Marketing on a 30 day rolling contract, and why we insist on it
No lock-ins means we have to earn our keep every month. Here is why that is better for you and for the work.
Most marketing agencies will ask you to sign a six or twelve month contract before they have done a day of work. We do the opposite. We work on a strict 30 day rolling agreement, and we turn away work that will not accept it. Here is the thinking, because it says more about how we operate than any list of services could.
Why long contracts exist
Long contracts are not there to protect you. They are there to protect the agency. They guarantee revenue whether or not the work is landing, and they remove the one thing that keeps an agency sharp: the risk of losing you. Once the signature is on a twelve month deal, the pressure to perform quietly drops, because the money is coming either way.
You have probably felt it. Energy and attention in month one, a slow drift by month four, and a scramble near renewal. The contract, not the results, was holding it together.
What a rolling agreement changes
When you can leave with 30 days notice, everything realigns. We have to earn the next month, every month. That means the work has to keep producing, the reporting has to be honest, and the relationship has to be worth staying in. It puts the pressure exactly where it belongs, on us.
Why it is better for the work, not just the optics
There is a myth that good marketing needs a long runway and therefore a long contract. The runway is real. SEO compounds, brand builds, pipelines take time. But none of that requires locking you in. It requires showing you the progress along the way, honestly, so you keep going because you can see it working.
A rolling agreement forces that honesty. We cannot hide a quiet quarter behind a contract, so we do not have quiet quarters. And because you are free to leave, the trust that builds when you choose to stay is worth far more than any signature.
What it means for you
It means the risk sits with us, not you. It means we are motivated by the same thing you are: results you can see, month after month. And it means that if we are ever not worth it, you can walk, which is exactly why, in practice, our clients rarely do.
What we ask for in return
A rolling agreement is not a one-sided arrangement. If we are going to earn our place every month, a few things have to be true on your side too, and we would rather say so at the start than discover it in month three.
Time to let the work land
Some of what we do produces results in days. Search, content and authority work does not. Leaving after six weeks because SEO has not moved is not a judgement on the agency, it is a misunderstanding of the channel.
Access to the people who know things
The best content in this sector comes out of a twenty-minute call with an estimator, a site manager or a technical director. Marketing written entirely without them reads exactly like it.
Decisions in reasonable time
A campaign waiting three weeks for sign-off is a campaign that is not running. We keep approvals as light as we can, but somebody on your side has to be able to say yes.
The other thing a rolling agreement does is force an honest conversation early. If a channel is not going to work for your business, we would rather tell you in month two and move the budget than quietly keep invoicing for it until an annual review nobody was looking forward to.
Give us those three things and the arrangement works the way it is meant to. We are motivated by the fact that you can leave, you are protected by the fact that you can, and neither side is relying on a contract to hold the relationship together.
It is worth saying that most clients stay a long time. Not because they are locked in, but because the work keeps being worth paying for, which is the only good reason anyone should stay anywhere.
Four questions to ask any agency before you sign
Whether you talk to us or anyone else, these four questions will tell you more than any pitch deck.
What happens in month one?
If the answer is onboarding, audits and strategy with no visible work, ask what month two looks like. Momentum should start immediately.
How will I see progress?
You want plain-English reporting against the numbers that matter to you, enquiries and rankings, not a dashboard of impressions.
Who actually does the work?
The person in the pitch and the person on the account are often different people. Ask to meet the one you will deal with.
What does leaving look like?
The honest test of confidence. If leaving is hard, expensive or ninety days away, ask yourself why they need it to be.
Our answers, for the record: work starts in week one, you get numbers you can read without a glossary, you deal with the people doing the work, and leaving takes thirty days from whenever you decide. That last answer is the reason we rarely hear it.
If you have ever been burned by a contract that outlasted the results, that is precisely the problem we built our model to avoid.
Stuck in a 12 month agency contract?
When it ends, try the other way. Thirty days, no lock-in, and the pressure stays exactly where it belongs: on us.
Talk to us about switching →
