There is no single correct answer that applies to all businesses out there.
- Some companies go bankrupt.
- Businesses adjust their budgets on a regular basis – so employing the same agency may no longer be applicable.
- Clients may hire an agency that isn’t suitable for their type of work (or the size of the business).
- Companies evolve on both ends – clients and agencies. A customer may grow and require a different type of expertise that the vendor doesn’t offer. Or the agency may morph into a vendor profiling into a specific field.
- Competition is fierce – and a competitor may pitch a client a seemingly better offer.
- Clients may look for specific services that the agency doesn’t specialize in, and end up working with several agencies at once.
- A business may move their marketing workforce in-house by building an internal marketing department.
- Businesses get acquired and assimilated by larger brands with effective marketing teams.
- The agency may underperform – or simply deliver a different type of solution than the client asked for in the first place.
- There may be a mismatch between expectations and reality – mismanaged on both ends.
Those are just a handful of reasons why businesses may decide to terminate a marketing retainer.
If you dig deeper into any business relationship, you will easily find other factors that come into play.
- Employees come and go – and the same process may be implemented differently with other folks working on the agency’s side.
- Some marketing managers may join a competitor and try to steal their former clients.
- Product managers often job-hop – and a new decision maker may come up with a better offer for the business.
Sometimes, a crisp communication may help increase the retention rate of a vendor. But there are lots of side factors that may influence the decision of a business in terms of offloading their marketing work to their existing vendor.
