Agency rescue · The clean move
Switching marketing agencies
without starting over.
The hidden cost of changing agencies isn’t the new retainer. It’s the restart tax: rankings rebuilt, an ad account relearning your market, and your history left behind in someone else’s dashboards. Most of it’s avoidable.
Fix my marketing leaks30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
- Your ad account and analytics move with you
- Six assets, one transition plan
- Metro Detroit, office in Birmingham
The restart tax
Why switching feels like starting over, and doesn’t have to.
Three agencies can mean three restarts: a new ad account, new analytics, a “brand refresh,” a new report format. Year one, paid for three times. The restart tax is what happens when the assets stay behind.
- 01
A new ad account
The history is gone, so the bidding relearns your market on your budget.
- 02
New analytics
Every benchmark and every season you had is gone, so nothing compares with last year.
- 03
A rebuild without redirects
Old URLs break, and the rankings they held go with them.
- 04
A new report format
Nothing lines up with the old numbers, so nobody can say whether the switch worked.
Sound familiar?
You’ve explained your business to a new agency for the third time.
- Kickoff call, agency three
“Here we go again. Tell us about your customers.”
- Month two
“They want to start a new ad account. Again.”
- The first report
“Different numbers, different format. Did anything improve?”
- Later
“Maybe every agency is the same.”
The agencies change. The assets should stay.
Your ad account’s history, your analytics, your URLs and your Business Profile are what let the next agency start where the last one left off. Keep them in your name and switching stops meaning starting over.
Take your data with you, and the next agency starts on mile twenty instead of mile zero.
The transition plan
Overlap or hard cutover, sequenced either way.
- 01
Secure and export, weeks 1 to 2
Ownership check, access consolidation and data exports, all before notice. The firing guide has the scripts.
- 02
Pick the next agency before you leave
Vet the next one while the current one still runs. A gap month feels like savings, but for paid ads it’s a cold restart, and for SEO it’s drift you’ll pay to reverse.
- 03
Decide: overlap or cutover
Overlap for 2 to 4 weeks when ads or SEO work are mid-flight. A hard cutover is cleaner when little is running.
- 04
Give notice and run the handover
Written notice per the contract, the handover checklist, and every account verified from your own email before the final invoice clears.
- 05
Baseline the new agency, days 1 to 30
The new agency’s first deliverable should be a written baseline: current rankings, cost per lead and conversion rates. No baseline means no accountability, and the same story in a year.
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 moving inventory
Six assets that move with you, or cost you.
Keep these in your name and add the new agency to them. Never let anyone start one over without a reason they can defend.
The account, not just the ads
An account with history gives Google’s bidding a head start a fresh one doesn’t have. Transfer it, and add the new agency as a user.
Analytics history
Your seasons, your benchmarks, your proof of what worked. Keep the property and add the new agency to it. A new property wipes your own memory.
URLs and content
Rankings live on your pages. If the new agency rebuilds, every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its replacement. It’s the step that gets skipped, and the one that costs rankings.
Google Business Profile
Reviews, photos and years of local signals move with primary ownership. Never let anyone make a “new, optimized listing.” Duplicate listings can get suspended.
Lead and call records
Export every form fill and tracked call before access changes, and repoint any tracking numbers the old agency owns. Those numbers are printed on things.
The paper trail
Final reports, invoices and deliverable lists. You’ll want them if a dispute comes up, and they tell the next agency exactly what was tried.
Vetting the next one
Three questions that filter out the next burn.
Ask five in the first meeting: who owns what you build, what you report first, what you’d keep from the last agency, a client you failed, and what month one looks like. These three answers matter most.
- Question one
“Who owns the accounts and the site you build?”
The only acceptable answer is “you, in writing.” Talk of proprietary platforms or bundled hosting is the rental model introducing itself politely.
- Question two
“What number will you report first each month?”
You want leads and cost per lead. If the answer tours impressions and engagement first, you’ve just heard the vanity report being rehearsed.
- Question three
“Will you keep any of my last agency’s work?”
The honest answer is usually “some.” An agency that insists on rebuilding everything is billing you. One that keeps what works is on your side of the table.
A move without the restart tax
Sixteen old URLs redirected. Page one after the move.
When Rêve Medical Spa moved off its old GoDaddy and Square pages onto a new site, all 16 old URLs were redirected to their new pages. Nothing it had earned got thrown away, and by September 6 it was on page one for the treatments people search for in Troy.
- All 16 old URLs redirected at launch
- Page one for botox troy mi, average position 2.8
- Page one for medical spa troy mi, average position 5.0
- 750 clicks from Google search by September 6
Worried the next agency will start you over again? Ask for a written baseline in month one, and put us through the same three questions on the call.
Fix my marketing leaksThere’s no before number: Search Console was set up after Rêve’s June 2026 relaunch, so this read starts July 23.
Common questions
About switching marketing agencies.
Will switching agencies hurt my SEO?+
Switching doesn’t. Sloppy transitions do. Rankings attach to your domain, URLs and content. Keep those intact, 301-redirect any URL that changes in a rebuild, and there’s no penalty for changing who does the work. The damage stories are usually a rebuild that dropped its redirects.
Should the new agency start a fresh Google Ads account?+
Almost never. Account history feeds Google’s bidding, and a fresh account relearns your market with your budget as tuition. The real exception is an old account that lives under the agency’s own login and can’t transfer. Then export everything and count the restart as part of the old agency’s bill.
Is it OK to have two agencies overlap for a month?+
Yes, when something real is mid-flight: active ad campaigns, an SEO push or a site migration. Scope it tightly. The old agency maintains, and the new agency baselines and takes over piece by piece. You’re buying continuity on the things that lose value when paused.
How do I compare a new agency’s proposal with the old one?+
Reduce both to the same three lines: what do I own, what number gets reported first, and what does month one deliver. Retainer prices are hard to compare; those three answers aren’t. The red flags list gives you the disqualifiers.
We’ve switched twice already and nothing changed. Is it us?+
Maybe, but not the way you think. If every agency “fails” the same way, the common thread is usually where the traffic lands: a site that can’t turn visitors into calls, with no tracking to show it. That problem travels with you from agency to agency. Here’s how to tell before you hire a fourth.
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 start you over for our own convenience.
- No new ad account without a reason we can defend
- No rebuild that drops your old URLs
- No report you can’t compare with last year
- No accounts held in our name
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
The rest of the move.
One next step
Plan the move before you sign the next contract.
Thirty minutes with Ervin. Bring the proposals you’re weighing and put us through the same questions. 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