The fastest way to get trapped with an agency you have outgrown is to let them keep the account in their name.
Written by Dmitrii Z., founder of Castells Media, Roseville, California.
How people end up locked in
An agency offers to get you started quickly. They create the Google Ads account, the Meta account, sometimes the Google Business Profile too, all under their own login. Everything works, calls come in, nobody thinks about it again.
A year later you want to try someone else. Now you find out that the campaigns, the conversion history, the audiences and the reviews you collected are not yours to take. Starting over means the new account has no history, which means it costs more per click until it learns again. That cost is exactly what keeps people paying an agency they have stopped trusting.
How it should be set up
You create the accounts, or they are created in your name. Then you give the agency access as a user. Access can be removed in one click, ownership cannot be taken away.
The same goes for the website, the domain and the CRM. If your site sits on hosting the agency controls, under a domain the agency registered, you do not own your own address.
How we do it
Every account is in your name from the start, and we work inside it as a user. The ad budget is charged to your card, not ours.
If you decide to leave, you remove our access and everything keeps running. No handover fee, no negotiation, no waiting.
What to check today
Open your Google Ads account and look at the admin section: it lists who owns it and who has access. Do the same in Meta Business Manager. Then check where your domain is registered and whose email is on it.
If any of those answers is your agency instead of you, that is worth fixing now, while everyone is still on good terms.
Castells Media Inc, 1298 Antelope Creek Drive, Roseville, California