Duane Carey, president of IMPACT Marketing, is fired up. After building a trusted marketing company over the course of 20 years, he’s tired of watching underhanded fly-by-night outfits hijack the websites and digital assets of hard-working small businesses who simply don’t know the ropes. These bad actors aren’t just hurting clients; they’re giving the entire industry a bad name.
“You know, sometimes I’m not even comfortable calling our company a marketing consultant,” he says. “I truly feel like we’re business consultants who use marketing tools to achieve business goals.”
Recently, Carey and IMPACT’s web hosting partner, BizMarquee president Randy Goldstein, sat down to discuss the dangers of dealing with dubious vendors instead of bona fide marketing consultants.
What would you say is the biggest challenge facing small businesses in need of honest marketing guidance?
DC: I think one of the big problems today is what I would call “machine marketing companies.” To them, you’re just a number. They get you into their system at a “low monthly fee,” but you’re actually getting very little. It’s very appealing to small businesses and startups, though, because they see this low number and they think, “This is great,” right?
RG: In most cases, they’re just paying to rent their own website. They don’t own it, but they don’t know that. It’s disingenuous. And it’s hard to believe that after all these decades in business, we’re still coming across vendors who work this way.
DC: These small vendors act like giant SaaS companies that lock clients into rigid, long-term contracts they can’t escape, even if the service is abysmal. We recently started helping a pet care client who had been with a previous marketer for years. In this case, this former phone directory company purchased a URL for the client and assured them they’d take care of everything. But now that the pet care client is moving on, they’re not releasing the URL to them.
RG: What is that even about? What on earth is this telephone directory company going to do with a URL for a dog boarding company in West Virginia?
DC: Every reputable digital marketing company allows people to get out of their contracts with a certain amount of notice. Thirty days, 60 days—something like that. But this vendor held this client to the full terms of their contract and made them buy out their contract. They were referred to us back in March, and we’ve been trying to help them navigate these charlatans since then. But they had to pay a lump sum to this company to buy out their contract through December of 2025. The end of December. That’s absolutely egregious.
RG: And in the meantime, they held everything hostage. Their website content, the design, and the photos.
DC: It’s such a shame, because this client really, truly thought that they were friends with these people. They’ve been working together for years. And when we first started talking, they were torn up. Even though they knew it was in their interest to go with actual experts, they were torn up about the relationship, and it turns out these people are screwing them.
We have a similar situation going on here in Maryland with an HVAC company that had been paying a vendor a hefty monthly fee for years. Thousands of dollars. All they were paying for was their website. Their “marketing company” was supposed to be doing other things, like SEO, citation listings, social media posts—and they haven’t done a thing. And it’s the same result. The moment the HVAC company canceled their contract and began moving things over to us, their website disappeared. It just went away.
RG: And that’s detailed in their contract, which is like 28 pages long. It spells out how the former marketing company owns everything.
DC: How pathetic are you as a marketer if you have to put golden handcuffs on your clients? Do you think they’re going to be long-term clients, or are you just playing a “Gotcha” game? “Gotcha! Gotcha to sign up now! We gotcha forever,” you know? That’s just disgusting. And it’s everything that’s wrong with marketing these days.
You’ve mentioned the terms “vendor” and “marketing consultant.” What’s the biggest difference between the two?
DC: These companies pushing low-cost, monthly fee situations – they’re just vendors. We kept hearing from the pet care client how their “rep”—not their marketing consultant—answered every question with, “Oh, that’s over my pay grade.” Why? Because they don’t know anything about digital marketing. They’re just trying to sell something.
RG: Google’s landscape is so complicated. Unfortunately, some small businesses fall for slick salespeople and pay them money for a length of time, then come out of it on the other end going, “What did I just get? I didn’t get anything. I paid a lot of money, and I didn’t get anything. I think this marketing stuff is a scam.” It gives the industry a bad name.
DC: I have very open discussions with prospective clients about this. People often ask us who our competitors are. And, honestly, by far, our biggest competitors are the previous marketing companies of prospective clients. Invariably, those people have burned the trust of that client, because they didn’t understand marketing – and didn’t care to, either.
Whenever we have initial discussions with potential clients, we try to sniff out how they’re going to regard us. If it sounds like they view us as vendors – if that’s all we’re going to be to them – we never-ever take the work. But if they’re going to treat us like consultants who can guide them, then we will take the job. And we’re going to have a partnership. And we’re going to earn their trust completely in the shortest amount of time.
How do you go about doing that?
DC: We take a completely “no bullshit” approach. You pay us for our time and our expertise, period. We are only going to recommend spending money if we believe it is in your best interest. We want long-term clients who are not shackled to us, but who want to stay with us because they’re making money, their lives are easier, and they have more peace of mind.
RG: It’s true. The faster we can gain trust, the more success the client is going to have, and the more success we’re going to have as their consultants.
DC: Trust is so important. You know, we’re sitting here in the backyard of Washington, D.C., where there are more engineers and IT consultants than anywhere else because of the DoD and the NSA. But to be honest, that’s exactly why we don’t take those companies as clients. Why? Because they’re so untrusting. They always think they know better and that they can figure things out on their own. So, simply because of that trust deficit, we don’t take them as clients. And this kind of garbage that these other marketing companies are doing is what erodes trust in the industry, and it’s why I’m so incensed.
What should people look for in a potential marketing partner?
DC: We wrote a great article about this a while back, and we continue to share it with prospects. The gist was “make sure you control your own assets.” Don’t be afraid to ask your marketing company the important questions. Do I own my website? Can I take my website tomorrow and host it somewhere else? Are you going to charge me? Then, actually read the contract. Most people don’t. If it says they own your website – well, that’s a problem.
RG: If they say they’re doing Google ads, for example, ask if you will have full access to go in and look at the account. Ask if you’re going to be the full owner of that account or if they’re maintaining control. A lot of companies will not allow you to go anywhere near your account, and you don’t get to keep it when you leave.
DC: Ask them about monthly reporting. What are you getting at the end of the day? Printouts of Google Analytics reports that mean nothing? That’s not reporting at all. At IMPACT, we have a dashboard that’s available 24/7 to the client so they can see their actual conversions at any time. Phone calls and form submittals. We need to be able to say, “Here’s what your marketing is doing for you.” We’re justifying our existence all the time. We’re not taking a “small” fee and then running and hiding.
How does the relationship between IMPACT Marketing and BizMarquee benefit your clients?
DC: We don’t accept or pay referral fees. We only refer clients to professionals that we know are going to help them. There are no conflicts of interest. We do everything in our power to eliminate them.
RG: All marketing companies offer hosting, but none of them actually do it. Most just take your money, and they take a piece of that money and put your site on a cheap platform somewhere. But Duane and IMPACT believe that hosting is a very important part of digital marketing and, to do it right, you need true experts.
DC: That’s why we recommend all of our clients go with our preferred host, and that’s BizMarquee. We don’t get a penny from Randy and Company for that. There are no kickbacks. No commissions. Nothing. And we do that because it’s in the best interest of the client to have that direct connection and to pay for it themselves without any markup. We leave tremendous amounts of money on the table by doing it that way. If we had a monthly hosting fee coming in for each of our clients, that would be a big chunk of money. But we forego it because it’s best for the client to go directly to BizMarquee for that part of the service.
What’s one last word of advice you would give small businesses who are seeking help right now?
DC: There are so many digital marketing companies, and there’s so much business to go around. I would say hire any of us who are good and reputable and strong, and run as fast as you can away from these people who want to rent you your website. Like we said, if you don’t control your assets, you don’t control your marketing.
