Brooke Summer 0:00 Hey there business owners welcome back to another episode of build with Brooke, the podcast and place to be if you want to actually make a living doing what you love. Let's get to this marketing and business skills right? Today's episode is going to be all about red flags because man how many of us see red flags and ignore them hoping for the best and then later we're like, Hmm, should have listened right? Today we're going to talk about red flags when it comes to marketing companies and SEO companies. And basically outsourcing anything in your business. There are some things that you definitely should be looking out for it. And there have been some situations recently with some marketing companies, some SEO agencies that are kind of shady situations and we want to make sure that you are not their next victim. Okay? It takes so much money to fix something like this when you hire the wrong person. So we're going to talk about what to look for red flags, things to watch out for questions to ask and all of the above when it comes to outsourcing something in your business. If you are ready for SEO summer because it's coming y'all I'm gonna teach you we're gonna do SEO for two months, head on over to grab my free SEO starter pack. It's called Brooks SEO starter pack at boldwithbrooke.com/seo. We're going to talk all about it for two months and I'm going to help you walk through it step by step. One by one we're going to take baby steps to make it small, easy, unless overwhelming, but for today, we're gonna stick with red flags when it comes to marketing companies and SEO. Let's listen in. Hello, they're gorgeous business owners. Welcome to bold with Brooke the podcast for creative business owners to learn the marketing and business skills they need to get more clients and design their lives on their terms. So we can actually make a living doing what we love, am I right? I am your host Brooke summer, and I'm an entrepreneur, educator and champion of women reminding them to embrace and step into their power. I'm bringing almost 20 years of business and marketing experience straight to you to help you get more clients and run a sustainable and successful business without burnout or overwhelmed. Let's jump into today's topic.

Welcome back amazing business owners to another episode of bolt with broke the podcast in place to be to learn the marketing and business skills you need to reach your biggest goals and actually get paid to do what you love. I am coming at you today at the end of June with some crazy chaos happening in my own personal life. Because next week, just need to take a deep breath before I even say this y'all my son is getting married. I am so not emotionally prepared for this yet. If any of you have kids, you're probably with me and going. I can't even imagine my kid getting married one day, or maybe you're the kind of like already has their wedding planned out to totally fine either way, but I am really kind of freaking out because in my brain I am still 23 years old. And now my son is actually getting married. This is crazy. So I'm really trying to be emotionally prepared and ready for this. But it is sneaking up on me so fast. The first week in July, I will be completely off, I will not have any clients. I will not have any coaching calls. My bold Marketing Academy students know that I am off until towards the end of July because there's just so much going on. So if you are in bold Marketing Academy and you haven't checked your emails, and they're like, Brooke, where'd you go, please check. And if you're not in bold Marketing Academy just yet, why the hell not you really should be it's the place where you can get access to all of my courses that I've built like all of them ever. And you also get two coaching calls with me every single month, it is a steal of a bargain. So head over to boldmarketingacademy.com If you're like Brooke, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Go to boldmarketingacademy.com And you can learn more there. Today we're going to talk all about red flags to keep an eye out for when it comes to outsourcing specifically outsourcing your marketing and SEO. I know that there are so many people that want to outsource these things. And I get it I do too. But there's a little bit of drama going on with some shady practices that a marketing company has put into place and I wanted to do an episode calling your attention to things to watch. I want you to know what to look for and what those red flags should be so that when someone is talking to you pitching to you trying to get you to hire them, you know what to ask and you know what to look for. I understand that when you are a part of a certain industry so for me, I'm in the photography industry, right as a boudoir photographer. I am also I have one foot kind of in the coaching industry as well. So I see a lot of the coaching drama too and people calling out certain people and I'm just here to tell you, you might think that your industry is the only one with drama. I promise you, it's an every single industry. And you might be watching some drama going down, you see it and you're disgusted with it and you kind of roll your eyes and you get annoyed by it. But I want to remind you, it is not just your industry, okay? So if you decide to change industries, you're gonna see something there too. There's good and bad that comes with any industry. It's so funny because I love to be and so I'm in a lot of baking groups on Facebook, because you know, if I have a question about something, that's who I ask, I am not a professional baker though, by any stretch of the imagination. I just love to bake and y'all the drama that I see go down in these groups, as well as like hairstylist. I see a lot of that too. I don't know how I got on that train. But there is drama in every industry recently in the photography industry, a marketing company has done some kind of shady things to several photographers and creatives. And really this could happen to anyone in any industry. So I wanted to give you some things to look out for and some red flags. Now y'all know I am a huge fan of outsourcing. I outsource all the things but if you're going to outsource something, you need to have some foundational understandings about what it is that you're outsourcing think of in Schitt's Creek. I don't know if I can say that on a podcast. If you guys have not seen that show, it's an older is it older now? I don't know. Fantastic show. It is an absolutely hilarious show. It is so well done. It's Eugene Levy and Daniel Levy. Absolutely amazing. I love Moira with Catherine O'Hara. It's just a great show. But you know that that family gets into trouble because of people that were working for them that did some shady things with their finances. Okay, I have had my own bookkeeping drama with giant huge mistakes made by my bookkeeper that I then had to pay 10s of 1000s of dollars to fix there are SEO scams. I know people who have given SEO Marketing, I'm sorry, SEO agencies 1000s of dollars for them to just disappear and ghost them. Here's marketing scams that are so many people that want to take advantage of business owners, I teach marketing and SEO. And really everything that I teach can basically be outsourced. But and this is a huge, huge, huge, huge bet. If you hear nothing else in this episode, please, please hear this. If you are going to outsource a piece of your business, you need to understand the ins and outs of whatever skill and role you're outsourcing before having someone else handle it.

So many people get scammed and screwed over just because they hired someone to take over something in their business when they don't know exactly what they're hiring them to do. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to be an expert. You don't have to be an expert in SEO, but you need to understand what it is that they're doing. You don't have to be an expert in marketing or ads or any of those things, but you need to have a basic understanding of what they're doing.

Before we jump into these red flags that I want you to keep an eye out for when it comes to outsourcing things, I want you to know that we have something new coming in July, it is going to officially be an SEO summer, SEO Summer is coming because it has recently been brought to my attention that I have a severe lack of content available on the podcast that is specifically about SEO, which is hilarious because it's one of my courses. I think that SEO is one of the top marketing strategies that is most often ignored. And this is super interesting because someone is actually trying to trademark a business and register that trademark and domain that I already haven't used and I have since 2020. So we're gonna start seeing more SEO stuff come out y'all. I know that there are people that want to learn more about SEO, and there are even more people that want to outsource. But as I said before, you need to have a foundational understanding and SEO summer will give you just that we are going to go into so many things. There are going to be several podcast episodes. And this is something that is a long term strategy. Okay, SEO is not an overnight sensation kind of thing. But because it is long term, it can also pay off for years. I've been teaching SEO since 2011. We're just gonna pretend that I'm not old. And I have had so many people ask me questions throughout the years and these episodes, this series of episodes are going to break down most of the questions that I've had, when it comes to SEO things like what are the first steps that I should do? How do I not get overwhelmed? What the hell do these words mean? How do I fix a website that's already up but I want to make it more SEO rich? What tools do I use? All of those things are going to be covered in the episode starting in July. We are going to spend two months on this and I'm putting out everything together in a free resource guide called the SEO starter pack, it might actually be called Brooks SEO starter pack just because I think it sounds better. But we'll see right now, because those episodes aren't live. That SEO starter pack will include my free templates and downloads, like the SEO cheat sheet and the blog post SEO checklist. Anything else that I create, that's a free template for SEO will go into that as well. So you will definitely want to grab that Brooke's SEO starter pack so that you can follow along when those episodes actually come out, you can grab those at boldwithbrooke.com/seo. Eventually, Brooke's SEO starter pack will have all of SEO episodes LinkedIn as well. But since they're in progress, that will come a little bit later. Right now it'll just be the resources and downloads the freebies, grab Brooks SEO starter pack at boldwithbrooke.com/seo.

Now let's chat all about the red flags to watch out for when it comes to outsourcing your marketing, SEO or really anything else in your business. Number one, something that you need to be very conscious of our over the top promises, especially ones that the person who is making those promises cannot necessarily guarantee. And this is huge, and SEO and I'm starting to see it in marketing as well, with SEO, the overall goal is to improve your ranking and a search engine, right? What a lot of these companies will do is make you a promise that they'll get you on the first page of Google or in the top five of Google. And the reality is that they can't promise that because they don't know they don't control that unless that person is legit working for Google, they cannot promise you that. And they can promise you improvement. They can promise you a big growth in rank, but they cannot promise you an exact placement. And the people who do are usually people that I probably wouldn't do business with also something to look out for when it comes to these over the top promises in marketing our numbers of leads. Now, if I tell you that I can run ads for you and get you 1000s of leads. That sounds amazing, right? Like who would not be all in for that. But there are more questions that are attached to that. Yes, you can get 1000s of leads from ads that are those quality leads that will actually lead to sales to booked clients to actual revenue in your pocket? Or are we just lining your inbox with people who aren't actually going to buy from you? Because Newsflash, that's not going to move you towards your goals? How exactly is all of this measured? I want to know the number of leads that are coming in and the conversion rates of those leads, I want to know how much revenue actually came from those leads. And believe me, in my business, I track all of this. I know exactly how much revenue came from which source whether they're word of mouth, whether they're Google search engines, SEO other search engines as well, I want you to be very aware of what it actually means when someone makes these over the top promises. This is Red flag number one because it happens. So often. Those sales pitches sound really, really really good at the time, right? But what does that actually entail? You also want to know what that requires from you are you going to have to be constantly sending this person information so that they can do ads for you? Are you in a place where you have a team that can handle 1000s of leads. I did a tic toc video on this recently, because the reality is that so many of us might want things that we can't necessarily handle just yet. So make sure that when someone is making you an over the top promise for a number of leads, or improvement in SEO, that this is something that a they can actually promise you because they have control over that, or B that you can actually handle as well.

Red flag number two contracts. How many of you don't read the contracts that you sign? Now? I'm actually admittedly very good at reading the contracts that I signed. However, how many of you have read the Terms of Service for your cell phone? How many of you have read the Terms of Service for using Google Chrome or Safari or your iPhone? Did you read all of those contracts as well? How about various software apps that you have like Gmail, or Adobe? Or any of the above? Chances are, you didn't read any of it? And I get it? They're crazy long. They're filled with the legalese. It's things that like the normal people, like me and all of the other people that are not lawyers, we're going to look at this stuff and go Yeah, I don't know what this means. I'll just accept it. But when it comes to signing a contract without sourcing, whether it's SEO, or marketing, you really really, really, really Need to read these contracts. I have had some contracts sent to me recently from some shady marketing companies that have some really concerning parts, such as non compete clauses, which by the way, they those were recently shut down by the FTC. Not really enforceable anymore. But these particular non compete clauses were kind of insane things like once you sign with us, you can't discuss a marketing in any way, meaning teaching it to someone else, or sharing a trick with something someone else for 10 years, you guys, that means that if you signed with this marketing company, and your friend asks you, hey, how do I set up this Facebook ad and you help them with that you could potentially be sued. That is concerning. Okay, non compete clauses that are over the top are absolutely a red flag. Another thing that I've seen in contracts recently that made me cringe, and it's like, how can we even enforce this are the person let me think of how to say this, anything that makes it difficult to dissolve a relationship. So signing a contract for a certain level of time, for a certain length of time. This is a huge red flag. Also, any piece of a contract that says that you cannot leave a negative review or speak negatively about this business anywhere. That's a violation of free speech, all that is really concerning. Now, of course, there are laws to keep people from slandering businesses with lies. But the reality is that if you're being truthful, you should be allowed to speak out about a business that didn't do a great job in the service that they were promising any of these contracts. And these things that are built into these contracts, when we don't read them are really, really concerning. And I want to make sure that you're actually reading a contract before you sign it, you're actually questioning these things before you sign these contracts and take on a company that is supposed to be helping you but in reality, they're kind of chaining you to them. So be very careful with that red flag. Number three, a thunderstorm is starting outside. So if you start to hear thunder, my apologies,

Red flag number three, not having ownership of your own work conversations, emails, ads, or creations, when you're under contract with them. I'm kind of stunned that this is even a thing. But intellectual property is a wicked beast. When you're working with something like templates, the templates that I sell, the templates that anyone sells, there are several educators that have templates available that we have created, that are for the purchaser to use with their clients, they are not for the purchaser to turn around and sell as an educator to other people. So there are different rights that you have when it comes to intellectual property. And some of these issues that I've been seeing recently are things like not having access to your own voicemails, your own text messages, or your own communication, such as emails, when you're working with this company. Now, if a company has provided you with an email template, that is different, right, but if you just reach out to a client, to ask them about an upcoming date or session or appointments, that is your own intellectual property that is not very simply because you have signed a contract that you are working with them. And it is very concerning that you may not have ownership of your own work or creations while you are under contract with them. Another thing to consider is you may hire a marketing company to do something like let's say a Black Friday special. Okay, so Black Friday is in November, day after Thanksgiving. And you're being proactive, because yay, whew. And in September, you start looking for a marketing company to handle Black Friday for you, because you figured it would be a great opportunity. Someone can take it off your plate. Hurray, right? But if you use some of their templates, but you then create your own pieces that go with it, because you have your own content that you've already created, that is still your content. It is not their content, it is not something that they can claim that's something that they can keep from you. All of this is happening right now. And it's wild to me that some people think that they can control this simply because they're under contract with someone make sure that you know what you're doing. Make sure that you ask these questions. Make sure that when you hire someone to do something for you, you know exactly what that will look like and exactly what you have access to and what you will have once that relationship is done. Are these templates available for you to use for years in perpetuity. After the relationship is done. Can you only use these templates while you're under contract with them and paying them among Billy fee, you need to ask these questions. And you need to understand exactly what these contracts mean, and exactly what the expectation is.

Red flag number four is not having any access to the back end of things like Google ads, dashboards, meta ads, the business workspace, or any other systems that they may be working on, when it comes to promoting you, or doing whatever you've hired them to do, when it comes to hiring an external company to handle some of these things for you, you should have passwords and logins or everything, that this does not mean that you're going to go in and mess with their work. Okay, don't be that guy. But you should have access to everything. And as a matter of fact, most of these companies, such as Google have requirements that the account owner does have access to this. So if someone is keeping you from this, not only is it unethical, but it could be a violation of terms of service from some of these companies, you need to have access to everything, you also need to be getting consistent reports, you need to know exactly what's happening and what they're doing on the back end. Because I've recently seen that someone approved an ad spend for a specific amount, and the marketing company actually ended up spending double that in ad spend. And because of the contract, the account owner or the person that had hired, this marketing company was now accountable for that cost, they were responsible for that cost, even though they didn't approve it, they're still the account owner, you need to make sure that you have access to all of that on the back end.

That really is kind of just good business sense. I let my dogs in because of a thunderstorm. And of course, they have to take this opportunity to say hello and scratch themselves, make sure that you always have access to any systems that they are using, that they are working in for you and that you have full visibility of anything that they are working on

Red flag number five, lack of accountability, when you hire a marketing company, it is not a matter of signing a contract sending a fee, however that fee is paid. And then voila, things are good, right? It doesn't work that way. And it takes time. There are things that they have to put into place. And I'm not saying that this is an overnight thing. However, there should be factors that you want to measure, there should be factors that you want to look at really regularly ask this company, how will you know that it's working? How will I know that the ads that you're putting out are actually working? How will I know that these SEO improvements that you're making are actually working? What are the analytics? What are the pieces of data that I can keep an eye on? How often will I get report? Will we be chatting consistently? Do we have a monthly meeting where we can go over the analytics? And the numbers and the insight? Or what exactly should I be looking for? And how often should I be looking for it? Again, this is not an overnight thing. If you are hiring one of these companies, and they are a legit company, no one will take issue with you wanting a report. Now again, if you're asking every day for a report, when they tell you, they'll give you one once a month, that's gonna cause a problem. Don't be that person. Okay. But if they say that you're gonna get a once a month report, and you never do, and it's six months now and you haven't seen any updates, and you're still paying these people, it's time to reevaluate. There are so many companies that get hired and just have no accountability. And I've had that in my own circumstances as well when it comes to bookkeeping and finances. So please understand what you should be looking for upfront, understand what you should be measuring upfront, and how often you'll be meeting with someone to go over these numbers before you sign or pay anything

Red flag number six. And this really should be a red flag in general, I think this applies more to women than it does to men. But I could be wrong on that one. I've heard more women taken advantage of in this way than men. But I don't know the reason behind that. That would be interesting to look at. I would love to see the data on that one. Red flag number six are companies and people that work for these companies that don't listen to you. If you ask a question. And your question is ignored if you have a certain part of your brand, that's very important to you, for instance, being inclusive, having people of different body types in your ads having LGBTQ plus friendly ads that are specific for your brand. And these people are trying to push their own agenda on you because they're trying to tell you well this will work better. That's a red flag. Now there are marketing strategies that work better than others for certain groups. If Ebola. And when it comes to my students, when they tell me they want to do something one way, and it's maybe not the best option for them, I will tell them flat out, I don't think that that's the best option, but it is your business. If you want to go with that, let's run with it and try it. We never know, maybe it will be the best option for their business. But we never know until we try it, I want to make sure that they are doing what's best for their business, even if it's not necessarily what I think would work best. Now, if they come back to me in six months and say it's not working, I might say, well remember when we had that conversation, let's revisit that and maybe tweak a few things. But if you have a marketing company that is trying to tell you only to have one specific body type one specific type of person or only certain things in your ads, because they do better. That would be a huge red flag. Also something to consider is the way that these marketing pieces including ads, SEO, blog posts, anything like that sound. And when I say sound, I don't mean audibly. Although sometimes for visually impaired, it might be audible, but when it comes to your brand voice and the way that you write your copy, and the way that you talk to your audience, you want to make sure that anything they create is cohesive with that because if you talk in a very conversational way, like I do, and someone creates a an ad, that's from chat, GPT, that sounds like a robot wrote it, that's not going to be consistent with my brand either. And I want to make sure that my brand is consistently represented across all marketing platforms. If someone isn't listening to you, if you have feedback on an ad, and you're like, that doesn't really sound like me. And they assure you No, no, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. That's a red flag, a marketing relationship and SEO relationship. Really, any outsourcing relationship should be a collaboration. It is not just to take the money and run kind of thing. It should be a collaboration, you should be able to ask questions, you should be able to have meetings with someone to sit down and understand exactly what you're hiring them to do. And whether it's working or not, you should be able to ask these questions. Now, again, just like with our own clients, the person who emails me every single day with a new question is probably going to get one email at the end of the week answering all of them, instead of being on call 24/7 marketing people, SEO people are allowed to have lives as well. So I am not trying to set you up for the expectation that they are on call to answer you whenever you want them to that is not the case, however, you should be able to expect a timely response that answers your questions, and that validates whatever you're asking, even if it's the craziest question in the world, they shouldn't be making fun of you for it. Right? They might say, I don't know if that's really the direction we want to go. How about this, instead, there is a way to tell people that they're wrong, or they're crazy, or they shouldn't be doing that without being a jerk. And really, a red flag would be in how someone treats you when it comes to this relationship. This particular relationship should be collaborative, it should not make you feel dumb. It should not make you feel like you're bothering someone, ask your questions, get some answers, get your analytics, look at your insights, look at your numbers, and make sure that you have time set aside so that you can understand what they actually mean.

So just to recap, red flags, and all of these have been taken from for different issues that have come up recently with marketing and SEO companies straight from the quote survivors of them. When it comes to some of my friends. Some of my colleagues, I specifically asked them, What is something that you wish you would have listened to upfront. And some of these came from my own experience, and some of them came from theirs. So to recap, number one, when it comes to red flags and outsourcing your marketing and SEO, number one over the top promises, especially ones that they can't guarantee or control number two contracts that have pieces to them that are super concerning. Number three, not having ownership of your own work conversations, emails, ads, or creations when you're under contract with them. Number four, not having access to the back end of software pieces like Google, or meta or ads or business managers, anything like that you should always have access. Number five, a lack of accountability and analytics and measurements. And number six people that don't listen to you or go out of their way to make you feel dumb. All of these red flags are things that have come up in my own experiences or with others and I wanted to pass them along so that you can avoid some of the drama some of the hurt the heartache and the money that it takes to fight some of these things after the fact. Like I said early With my bookkeeping it cost me 10s of 1000s of dollars to fix some of these mistakes that were made, they were huge mistakes. And if I would have taken care of it for myself, I could have avoided that all up front.

Now before we close this episode out, I do want to call your attention to something if you are one of these people that has been taken advantage of by one of these companies, whether it's marketing, or SEO, or any other outsourcing that you have done, I do not want this episode to be a spiral of shame for you, that is not necessary, okay, shaming ourselves for our mistakes and the things that we have done, the things that we should have looked at the things that we should have listened to, that's not going to help anyone. Okay, so I want to be very, very clear that that is not what this episode is about. This is about looking at what happened with factual eyes, not emotional, but factual eyes and looking at the facts of the situation and saying, What can I do differently to avoid this in the future, we all make mistakes. I told you guys my own bookkeeping issue that came up for me that is very real. And if I let that cause me to go into this spiral of shame, then I would never outsource again, which doesn't serve me either. So again, please, please, please take this episode as a learning experience and something that you'll learn from and move forward from and do better on in the future. Thank you so much for joining me today. I do not take it lightly that you have put me into your earbuds while you're walking the dog or picking the kids up from school. I appreciate you being here so much.

If you love this content, you're like Brooke, how can I thank you, I have a way you can think me head on over to boldwithbrooke.com/itunes you can pause right now only so that you can leave a review. I know personally, I am not an apple person either. But those iTunes reviews do really matter. And they really help us to get in front of more people so that we can help more people and get amazing guests. I think I'm ready to bring guests back. You may have noticed I haven't done a lot of guests this year and I think I'm ready to bring them back and they definitely look at those iTunes reviews. So I would love to know some of your biggest aha takeaways feel free to share a screenshot on social media. I am at bold with Brooke pretty much everywhere or you can share it in the Facebook community and boldwithbrooke.com/community. And don't forget to grab Brookes SEO starter pack at boldwithbrooke.com/seo Your business is one way that you can make an enormous impact in the world. I strongly believe that every woman should be able to make an impact in the way that they see fit. If you have any questions, please reach out. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Have an amazing rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining me today and listening in. You can find all of the show notes for this and every episode over at boldwithbrooke.com/podcast where you can also find all of the links or resources mentioned I can't wait to work with you have an amazing rest of your day.