A business owner sent us his agency proposal last year and asked whether it looked fair. Twelve thousand dollars a month. Four pages. Every line was a noun. Social media management. Content creation. SEO. Reporting. Not one number anywhere. No volumes, no deliverables, no names, no hours. He had been paying it for fourteen months.
That contract was not unfair. It was empty. And it is the most common thing we see when a business comes to us after a bad agency run. Nobody got ripped off in an obvious way. They just signed something so vague that neither side could ever be held to it, and then spent a year feeling vaguely dissatisfied without being able to point at why.
So before you sign anything, ask these five questions. Ask them of us too.
What am I getting each month, in numbers. Twelve posts or four. Two ad sets or unlimited. One strategy session a month or a review each quarter. If a proposal cannot put a figure beside a deliverable, it is not a scope. It is a mood board with a price on it. Vague scopes protect the agency, not you, because when results are thin there is nothing to measure the work against.
Who is actually doing the work, and what is their name. The most common gap in this industry is the pitch being senior and the delivery being a graduate. Ask who writes your copy, who builds your ads, who sits on your calls, and how much of your retainer goes to account management rather than work you can see. You are entitled to know that.
What happens to my accounts if we walk away. Your ad account, your pixel, your domain, your content library, your data. Every one of those should be owned by you and hosted under your business, with the agency holding access rather than ownership. If an agency needs to keep your assets to keep your business, that tells you what the relationship is really built on.
What do you count as a result. This is where most agencies quietly change the subject. Impressions and reach and engagement are inputs, not outcomes. You want to know how many enquiries came in, what they cost, and which ones turned into revenue. If reporting stops at reach, it stops before the part that pays your wages.
How quickly can you start, and what does month one actually look like. A good partner can be in strategy inside a week and executing within two to four. If the answer is a discovery phase that runs a quarter before anything ships, you are funding someone’s process, not your growth.
We put numbers against everything we do because we would rather be held to a standard than hide behind one. Our clients know what lands each month, who is building it, and what it is meant to deliver. That is not a differentiator we invented. It is just the bar, and most of this industry is sitting under it.
If you are already paying a retainer and quietly unsure what you are getting for it, send it to us. We will read it and tell you what is missing, what looks light for the money, and what to go back and ask. No pitch and no obligation. Worst case you get clarity on a contract you are already paying for. Best case you find out what your marketing should have been doing all along.
