How to Avoid Bad Clients: A Guide for Digital Marketing and SEO Agencies

Imagine you’ve just signed a brand new client for your agency. Your team is excited to get started and make them your next success story. After all, you’ve spent months mastering your SOPs, getting your operations in check, and hiring team members. You’re confident you can deliver for the client and after they pay your invoice, get to work almost immediately.

Two months later, they message you saying something along the lines of “This isn’t working. Please cancel my retainer” out of no-where. What happened?

You thought you made expectations clear from the start. You’ve told them many times that the process would take time to see results and that this is a proven process. Yet, even after spending hours reassuring them one-on-one, making sure team-members were doing their tasks, and personally checking in on their results, they churned anyway.

The truth is – most businesses are like this. There was nothing you could have done differently in a sustainable way. Chances are, they’ve used other agencies in the past and cancelled for similar reasons.

In this article we’ll be going over the warning signs for bad clients and how to disqualify them before they pay your invoice and waste weeks of your time. 

Many of these are tips from Damon Burton, founder of SEO National – an SEO agency with over a decade of experience running an agency and working with clients of all sizes.

Set Clear Expectations For What’s Required For The Client

As we explain in our Dollar-a-Day Training, digital marketing is an amplifier for what’s already working. To that end, there’s certain criteria we need to check off before we can confidently onboard a client.

• Ensure They Have Clear Evidence They’re Good At What They Do

You should hardly work with soloprenuers or newbies who don’t have clear evidence of success in their area. Since they’re paying us to amplify their business and make more money, they should have a proven track record of success prior to working with us.

• Share Images and Videos For Content

We require our clients to send us images and videos of their work which we can repurpose. Doing this, we can amplify their content using our 4 stage Content Factory process and get them more qualified calls.

Steer Clear of Constant Promotions

Damon emphasizes the importance of maintaining the perceived value of your services. 

Agencies that frequently offer discounts and promotions may attract “tire kickers” who are not serious about long-term collaboration and could potentially devalue your services in the eyes of legitimate leads. Instead of running gimmicks, Burton suggests focusing on sharing knowledge about SEO, providing free advice, and celebrating client wins.

If you’re constantly promoting, how do you have time to deliver services? Notice how the types of people constantly engaging in self-promotion hardly have any success stories of their own.

Doctors don’t offer discounts in the emergency room. Instead of promoting yourself, promote others and the results your agency has given. You want the right type of client, not folks who’ll waste your time.

This approach not only builds credibility but also attracts clients who are interested in quality and results.

Establish and Follow Strict Client Selection Criteria

To protect your agency from potential pitfalls, it’s essential to establish a set of non-negotiable criteria for client selection. Burton identifies several red flags that agencies should avoid:

• Drama or Gossip: Clients who engage in this behavior can create a toxic working environment.

For example, a potential client frequently badmouths competitors or previous service providers during initial consultations. This behavior could signal a propensity for creating a toxic environment through unnecessary drama or gossip.

If they talk this way about a former agency, what’s stopping them from doing the same for you?

• Financial Instability: These clients may struggle to pay on time, affecting your cash flow.

During the vetting process, a potential client hesitates to discuss budgets or has a history of switching marketing agencies frequently citing budget constraints or unpaid invoices from previous engagements.

Different agencies have different criteria for who to screen for based on cashflow. But in our experience, any business doing under $30k/month in revenue is fickle and needs your help in surviving, let alone thriving.

This puts all the pressure on you – meaning lots of one-on-one conversations, scared texts, and accelerated timelines as an expectation for paying you.

• Impatience: SEO and digital marketing is a long-term strategy. Clients who expect immediate results are often not a good fit.

For example, a prospect might expect to rank at the top of Google within a month and shows frustration with explanations about the time SEO typically requires to produce results. Such expectations are unrealistic, indicating a lack of understanding and patience necessary for a successful SEO strategy.

We have a saying called The Five Magic Words: “We’re Not Right For Everyone”.

Remember to engrain this concept deeply: avoid underestimating your worth. You’ll regret engaging with a budget client, as they often have the smallest budgets and are the most demanding and difficult to please. Our premium clients compensate us well, respect our services, and are pleasant to work with.

In contrast, clients for whom we’ve lowered our standards tend to drain our energy and make us question our career choice. Protect your team from this distress and adhere to these five crucial words, or you might risk losing your top talent, who have plenty of other opportunities.

Inform potential clients with confidence and courtesy that you serve a select clientele, collaborate with industry leaders, and provide your team with excellent compensation because they are the finest in their field. Clarify that your pricing is neither the lowest nor the highest, and maintain this stance. If pressured, reiterate that your agency does not offer discounts but can direct them to others who may.

Clients who meet these criteria are typically well-established businesses with team members who value quality and reignite the passion that drove you to start your business. You are compensated well enough to deliver quality work, leading to a positive cycle of high morale among your staff, who are eager to work with these clients, spreading their enthusiasm.

If a potential client passes these initial filters, you should then assess them against a more detailed set of attributes:

• Punctuality: Shows respect for your time.

A client consistently arrives on time for meetings or calls, submits required information by deadlines, and respects the schedule set out for campaigns. This demonstrates respect for your time and commitment to the project.

The client knows that they’re in the right hands and trusts your team to handle the process for them in a timely manner.

• Attention Holding: Indicates engagement and seriousness about the partnership.

During presentations or discussions, the client remains engaged, asks pertinent questions, and contributes thoughtfully, indicating genuine interest and a serious approach to the partnership.

This means that they’re not on their phone and focused. They constantly show curiosity in what you and the team do and are willing to follow your example and learn.

• Respectfulness: Essential for a harmonious working relationship.

The client communicates clearly and respectfully, provides constructive feedback, and values the expertise and efforts of your team. Such interactions are crucial for a smooth and effective working relationship.

For example, the client never acts unprofessionally to you or your team when something goes wrong. They’re respectful and thankful for the opportunity to work with you.

• Coachability and Marketing Savviness: They should be open to learning and advice but not so overconfident as to disregard expert guidance.

A good client understands they’re hiring expertise they lack, shows eagerness to learn from your team, and applies your advice to improve their business. However, they do not challenge every recommendation with a know-it-all attitude but collaborate to refine strategies.

• Organization: This includes having processes in place or delegating effectively.

The client has established processes for approvals, feedback, and content delivery, or they have a dedicated point of contact who manages these aspects effectively. This organization ensures streamlined workflow and fewer delays.

It’s not your job as an agency to structure their SOPs for them. If the business isn’t picking up calls, responding to emails, or showing that they’re organized, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to make them more money.

• Humility: Ability to acknowledge their role in delays or issues.

When issues arise, the client can admit if their actions contributed to the problem and work together to find a solution, rather than placing undue blame on your agency.

• Resistance to External Influence: Clients should trust your expertise over outside opinions.

The client trusts your expertise and strategy, even when third-party suggestions or critiques arise. They consult with you first before making changes based on external advice, ensuring that the strategy remains coherent and expert-driven.

This is more common than you’d think – with clients insisting they test strategies which your agency doesn’t condone or even recommends against. For SEO, this is usually by buying backlinks, which is against EEAT practices.

There Are Always Signs From The Start

If you’re perspicacious enough, you’ll notice big flashing “warning” signs from the start before the client pays you.

This includes some of the following:

• Cycling through agencies in the past because they received “no results”.
• Having no team-members or form of RACI to show.
• Complaining about small things instead of seeing the bigger picture.
• Asking for reassurances and money-back guarantees before work has even started.

As an agency owner or someone onboarding for your agency, you have to understand these signs to avoid wasting time and instead work with clients who respect you and understand the work that you do for them.

Retainers are essentially payment plans. Which means that if ranking in Google costs $24,000, that’s split between 12 months with payments of $2k. This means that when a client cancelled early, we’re eating the cost of that.

Doing good work is always the priority instead of mindlessly promoting, but understand that there are some clients where that simply isn’t possible. And instead of slamming your head against the wall, it’s easier (and cheaper) to not take their money in the first place.

Lack of Perceived Care Is Why Clients Churn

As tempting as it is to throw the blame entirely on the client, understand that your agency has the responsibility of showing up and genuinely addressing the client’s needs.

This means answering back within 24 hours (ideally sooner), sending weekly reports, and thoughtfully caring for folks that are sending you thousands of dollars every month.

Unless you have clients telling you directly that they’re happy with your services, assume that they aren’t and change behavior. Remember – it’s just as important that you do quality work as it is you vet for the right clients to work with.

Damon does such a good job getting results that potential clients come to him– since his clients talk about him and refer their friends.

Thus, Damon is DISQUALIFYING potential clients– kind of like an elite university who will take on only the best candidates.

Meanwhile, the agencies that suck (even if they insist they are awesome) rely upon cold DMs, spammy outreach, and trickery.

Their method is exactly opposite what Damon and I do– they want to convince everyone to buy, qualified or not. It’s all about the close rate and having a booked calendar of prospects.

But you know what a fully booked calendar means?

It reveals they aren’t keeping their clients– so they have to keep acquiring more clients to replace the ones they keep losing– like pouring water into a sieve.

Such agencies then try to pour more water into the sieve or get a bigger sieve– thinking this solves the problem.