check with the team.”
- The next agency’s pitch
“That’s exactly what the last one said.”
- Later
“Maybe I should just do it all myself.”
Doing it all yourself isn’t the fix. Owning it is.
Your domain, your website login, your Google Business Profile, your ad account and its history: every one of them was paid for with your money, and every one gets harder to recover once you give notice. Check them first.
If the agency resists handing over what you paid for, that resistance is the confession.
The recovery sequence
Five steps out, in the right order.
- 01
Secure what’s yours, quietly
Before any hard conversation, confirm you hold the domain registration, hosting login, website admin, Google Business Profile, ad account and analytics. Check ownership first: your leverage disappears the moment you give notice.
- 02
Get evidence, not opinions
A free audit shows what was actually done: tracking there or not, pages that convert or don’t, rankings real or imagined. Now you’re deciding from facts.
- 03
Decide: fix or fire
Sometimes the audit shows salvageable work and a fixable relationship. Either way, the decision is yours, and it’s made on evidence.
- 04
Exit clean
Notice per the contract, an asset handover checklist, and access transfers confirmed before the final invoice clears. The firing guide covers the sequence.
- 05
Rebuild on a foundation you own
Domain in your name, a site you can log into, tracking you can read. That’s the Foundation, and it’s why this can’t happen to you twice.
Proof, before the pitch
Real evidence should survive an incognito window.
Result one
A Troy med spa we relaunched, already winning its market.
Rêve came to AlbaTech for a full relaunch. We rebuilt the site, the local-search foundation and the review engine together, and the treatments people actually search for now surface the business.
- Search: med spa troy
- Market: Troy, Michigan
- Result: first web result
- First web result under the map, and it holds that spot every time we check
- In the map pack too, highest rated of the three at 5.0 from 111 reviews
- Also in the pack for botox troy and laser hair removal troy
Result two
Our own studio, first for “microblading Michigan”.
Fine Strokes is our own studio. We built the website and the local search setup around the service customers actually search for. We ran the method on our own business before we sold it to anyone.
- Search: microblading Michigan
- Market: Birmingham, Michigan
- Result: first position shown
30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
The six burns
How businesses actually get burned.
Each one is checkable from your desk, without asking the agency anything.
The hostage site
The agency registered your domain, hosts the site on its own account, and built it in a system only it can edit. Leaving means starting from zero, which is the point.
The mystery retainer
The invoice says “digital marketing services” and a number. What happened for that money? Nobody can say.
The vanity report
Reach up, engagement “trending strong,” the phone silent. A report that never mentions leads is hiding the only number that matters.
The untracked ad spend
Google Ads ran for a year with no conversion tracking. Nobody, the agency included, knows which dollar produced a customer.
The set-and-forget
The campaign got built in month one and nobody logged in again. You paid a management fee for maintenance that never happened.
The lock-in
Twelve months, auto-renew, a 90-day notice window you missed by a week. The work stopped being good in month three. The billing didn’t.
The honest diagnosis
Three things that might have actually happened.
You don’t have to guess which one is yours. A free audit checks the account, the site and the tracking, and tells you. Roughly 1 in 5 of our reviews ends with us telling the owner they don’t need a rebuild at all.
- Possibility one
The agency did bad work
Ask which campaigns produced which leads, at what cost. If the answer is a story instead of a number, the account was never measurable, and “trust us, it’s working” was the product. Run the test.
- Possibility two
The work was fine, the foundation wasn’t
Good ads pointed at a homepage that doesn’t convert still produce nothing. Fire that agency and the next one fails the same way until someone fixes the site.
- Possibility three
Nobody set the expectations
SEO sold as a 30-day fix, or a small ad budget expected to fill a calendar. An honest agency prices the goal in the first meeting. If nobody did, the burn started at the sales call.
What you’re owed
Leaving? These go with you.
Every one of these was paid for with your money. When you leave, they leave with you, and the time to confirm each one is before you give notice, while cooperation is still cheap.
- Your domain, in a registrar account you control
- Your website files, database and a full admin login
- Your Google Business Profile, with you as primary owner
- Your ad account and its history, plus analytics and tag manager
Worried the next agency will do the same thing? Everything we build sits in accounts in your name from day one, so leaving us is as easy as it should be.
Fix my marketing leaksThe content you paid for goes with you too: photos, copy, video and design files.
Common questions
After a bad agency experience.
How do I know if my marketing agency actually did anything wrong?+
Ask one question: which campaigns produced which leads, at what cost per lead? A competent agency answers with a number in one screen-share. If the answer is engagement charts, impressions or “these things take time” after month six, the account was either untracked or unworked. The not-delivering test walks through it.
Can you audit my current agency’s work without them knowing?+
Yes. The free audit works from your website, your rankings and, if you can grant view access, your ad and analytics accounts. Nobody contacts the agency, and nothing in their systems gets touched.
Do you take over websites other agencies built?+
Yes. Sometimes we rebuild on a platform you own, and when the existing site is worth keeping we fix it in place. The audit decides that, not a pitch for a rebuild you might not need.
What if the agency owns my domain name?+
It’s usually recoverable, but the order matters, and you shouldn’t give notice until it’s resolved. Who owns my website shows how to check the registration today and what to do with each answer.
Should I just bring marketing in-house instead?+
For some businesses, yes, and a foundation you own makes that possible. Every build comes with the playbook, so you can run it yourself or build with guidance through Foundation Coaching. An agency that only offers a retainer is answering its own needs, not yours.
How is AlbaTech different from the agency that burned me?+
Structurally. You own everything we build: domain, site, ad accounts and tracking. Scoped builds have a fixed price, and our reports lead with leads and cost per lead. Nobody stays with us because leaving is expensive.
Is this right for a business that’s just getting started?+
Not yet. If you’re just getting started and capital is tight, or you want something cheap and quick, we’re not the right call, and there are people who serve those needs well. What we build is for owners who already treat marketing as a budgeted line item and want it spent where it compounds.
What we turn down
We won’t hold your business hostage.
- No domains or ad accounts registered in our name
- No retainer you can’t walk away from
- No report without leads and cost per lead
- No rebuild you don’t need
The ownership promise
No hostage accounts. No mystery handoff.
Your ad accounts, website, analytics, data and documentation stay in your name. If we stop working together, nothing gets held over you.
The rescue library
Every step, documented.
Before you hire anyone, including us, run the 18-point Foundation Checklist against your current site. It’s free, and the whole list is on the page.
Agency not delivering?
Run the test →Agency red flags
Spot it early →Who owns your website?
Check today →How to fire your agency
Exit clean →Switching agencies
A clean move →The Foundation Checklist
18 checks, free →The Foundation Package
Website, SEO and ads →Conversion-ready websites
When the site is the leak →One next step
Find out what actually happened to your marketing budget.
Thirty minutes with Ervin. We look at your website, your local search and your tracking, and you leave with a ranked fix list whether or not you hire AlbaTech.
Fix my marketing leaks