I’m in hacked hell and don’t know what to do.

The phone stopped ringing, lead levels fell off a cliff, the invoice from Google was missing. Something was up but they didn’t know what or why.   

“Adwords says it has an issue and has disallowed all of your campaigns” said the agency rep nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, we’re onto it.”

One week, two weeks, three weeks….. nothing.  

“We’ve checked all the pages. Couldn’t find a thing. We are now resubmitting your campaigns to Google”

…. Six weeks later.

“We are not sure why, but Google is still disallowing your campaigns. We have done all our virus checks and can’t find a thing wrong.”

Then from the client…

“I guess we don’t really know who has access to the website or Adwords campaigns and not sure who has access to, or manages, our domain. We are still paying $4000 per month for digital marketing management (+ media spend), not sure of any hosting details, or how to access out website ourselves. Do you think we should halt payment?  

Yes, a mess! But not unfamiliar.

Following a lost week, and a dozen additional greys, spent on call centre hold, chasing down ex agencies for long gone staff member emails - basically trying to figure out ‘who’ was who, and ‘what’s’ on second (… you get the drift), we were able to claw back some resemblance of control over an absolute digital asset mess      

Moral to the story, it can and does happen. Frequently.

Digital marketing is a fast moving environment and when you have agencies, web developers, IT departments, marketing managers, and business owners, moving quickly (aka running a muck) to ‘get things live’, shortcuts are taken which can cost you much in exasperation and pain. Even financial or reputational damage.     

All of this can be avoided with a simple ‘Break Glass’ action plan which lists all of your assets, what they do, who has access, and how to sever or isolate any component immediately.