What does a fixed-price marketing project actually include?

A genuine fixed-price project comes with four things: a written scope listing exactly what will be delivered, a price that doesn't move unless you ask for more work, agreed dates, and a clear split of what we do and what you do. If any of the four is missing, you have an estimate rather than a fixed price, and the difference will show up on the invoice.

Below is a real example from our own services, a comparison with the other ways marketing is priced, and a checklist for any scope you're sent, whether it's ours or anyone else's.

Fixed price, retainer or day rate

Three pricing models cover most marketing work, and each puts the risk in a different place.

None of them is wrong. The mistake is using the wrong one for the job: a retainer to build something, or a fixed price for something nobody can yet describe. Whichever you choose, make sure you own the accounts and files at the end. If you'd like the figures, how much a marketing consultant costs in the UK goes through what each model costs, and our prices for every service are in what marketing costs in the UK.

A scope names deliverables, not activities

"SEO work" is an activity. "A technical audit, the first round of fixes implemented, and twelve rewritten page titles and descriptions" is a list of deliverables. Almost anything can satisfy the first. The second either happened or it didn't.

Look for nouns you could point at afterwards: a document, a page, a campaign, a configured account, a report. If the scope is mostly verbs, ask what you'll be holding at the end.

A real example

This is the scope of our 90-day marketing plan, which costs a fixed £2,500 and takes about three weeks. You get:

• Where your marketing money goes now, and what it earns.
• Your customers and the competitors worth watching.
• A budget split channel by channel.
• A ninety-day plan with the jobs in order.
• The two or three numbers to judge it by.

This is how it runs. It starts with a free 30-minute call. Within two working days you get a written plan and quote with the scope, the price and the dates. Then come about three weeks of work on your numbers, your customers and your competitors, and finally we walk you through the plan, which is yours to keep and use.

You could hold up every one of those five items at the end and say whether it was delivered. That's the test to apply to any scope.

It says what isn't included

This matters more than the list of inclusions, because the exclusions are where the extra invoice comes from. Ours says it plainly: social media is referred out to partner agencies rather than done badly in-house, and ongoing management after launch is a separate decision you make later, not a condition of the work.

If a scope has no exclusions at all, either the consultant hasn't thought about it or they're leaving themselves room.

These are the exclusions worth asking about in any marketing scope:

• Ad spend. In a paid ads project, the money paid to Google or Meta is almost always separate from the fee. Check that it's clear which figure is which.
• Copywriting and photography. A website quote may assume you'll supply the words and images.
• Third-party costs. Software, plugins, stock images, fonts, hosting and domains.
• Rounds of changes. How many revisions are included, and what happens after that.
• Implementation. Whether a plan or audit includes making the changes, or only recommending them.

The dates bind both sides

Every project timeline depends on the client as much as the consultant, and a fixed-price scope should say so. Ours asks for access to your website, analytics and ad accounts, an hour or two of your time at the start, and one named person who can approve things. That genuinely is all.

It's written down because approval delays are the most common reason a project runs late, and a date that binds only one side isn't really a date.

The price survives the middle of the project

This is the whole point. Work is always messier in the middle than it looked at the start, and in a fixed-price arrangement that risk sits with us rather than with you. If the audit turns up more than expected, the price doesn't change. If you ask for a second website template that wasn't in the scope, it does.

That distinction should be written down before you sign anything, in words you could quote back. The usual way to handle a genuine change is simple: the new piece of work is described and priced separately, and nothing starts until you've agreed it in writing. If a supplier's answer to "what if I want something extra?" is vague, expect the invoice to be vague too.

What you should get at the end

Whatever the project, you should come away with three things:

• The work itself, delivered and live rather than described in a document.
• The reasoning, so your next decision is better even if you never work with us again. A plan you don't understand is a plan you can't maintain.
• Whatever it takes to carry on without us: account access in your name, not ours, a record of what was changed, and a plain answer to "what would I do next".

That last one is the tell. An engagement built to make you dependent looks different from one built to leave you capable, and you can usually tell which one you're being sold in the first conversation.

A checklist for any fixed-price scope

Use this on the next scope you're sent. These four checks are what make a price fixed:

• The price is a single figure, not a range or an estimate.
• It says what happens if I ask for something extra, and that nothing extra starts without my written agreement.
• It says how many rounds of changes are included.
• Any ongoing work afterwards is optional, not a condition of the project.

The scope also has to pass the six checks every quote should pass. For a fixed price, the last of them, what you get, carries the most weight: every deliverable a noun you could point at, a list of what's excluded, and dates that say what the supplier needs from you.

If a scope passes all of them, it's a genuine fixed price. If it fails any, ask for whatever is missing to be added before you sign, and notice how the request is received.

What a good first call covers

Because the supplier takes the risk on a fixed price, the first conversation has to do real work. If it's thirty minutes of the supplier talking about themselves, the quote that follows is a guess. A useful first call covers:

• What you want the marketing to do, in business terms: more enquiries of a certain kind, a launch by a certain date, a website that stops losing people.
• What exists already: the website, the accounts, what has been tried and what happened.
• What you have to spend, including anything separate from the fee, such as an ad budget. Our published prices for every service give you a starting point.
• Who on your side will approve things, and how quickly.
• What would make the project a success when you look back on it.

You should come away knowing whether the supplier understood the problem, even before the quote arrives. If they didn't ask about your customers or your numbers, they can't have priced the work properly.

Ours starts with a free thirty-minute call and, within two working days, a short written plan with the scope, the price and the dates. If it doesn't suit you, there's no follow-up sequence, and nobody rings you in six weeks.

Every service has its price on the services page, from £2,500, so you can see the band before you speak to anyone.