Are there marketing assets that are transferable to another agency (or to my "friend" or "family" member who is "taking over my marketing?")
No.
When you decide to part ways with Identity Dental Marketing, processes, tools, reporting systems, any management software, landing pages, historical data, etc. are non-transferable.
Why is it a red flag when an agency asks for past digital assets or entities?
Each marketing agency should have its own method for measuring and reporting results.
No agency should be reliant upon the efforts created or managed by a past marketing agency. They should have their own processes and protocol for evaluating progress, inclusive of setting up their own reporting tools. Just as we didn't require you to provide metrics, data and tools, no other agency should rely on this in any way. The moment you have a new agency, person or strategy, it is no longer an apples to apples comparison of data.
How can I gauge if they are doing better or worse than Identity?
Your main KPI (key performance indicator) should NOT be web traffic data alone, but it should include the actual number of new patients and whether the new patients attracted on the SAME budget are appropriate fits for your practice. If they know what they're doing, you will see the return on investment internally in your new patient numbers, and in revenue. Do not fall for the "data only" approach when proving the efficacy of a campaign. There are many business owners who have been shown "excellent" stats that are not indicative of actual results, and don't know better.
Why does my new agency want this data?
Some salespersons promise to improve your results or your money back. They also know that if they can show you "progress" in data that you'll more likely trust them sooner, even if they haven't been able to get you results in the form of actual business growth. This is a part of their sales process. They can paint a picture that data proves progress, even though data is easy to manipulate in this circumstance.
It may be presented to you that by maintaining analytics from one agency to the next, that you can clearly see "improvements" in the campaign's performance. While appearing to be an obvious conclusion to draw, this information is actually FALSE.
Can you give me an example as to how this is information is falsified?
One could easily expand a campaign from a narrow target to a broad target, and (seemingly immediately) increase traffic, but decrease the ROI by having a less appropriate keyword strategy.
They could add the word "Free" to your website or Google ad campaign and drive a great deal of traffic, without generating any additional quality leads. They could turn around and claim that in only a month they've improved your "SEO" and "Ads" performance, when in reality, your business is about to incur a financial decline, loss of patient retention, and wasted ad spend because of a broad strategy or an overly aggressive offer that brings in hard-to-retain patients.
Aren't these my entities? Don't I own them?
No. They were set up by our team for your use while you were a client.