How to Vet a Marketing Agency After You've Been Burned
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
Author: Brady Carlson | Dirt2Dollars
Published: 6 November, 2026
In one month this fall we heard all of these from contractors on sales calls.
An excavator whose current agency was running ads with stock photos of European dump trucks. Not his trucks. Not American trucks. European ones.
A land clearing contractor who spent $25,000 on marketing over a couple of years and couldn’t point to a single job that came from it.
A new excavation company whose prior agency was slow, hard to reach, and vague about where the money was going.
A grading contractor paying $350 a month for “SEO” that produced nothing he could measure.
A dirt work company spending $2,000 a month across two platforms and getting about six jobs a year out of it.
If you’ve been burned, you already know the feeling. You don’t need another pitch. You need a way to tell the difference before you write the next check.
Here’s how we’d vet an agency if we were a contractor. Including us.
Red Flag 1: They Won't Tell You Who Else Gets the Inquiry
Ask one question first: “When a property owner fills out a form from my ad, who else gets that information?”
If the answer is anything other than “nobody, it’s yours,” you’re buying shared leads with extra steps. The same homeowner is going to four other contractors. You’re racing to the bottom on price, and the agency gets paid either way.
Exclusive means the ad runs under your business name, the inquiry goes to you alone, and the property owner thinks they contacted you. Anything else is a platform wearing an agency’s clothes.
Red Flag 2: Stock Photos and Generic Creative
The European dump truck story is funny until you realize what it tells the homeowner: this company didn’t bother. Property owners can smell a stock photo. They’ve seen the same smiling guy in a hard hat on a dozen sites.
Ask to see the actual ads the agency is running for a current client in your trade. Real machines. Real job sites. Real before-and-after. If they can’t show you, they don’t have it. If what they show you is a generic “we do excavation” graphic, that’s what you’ll get too.
Our own ad review calls get specific about this. In October 2026 we pulled an ad for a client because the “after” photo didn’t show a professional finish. We rejected another because it showed a machine struggling. If the agency’s creative team isn’t arguing with you about photo quality, they’re not paying attention.
Red Flag 3: Nobody Is Calling the Inquiry
Most agencies run ads and stop. The form fill lands in your inbox, and now it’s your job to call a stranger back while you’re in the cab.
Ask: “Who calls the property owner after they fill out the form? How fast? How many times?”
The honest answer from most agencies is “you do.” That’s fine if you have someone in the office. It’s a disaster if you’re a one or two man operation. Inquiries that don’t get called in the first hour go cold. Inquiries that get called once and never again go to the next guy.
Our standard is the 10-10-10 rule: ten calls, ten texts, ten emails on every inquiry until we reach them or they tell us to stop. Whatever an agency’s number is, make them say it out loud.
Red Flag 4: Vague Reporting
“Your campaign is performing well” is not a report.
A real report tells you: how many inquiries came in, how many we reached, how many became on-site appointments, how many appointments you completed, how many quotes went out and for how much, and how many closed. Every two weeks, on a call, with a human.
Here’s what that actually sounds like. On one of our client progress calls in October 2026, our CSM went line by line: first appointment, closed, $32,800, half collected. Second, quoted around $40,000, negotiating volume. Third, roughly $70,000, owner knows the range. Fourth, quoted $15,000, homeowner wanted $5,000, dead. And so on, through every name on the calendar.
If your agency can’t do that for you, they don’t know whether their own work is working.
Red Flag 5: The Guarantee Is Really a Refund Policy
Some agencies offer a “money back guarantee.” Read it. Usually it’s full of conditions, and even when it pays out, what you got was your money back and three months of nothing.
The better question is: “What happens if you miss?”
Our answer is 30 on-site appointments in 90 days, and if we don’t hit it, we keep working for free until we do. We do not write checks back. We deliver the appointments. That’s the only kind of guarantee that aligns the agency’s incentives with yours, because missing costs us more than it costs you.
Any guarantee that’s about leads or clicks or impressions is not a guarantee of anything you can bill against.
Red Flag 6: They'll Take Anyone
This one’s counterintuitive. If an agency says yes to you in the first five minutes without asking about your equipment, your service area, your close rate, or whether you can actually handle 30 appointments in 90 days, they’re going to say yes to everybody.
That means they’re probably running ads for your direct competitor two towns over. And it means they don’t care whether you succeed, because they’ve already got your deposit.
We turn down contractors on sales calls every week. Part-time operators who can’t take calls during the day. Guys whose budget would have them running out of money in month two. Businesses in a territory where we already have a client. Some of those contractors leave us a one-star review, and we’d rather have that than take their money for a program that won’t work.
Ask the agency who they won’t work with. If the answer is “we work with everyone,” that’s your answer.
Red Flag 7: They Describe Themselves as "Leads"
Listen to the words. Agencies that sell “leads” are selling you a spreadsheet. Names, numbers, “interested in land clearing.”
An on-site appointment is a different product. It means a real property owner, with a real project, who confirmed a time to meet you at the property. The agency’s job isn’t done when the form gets filled. It’s done when you’re standing in the driveway.
If the agency only talks about leads, that’s where their work stops.
Red Flag 8: Month-to-Month With No Plan
This one cuts both ways. A long contract with no out is a trap. But an agency that’s happy to go month to month with no commitment on either side is telling you they don’t expect to be around in month three.
Paid advertising takes time to optimize. The property owners you meet in week two close in week ten. An agency that’s planning for 90 days will tell you that up front and explain why. One that’s selling you on “cancel anytime” is planning for you to cancel.
Our CSM explained it to a contractor this way on an October 2026 call: when he knows he has a client for 90 days, he can let an ad run four or five days to find its audience. When he only has them for two weeks, he has to cut it at its knees the first bad day and relaunch. Short commitments make the marketing worse.
Questions to Ask on the Sales Call
Take these to any agency, including us.
Who else receives the inquiries from my ads?
Show me three ads you’re running right now for a contractor in my trade.
Who calls the property owner, how fast, and how many times?
Walk me through what a progress call looks like. Show me a real one if you can.
What exactly is guaranteed, and what happens if you miss?
Who do you turn down?
Do you deliver inquiries, or do you deliver appointments on my calendar?
Why 90 days?
If they can’t answer every one of those clearly in under ten minutes, you have your answer.
A Note on Reviews
When you look up an agency’s reviews, read the one-stars first and figure out who wrote them. For most agencies in this space, the worst reviews come from one of two places: contractors who did sign up and got nothing, or contractors who got turned down and were angry about it.
The first kind is disqualifying. The second kind is a good sign.
About Us
Dirt2Dollars is a done-for-you marketing agency. We are not a coaching program. There are no courses, no group calls, no 1-on-1 coaching. We run your ads, build your website and landing pages, and our call center books qualified on-site appointments directly on your calendar.
There’s another business with a nearly identical name that sells coaching programs. If you’re vetting us, make sure you’re looking at the right company.
Ready to Ask Us These Questions?
If you’re a land clearing, excavation, or forestry mulching contractor who’s been burned before and wants to ask hard questions before you spend another dollar, we’d rather have that call than any other.
We’ve generated over $100 million in on-site estimates for more than 250 contractors, a lot of whom came to us after someone else failed them.
Book a Demo Call with Our Team
Brady Carlson / Dirt2Dollars
