Don’t let your online marketing company control your business

More often than not, we see clients that have given the entire keys to their online business to an online marketing company, web development company, consultant, etc. What I mean by keys is that their vendors, in many cases, control their hosting accounts, analytics accounts, paid search accounts, and in some cases, acting as their domain registrar.

This is a huge problem in the industry. The service companies that I mention above refers these things as “hooks”. Meaning, if you ever wanted to leave them, not pay them, bad mouth them, etc. You would be less reluctant to do so because they can literally shut down your entire business if they want.

Here are the primary accounts you need to have control over. Not just access, but control:

1. Hosting – Hosting is the biggest and most disastrous hook I see. Usually your web development firm will provide a cheap or free hosting. They make this look like a favor, however, unless you have a site with more than 50,000 unique visits a month, hosting is dirt cheap. Go out and get your own hosting at Godaddy.com, HostDepot.com or one of a thousand hosting companies out there and pay for it yourself. NEVER LET SOMEONE ELSE CONTROL YOUR HOSTING PLATFORM. You will soon regret it. If you ever wanted to leave them, they could hold your website files hostage and you would have to pay another company to redevelop it.

2. Domain Registrar – this is a huge mistake. If you do not control your registrar account, then you don’t control your company. It is $7.00 a year for a domain. Pay it yourself, make sure you control it.

3. Analytics – In most cases, I am referring to Google Analytics. When your Google Analytics account is setup, make sure it it under your Google ID. Development and Marketing companies will usually set this up under their account and grant you access. HUGE mistake as if you ever dump them, kiss your valuable analytics data good-bye!

4. Paid Search Accounts – If Paid Search (Adwords, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Ad Centers) is a valuable part of your business (and it should be), then you need to make sure your online marketing company is managing YOUR account versus using their own account. The history of your account is going to give you a lot more leverage when buying traffic, and if you left your marketing company, all that history would be sent down the tubes and you would be starting over. This could costs you tens of thousands of dollars.

5. Local Accounts – Most local search engines (Google Local, Bing) have you setup an account to list your business in their local maps. This is a huge source of free traffic and is growing in importance. The issue is that if you use an outside marketing company to do this, they are probably going to list you under their account. If you walk, they can simply delete your listing and you will be deleted from the search engines. Make sure that your online marketing company is submitting and listing your business in an account that you control.

When you confront your online marketing company with any of the above issues, they are going to start using words like “Proprietary technology” “Secret Sauce” “Verified Accounts”, etc. then you have an issue. If they say anything other than “No problem, we are happy to do that for you” then I would go get a good attorney and start the legal process. As if they don’t want to give you the keys to your own car, there is some mal-intent on their side.

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