What does a fixed-price marketing project actually include?

A written scope listing exactly what will be delivered, a price that does not move unless you ask for more work, agreed dates, and a clear split of what we do and what you do. If any of those four is missing, you have an estimate rather than a fixed price, and the difference will show up on the invoice.

Here is what that looks like in practice, and what to check in anyone else's version.

The scope has to name 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 deliverable list. The first can be satisfied by almost anything. The second either happened or it did not.

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 will be holding at the end.

It has to say what is not included

This matters more than the inclusions list, because that is 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 rather than a condition of the work.

If a scope has no exclusions at all, either the consultant has not thought about it or they are leaving themselves room.

The dates have to be mutual

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 is genuinely it.

The reason this is written down is that approval delays are the most common cause of a project running late, and a date that only binds one side is not a date.

The price has to survive 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 you. If the audit turns up more than expected, the price does not change. If you ask for a second website template that was not in the scope, it does.

That distinction should be written down before you sign anything, in words you could quote back.

What you should get at the end

For any project, 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 do not understand is a plan you cannot maintain.
• Whatever it takes to carry on without us. Account access in your name, not ours. Documentation of what was changed. A plain answer to "what would I do next".

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

How ours works

A free thirty-minute call. Within two working days, a short written plan with the scope, the price and the dates. If it works, we book a start date. If it does not, there is no follow-up sequence and nobody rings you in six weeks.

Prices are published per service on the services page, starting at £2,500. You can see the band before you speak to anyone, which is the point.