Most digital marketing companies are full of shit.
They’ll promise you the world with a bunch of flashy words and smooth talk. Next thing you know, you’ve signed a contract, paid a few grand, and you’re stuck wondering what the hell you even bought. You’re not alone. This is happening to business owners everywhere, especially around the Pittsburgh area where small businesses are just trying to get a leg up.
You’re told you’re getting a full-blown “strategy,” “customized content,” and “growth solutions.” What you really get is a bunch of automated junk, vague reports, and excuses when the results don’t show up. Ask for performance updates and you’ll get a lot of “it takes time” and “we’re building awareness” or some other buzzword filler that doesn’t mean anything.
Here’s what really goes on behind the scenes
A lot of these agencies are just middlemen. They outsource everything. You think you’re working with a tight, creative team who understands your brand. You’re not. Someone four states away is scheduling your content, another contractor is building your site, and nobody knows who you are or what your business even does.
Most of them are cranking out content for 50 other clients at the same time. It’s the same recycled crap in the same style, same tone, same posts just with your logo slapped on it.
They build your website and claim it’s “SEO optimized” but don’t even bother labeling images properly. Go check the image files on your site. Are they named “food.jpg” or “car.png”? Yeah, that’s not SEO. That’s laziness. But they’ll still charge you premium prices like they handcrafted every detail.
This is what you get when you hire the wrong digital marketing and SEO agency. It’s a factory model. Get clients in, sign contracts, crank out copy-paste work, move on to the next one.
Red flags to look out for
If you’re about to hire someone or already working with a company, here are some things to watch for:
They can’t explain what they’re doing without using buzzwords
You’ve never met or spoken with the person actually creating your content
Their “strategy” is the same one they pitch to every business
They can’t show you real results, just fluffy engagement numbers
They lock you into a long contract with no clear exit plan
Ask these questions before you sign anything
Can the agency you’re working with offer high-quality photo and video content?
Can they actually edit those assets to be engaging on social media?
If so, where is that photography or video content coming from?
Because in most cases, it’s not someone from their team. It’s a random photographer or content creator they found online, sent to your business, and then marked up the cost. You pay a premium, the creator gets their cut, and the agency pockets the rest. Sounds a bit like a pyramid scheme, doesn’t it?
If they can’t do that work in-house, you’re not getting a real team. You’re just paying for coordination. That’s not value. That’s overhead.
How do I know this?
Because I’ve been contacted by these agencies. I’ve had them reach out on behalf of a restaurant, one that usually has no idea this is going on and ask me for a quote on XYZ content. If my quote cuts too far into their profit margin, they ghost me and move on to a cheap option. The restaurant owner thinks they’re working with a real team, but in reality, they’re just being shuffled around so the agency can pocket the difference.
That’s not marketing. That’s manipulation.
The copy-paste scam that nobody talks about
Want to know a little secret?
If I spent just a few hours digging, I could find one of these so-called “marketing companies,” grab a list of their clients, go through their social media accounts, and guess what I’d find?
Same voice.
Same templates.
Same lazy, low-quality posts.
Sometimes even the same exact stock photos across different businesses in completely different industries.
That’s because a lot of these agencies are running on autopilot. They crank out “content calendars,” schedule everything out using a third-party tool, and call it a strategy. It’s not. It’s just a way to stretch minimal effort across maximum clients.
And the hashtags? Don’t even get me started.
They’ll slap on junk like #Happy, #BestFood, #Foodies, #Friday or a random shit or “viral” tags of high-volume, low-value garbage. None of it is targeted. None of it is local. You need people who live near your business to see your content, not some guy in California who’s never stepping foot in your store.
If someone across the country sees your post and clicks your ad, congrats, you just wasted your cost-per-click on a dead end. Probably paid for that, too.
Now ask yourself, is your “social media expert” just posting to Facebook and Instagram from the same dashboard without optimizing for either platform?
Ever see an Instagram caption with a bunch of links in it? Hate to break it to you but those links aren’t clickable. They work on Facebook, but not Instagram. Huge red flag. That’s lazy scheduling. Fast, sloppy, and it’s costing you money.
Want to test your agency? Ask them this:
Here’s something fun. Call your agency and ask:
“Hey, when you post our content on social media, what alt text and metadata are you using for our images?”
If they’re the real deal, they’ll answer without missing a beat.
If they’re one of these generic, outsourced, cookie-cutter companies… they’re going to panic. That’s even if they know what the hell you’re talking about.
Want another one?
Ask:
“Did you use Google Trends to see what people in our area are actually searching for before you built our content or website? Did you bake those keywords into our copy, captions, and metadata?”
Crickets.
More red flags no one warns you about
Be careful with full-service agencies
“Full-service” sounds great on paper. Ads, SEO, email marketing, social media, they’ll handle it all. But from what I’ve seen, most of these places don’t actually specialize in anything. They’re just okay at everything. Not great at anything.
I’ve looked behind the curtain of some of these big, all-in-one agencies. Their ad setups are a mess. No structure, no clear targeting, no real purpose, just “run ads and hope something works.” And because they’re trying to offer 10 different services at once, they have to hire a huge team to manage it all, and guess who ends up paying for that? You do.
Watch out for percentage-of-ad-spend pricing
If you’re running paid ads and your agency charges you based on how much you spend, that’s a problem. Because that means they make more money when you spend more money. Even if the ads aren’t working. Their goal becomes “spend more” instead of “make more.”
A better setup is one where both sides win when the results are good. Maybe a flat fee, or even a bonus tied to actual performance. But if they’re just taking a cut of your ad budget, you should be asking why.
Don’t fall for lowball pricing
If an agency is charging you $300 to $500 a month and promising to run your entire digital presence… it’s probably not going to be good. High-quality strategy, content, and ad management takes time, skill, and consistency. You don’t get that for the price of a couple utility bills.
And don’t assume just because they’re charging more that they’re any better. Some of these agencies are just marking up outsourced work from freelancers or assistants behind the scenes. You might hear them talk about their “team,” but that usually means a bunch of random people they found online sometimes called “VAs,” which is short for virtual assistants. These are cheap labor hires who don’t know you, your business, or your local audience.
Transparency matters
Ask any agency exactly how they plan to get results. Ask what platforms they use. Ask how they’re measuring success. If they dance around the answer, or say something like “We’ve got a secret system” or “proprietary methods,” that’s usually a red flag.
Marketing isn’t magic. If they can’t explain it in plain English, they probably don’t understand it either or worse, they don’t want you to know what you’re paying for.
Don’t Fall for the Sales Pitch—Here’s What to Ask
Let me save you some time. If a digital marketing company tells you they can “get you to #1 on Google in 30 days,” hang up the phone. That’s not confidence, that’s a scam. Nobody can promise that without knowing what keyword you're targeting, what your competition is doing, or how your site is currently performing.
Now let’s talk about price. If you’re paying less than $1,000 a month, and it’s not a personal favor or some ultra-limited engagement, then you’re probably just paying someone to collect checks. Real work takes real time, and real time costs money.
And again, check their website. If it looks like it was built in 2012, that’s your first red flag. If they don’t invest in how they look online, they’re not going to care about how you look.
Questions you should absolutely be asking before hiring anyone:
How often are you posting new content for us?
Are you using local search terms and Google Trends data for our region?
What kind of alt text and metadata are you putting on our images?
Can you show me examples of websites or campaigns you've built recently?
Who’s doing the actual content creation and ad management?
Do you offer month-to-month services or are we locked in?
How do you measure success, and how often do you report on it?
Even just asking these questions will scare the fake ones away. The real ones will have answers. The lazy ones will fumble or give you vague jargon.
Here’s how it should be done
I’m a one-man show. I’ve got over 28 million Google image views. Not from throwing around “Google rankings” in some sales pitch, but by knowing how the platform works and creating content that’s optimized with purpose. You can Google “ISJDESIGNS” or my name or anything close to what I do and you should find me. That’s how real search strategy works.
And that’s what a real digital marketing and SEO agency should help you build. A foundation that puts you in front of the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Not spray-and-pray hashtags and recycled Canva templates.
Local still matters
This isn’t just a Pittsburgh problem, but if you’re in the Greater Pittsburgh area, whether that’s Carnegie, Washington, or you’re literally Googling “marketing agencies near me,” working with someone local gives you a real advantage. You want a partner who can visit your business, sit down with you in person, understand what makes your operation unique, and build a strategy that actually fits.
Hiring someone local means:
You know who’s creating your content
You can meet face to face and talk strategy
You’re not just another invoice on a spreadsheet
Too many agencies fake the “local” angle. They put Pittsburgh on their site, but the people doing the work have never even set foot here.
Marketing doesn’t have to be a gamble. It should be a partnership that brings clarity, growth, and results, not confusion, wasted money, and regret.
If you’re tired of being dazzled by buzzwords and left in the dark, start asking the right questions. Don’t get locked into bad deals. Don’t settle for lazy work. And don’t trust a company that won’t even tell you who’s actually doing the job.
You deserve better, especially if the first thing you see is “award winning premier digital marketing services” instead of a real person willing to show up and do the work.
