Most small businesses assume the problem is their marketing agency.
I've certainly heard some horror stories.
But according to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (let's call them the ASBFEO from here on as clearly no marketer with brand expertise was involved in the naming of this organisation... BOM take note), the issue is often deeper.
Their research found:
- 75% of small businesses change marketing providers within a year
- 50% say they were sold services they didn’t actually need
That’s an extraordinary failure rate.
More effective (and cheaper!) is starting out with personalised visibility recommendations to avoid selling (on the agency side) or getting (on the client side) what you don't need.
Three out of every four small business owners onboard — and then offboard — a marketing agency within 12 months.
And one in two feel they were sold the wrong solution from the beginning.
There are more than 12,000 organisations in Australia delivering marketing services, according to industry data. Most of them are also small businesses, meaning the impact cuts both ways:
Founder-led businesses (the clients) feel burned.
Founder-led businesses (the agencies) lose clients.
That level of churn isn’t sustainable for anyone.
It’s a problem worth solving.
And it reveals a deeper issue in how most businesses approach digital marketing.
The real issue isn’t marketing
Small businesses are usually asked to buy marketing services before they understand their visibility problem.
So they purchase things like:
- SEO retainers
- social media management
- Google ads
- content marketing
without knowing whether those are actually the constraint.
The result is predictable:
misaligned expectations, wasted spend, and frustration.
Why this happens
Most founders don’t have a clear answer to three questions:
- Can people find my business in search?
- Can AI tools understand and recommend my business?
- What is the single biggest visibility gap?
Without those answers, marketing becomes guesswork.
And guesswork is expensive.
Diagnose before you hire
The smarter order looks like this:
- Measure visibility
- Identify the constraint
- Fix the constraint
- Then invest in marketing
That shift alone changes everything.
Instead of buying services blindly, you’re investing in a personalised AI recommendation plan that matches your specific gaps.
Your agency, instead of leaving you to guess what marketing you need, should begin by measuring your visibility across:
- search
- structured content
- authority signals
- AI discoverability
and then identifying and recommending the highest-impact improvements for your business.
A responsibility on both sides
The ASBFEO guide encourages small businesses to ask better questions before hiring digital marketing providers.
Visibility clarity should come first.
But the responsibility doesn’t sit solely with founders.
The guide also calls on anyone selling digital marketing services to ensure they are only selling the client the solution to a problem they actually have.
Selling something else may be understandable in a cost-of-living crisis when the vast majority of marketing businesses are founder-led.
But it’s ethically indefensible.
We must remain in this together as founders; working for our shared success, not achieving it at the expense of one another.
When the wrong services are sold, the result is predictable:
- frustrated clients
- churned agency relationships
- and a growing distrust of the marketing industry as a whole.
Which ultimately harms everyone.
A better starting point
Marketing works best when it solves a clearly defined problem.
So before hiring an agency — or committing to another retainer — make sure you get low-cost personalised visibility recommendations first.
Because the right strategy starts with understanding what to fix.
About the author
Suzanne Hevey is the founder of Gro Me Online, a platform that helps businesses understand and improve their visibility across search and AI. She works with founder-led businesses to identify the highest-impact opportunities before they invest in marketing.
By Suzanne Hevey
Founder, Gro Me
Published: 17 March 2026
Melbourne, Australia