Questions To Ask Before You Sign A Marketing Contract

Most marketing agreements go wrong in predictable places. All of them are answerable before signing, and the answers take one conversation.

About the work

What exactly do I get each month, in numbers? Not "social media management". A number of posts, a number of articles, a number of hours if that is genuinely the unit. Vague scope is the single largest source of later resentment.

What is explicitly not included? More informative than the inclusions. Photography? Video? Ad spend? A new landing page? Print? Website changes?

Who does the work, by name? Not who sold it. And what happens when that person is unavailable.

How many rounds of revision, and what counts as a round?

What do you need from me, and by when? The honest answer to this predicts most engagement failures. An agency that needs weekly input from a client who cannot provide it will underdeliver regardless of capability.

About accountability

What are we measuring, and against what baseline? A baseline recorded before the work starts. Without it, nothing can be demonstrated later.

When should I expect to see something? A specific answer, with the reasoning. Search work and paid work have very different timelines and both should be stated.

What happens if the targets are not met? The answer may reasonably be nothing, and hearing it now is better than assuming otherwise.

What is in the report and how often? Covered properly in how to read a marketing report.

Who do I call when something is wrong?

About money

Is ad spend inside or outside the fee? Always ask. Always get it in writing.

Whose ad account is it? It should be yours. An agency holding the account holds your history, your audiences and your learnings.

Are there setup or onboarding fees?

When and how does the price change?

What is billed if a month is quiet or a deliverable is not used?

About ownership, which is where people get hurt

Who owns the website, the domain and the hosting? You should. Verify it rather than assume it.

Who owns the content, the design files and the source files? Including the working files, not just the exports.

Who holds the logins? You should hold administrator access to everything: ad accounts, analytics, search console, the CMS, the domain registrar, the social accounts.

What do I get at the end? A documented handover of accounts, assets and access, specified now, not negotiated at the point of leaving.

This is the section that produces the most painful outcomes. A business that leaves an agency and discovers it does not own its own domain or ad account has a genuine problem, and it was avoidable with one question.

About getting out

What is the term, and what is the notice period?

Can I pause rather than cancel?

What happens to work in progress?

Is there anything I cannot do after we stop? Restraints and non-competes in marketing agreements are worth reading.

A twelve month lock-in with no exit is a signal. Three months then monthly on thirty days notice is fair to both sides and it keeps the relationship performance-based rather than contractual.

The questions about them

Who else do you work with in my industry? A conflict is worth knowing about. So is relevant experience.

Can I speak to a current client? Not a testimonial, a conversation.

What went wrong on a recent engagement and what did you change? The most revealing question on this list. Anyone who has done this for a while has an honest answer, and anyone who says nothing has gone wrong is either new or not being straight.

The thing to notice

How they answer matters as much as what they answer.

Specific, direct answers to uncomfortable questions is the behaviour you want for the next two years. Deflection now becomes deflection later, on something that costs you money.

The related view from the other side is in what a marketing retainer should include.