Have you faced marketing trauma in your past?

There are times when we’re meeting with a potential client that we can tell they’ve been burned badly by a marketing agency in the past. They’re defensive, questioning, and unwilling to share much about their situation — and for good reason! If they’ve had a bad experience before, it can be tough to trust another unknown group in the future.

As Ali shared so well in a recent post, we do a lot of things to try to ease the nerves of a new client, including:

• Not making them sign long-term contracts
• Keeping our links out of their footer
• Letting them choose their own vendors for things like hosting and printing

Ultimately, we try to make it very easy for people to leave us if they’re not happy, as that can offer some assurance up front. Even with that, though, some people are just nervous to make a big decision like hiring a new marketing firm. If that’s you, there are two main things I’d suggest you do:

Investigate the new agency

Look at their website and reviews, for sure. Going deeper, though, look at their reviews on sites like Clutch ( here’s ours) where users can’t directly place reviews and they’re vetted far more than Google or Yelp ever could.