Approach
Four commitments, made in writing before we start.
None of these are unusual. They are simply the things that make an engagement auditable, and the reason most agency relationships cannot be audited is that nobody agreed to them at the start.
The baseline gets frozen in week one
Before anything is switched off, the current reported numbers are captured and signed off, wrong as they are. Cleaning up tracking makes reported performance drop, sometimes sharply. Without a frozen baseline that drop reads as our first month of work, which is both unfair and a strong incentive to leave the measurement broken. So we freeze it first.
One stated metric, agreed on day one
Not a dashboard of forty. One number we are accountable for, chosen with you, reported monthly. If that number is gross profit, then platform conversions are diagnostics and nothing more. Picking the metric first is what stops the reporting from quietly migrating to whichever chart happens to look good.
A dated change log, every month
Every change made to your account, with the date it was made and why. It is the record that lets you tell whether a result came from something we did or something that happened. It is also what your next operator inherits, which matters more than anybody wants to admit at the start of an engagement.
No markup on anything we pass through
Ad spend, production costs, software licences, platform fees. Billed at cost, always. The fee is the fee. An operator who earns a percentage of spend has a reason to spend more, and that conflict is not worth having in the room.
How an engagement runs
Diagnose, then operate, then build.
Diagnostic
A fixed price audit of what you are spending and what it returns. Ad accounts, analytics, site, CRM, email. You get the findings whether or not you retain us, and they are specific enough to act on without us.
Operate
A monthly retainer covering the lines you need. Billed on the first, same number every month, predictable for cash flow. Six month initial term, then thirty days notice on either side.
Build
Anything that gets built once is scoped, priced and agreed separately, then invoiced as it is delivered. Half to start, half on delivery. No surprise charges appearing inside a retainer.
Terms worth knowing early
The unglamorous parts.
If a recommendation only looks good because the measurement is broken, it is not a recommendation. It is a decision made in the dark.