This is one of those situations where the right move isn’t as obvious as it first seems and I think a lot of people in the agency world have been here before. Someone lost a client last month. The client decided to switch to an AI powered marketing solution. Fair enough, it happens. But then whoever was managing the account kept an eye on the site and noticed something. The rankings completely fell off a cliff. Like a 40 plus percent drop in visibility overnight. And now they’re wondering if they should say something.
On one hand it feels like the right thing to do. You can see something going wrong and you have the knowledge to potentially help. On the other hand it’s not really your client anymore. They made a choice and it’s not your responsibility to clean up someone else’s mess. There’s also a more practical concern which is that if you tip them off too quickly the AI company might just fix whatever they broke and you lose the advantage.
My take is you don’t immediately reach out and go hey everything’s trash, come back to me. That’s gonna come off desperate and honestly it might make them suspicious. Like did you do something to cause this. Even if you clearly didn’t, planting that seed in their head is not a good look. People who just left a relationship don’t want to hear from the ex the second things get hard.
What I’d do is let it sit for a little while. Let them feel the effects of the drop. Let them start asking questions internally about why things aren’t working. And then a few months down the road just do a casual follow up. Hey how are things going, hope the new setup is treating you well, we’d love to reconnect sometime. Keep it light. If they’re paying any attention to their metrics they’re going to know things aren’t great and your timing is going to seem like good luck rather then opportunism.
The thing about clients who leave is they usually had a reason. Even if you think everything was great on your end, something made them want to try something else. So coming back with hey look they broke everything isn’t really addressing that underlying reason. You gotta let them get to the conclusion on their own that the grass wasn’t greener and then be there when they start looking back.
