What to check before you sign with any marketing company

The trade is full of bad contracts

Almost every contractor who has been in business ten years has a story about a marketing company. Usually the same story: a long agreement, a monthly charge, a dashboard nobody looked at, and no clear way out.

The questions below are the ones that would have surfaced that in the first meeting. They apply to us as much as to anybody else, and if a vendor gets defensive at any of them, that is the answer.

Who owns it when this ends

The most important question and the one asked least often. If you stop paying, what do you keep? The domain, the website, the phone number, the customer list, the photographs.

There is no single correct answer here. Some arrangements are rentals and that can be fine, if you knew. What is not fine is finding out at the end. Ask for it plainly, get the answer in writing, and be especially careful about the phone number: a number that belongs to the vendor is one that takes your existing customers with it when you leave.

What does month four look like

Every vendor can describe the launch. Fewer can describe the ordinary month afterwards, which is what you are actually buying.

Ask who you contact when something is wrong, how long a small change takes, and what happens in a month when there is nothing dramatic to report. Vague answers here are the strongest predictor of a relationship that goes quiet after the build.

What are you promising, exactly

Be direct, and listen carefully to the shape of the reply. Nobody can promise you a position on a search results page and nobody can promise you a volume of work. Anyone who does is either inexperienced or counting on you not remembering the conversation.

A vendor who says plainly that they cannot promise those things, and then explains what they can do instead, has told you something useful about how they will behave when something goes wrong later.

The other five

Shorter questions, same purpose. Each has a clean answer if the vendor has thought about it.

• How long is the commitment, and what does cancelling actually involve.
• Is the fee split between setup and ongoing, and what is the setup buying.
• Who writes the words on the site, and where do the photographs come from.
• Can I see three sites you built that are live right now, not mockups.
• What do you need from me, and how many hours a month is that.

Be careful about anything with a long minimum term

A twelve month minimum is not automatically a trap, but it changes who is carrying the risk. Before you sign one, ask what specifically justifies it. If the answer is that the setup work is heavy and the fee is spread across the year, that is a real reason and it should be visible in the pricing.

If there is no clear answer, the term is doing something else: it is protecting the vendor from the consequences of losing interest in month three. The month-to-month version of the same arrangement puts that risk back where it belongs, which is why fewer vendors offer it.

Watch what they do during the sale

How a vendor behaves before you have paid is the most reliable information you will get. Do they answer a question they did not want, or slide past it? Does the follow-up arrive when they said? Do they say a number they have not checked?

A company that is slightly slow and completely straight is a better bet than one that is fast, agreeable and vague. You are going to be depending on them to tell you things you do not want to hear.

And apply it here

We build the site first and you see the finished thing before you decide anything, which is our answer to the question about mockups. Everything is paid up front and month to month, so cancelling means not paying next month.

We cannot promise you a position on a search page or a volume of work, and we will not. Ask us the other seven and hold us to the same standard as everybody else you talk to.