Who owns your marketing accounts is a question almost nobody can answer until the moment it matters. It gets asked when a marketing manager resigns, when an agency relationship ends badly, or when the website goes down on a Friday afternoon and the only person who can fix it left eighteen months ago.
At that point it stops being administrative and becomes the only thing anyone cares about. I have sat in a few of those meetings. They are avoidable and the fix takes about an hour.
How it goes wrong
Nobody sets out to lose control of their own assets. It happens because setting things up properly is slightly slower than setting them up quickly, and the difference only shows up years later.
- The domain was registered by a web developer in 2016 using their own account, and renews on their card.
- The ad account sits inside an agency business manager, so it goes with them.
- Analytics was set up by someone using a personal Gmail, and that person has left.
- The website host is billed to a card belonging to a director who is no longer with the business.
- Two people share one admin login, so there is no way to remove access for one of them.
| Item | Business owns | Access only | Held elsewhere |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Partly | No | Yes |
| Website hosting | Partly | Partly | Yes |
| Ad accounts | No | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics | Partly | Yes | Partly |
| Creative files | No | Partly | Yes |
Ownership is not the same as access
This distinction catches people out. You can have full admin access to an ad account and still not own it. Access is granted and can be withdrawn by whoever owns the container it sits in. Ownership is who the account belongs to legally and who can remove everyone else.
When a relationship ends amicably this rarely matters. When it ends badly it is the only thing that matters, and the party who owns the container has all the leverage.
Access is what you have on a good day. Ownership is what you keep on a bad one.
The fix
- List every digital asset: domains, hosting, ad accounts, analytics, CRM, email platform, social profiles, design files.
- For each, record the legal owner, the account it sits under, who has admin, and what it is billed to.
- Move anything on a personal email onto a business account, and anything on a personal card onto a business one.
- Make sure at least two people have admin on every critical asset, and that neither is a contractor.
- Diarise domain renewals. A lapsed domain is the fastest way to lose a business week.
The digital asset ownership register is the template I use for this, and it is free. If you would rather have someone else go through it and tell you what is exposed, that is what asset protection and continuity work covers. Either way, the worst time to start is the week you need it.
For domains specifically, you can check the registrant on any name yourself through ICANN lookup (opens in a new tab), which will tell you the registrar and, depending on privacy settings, who the record belongs to.