We would rather show you the method than invent a quote.
Most agency testimonial pages are unverifiable. A first name, a job title, a stock photograph and a sentence nobody said. We are not going to put that in front of you, so here is what we will put instead.
- None
- When clients approve them
- References
Why this page has no quotes on it.
Rugmaz is building its UK client base. Some of our work sits under agreements that do not permit us to name the client, and some of it is recent enough that the results are not yet worth claiming.
The option in front of us was to write plausible testimonials and attribute them to plausible people. Agencies do it constantly and it is almost never caught, because nobody checks whether Sarah from the Didsbury dental practice exists.
We are not doing that, for a simple reason. If we are willing to invent proof to win the work, you have no basis for believing the reporting once the work starts. The whole relationship runs on whether our numbers are honest. That has to start before you pay us anything.
A fabricated testimonial is not a small marketing liberty. It is a demonstration of exactly the behaviour you are trying to screen out.
This page will fill up. It will fill up with named clients, real figures and quotes those people actually said.
The standard for anything that appears here.
A named business
Not “a Manchester retailer”. The actual company, with their permission in writing, so you can look them up and ask them yourself.
The starting position
What the numbers were before we touched anything, including the inconvenient ones. A result without a baseline is not a result.
What we changed
The specific work, in enough detail that another practitioner could judge whether it was competent.
What we did not cause
Where a seasonal lift, a product launch or a competitor closing contributed, that gets stated. Taking credit for a market movement is the oldest trick in the category.
Figures the client has verified
Revenue and lead numbers come from the client, confirmed by the client, not pulled from a platform dashboard that counts generously.
The things that went wrong
Every engagement has a month where something underperformed. A case study with no setbacks in it has been edited into fiction.
How to check us without a testimonial page.
Ask for a reference call
We will put you in touch with people we work with. A fifteen minute conversation with a current client tells you more than any page we could write.
Give us a live problem
Send us something real. A page that does not rank, a campaign losing money, a site that loads slowly. The quality of the diagnosis is the sample of the work.
Read the service pages properly
They state what we do, how, and where it fails. Compare that to three other agencies and the difference in specificity will be obvious inside ten minutes.
Start small
A fixed scope piece with a fixed fee and no retainer. If it goes well, extend it. If it does not, you have lost a defined amount and learned something.
Questions that separate competent agencies from confident ones.
“What would make you tell me to stop spending?”
Any agency that cannot answer this concretely is not planning to tell you. The answer should involve a number, a timeframe and a decision rule, not a reassurance.
“Who owns the ad account and the analytics?”
If the answer is anything other than you, walk. An agency holding your account holds your conversion history, your audience data and your negotiating position all at once.
“Show me a month where the numbers went backwards.”
Everyone has one. An agency that cannot produce it is either very new or editing its reporting, and both are worth knowing before you sign.
“What is a customer worth to me, and how did you work it out?”
If they have not asked you for this, they are not optimising towards profit. They are optimising towards whatever metric their reporting template contains.
“Who is actually doing the work?”
The person in the pitch is frequently not the person in the account. Ask who, ask how many other accounts they hold, and ask to meet them.
Where this connects.
Tell us what’s next.
Send over the problem and the numbers you have. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.