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Hot take: A small ad agency in Tacoma taught me to read the fine print on case studies
Two years back I hired a small shop in Tacoma to run ads for our moving business, and I picked them almost entirely off a case study on their site. The study showed a client going from $4,000 a month to $40,000 a month in 90 days, and I was sold. About six weeks in, our cost per lead had doubled and nothing was converting, so I called the client listed in that case study, a guy named Ray who ran a window company. He laughed and said his bump came from a big insurance contract, not the ads, and the agency had never even asked him about it. I pulled the contract, and buried on page 6 was a line saying results are not typical and the client example was for demo purposes only. I sat in my truck outside the office for 20 minutes just feeling dumb. I ended up canceling and eating about $3,100, then moved to a one man shop in Kent who showed me real dashboards for three local clients. Now when I look at an agency, I skip the case study page and ask for a client phone number instead. Has anyone else gone down this road, and do you have a way to vet these stories before you sign anything?
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mason.keith15h ago
Man, $3,100 and six weeks is a cheap lesson compared to some folks I know. I get being mad but case studies are basically ads, right? Nobody ever posts the client who got nothing. I've seen shops brag about a 10x jump when the guy just happened to launch a new product the same month. The fine print thing is annoying but it's on every single one of them, page 6 or not. Feel like the real takeaway is you should always call a reference before paying anyone for anything, not just ad shops.
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