What a Marketing Proposal Should Contain
Most agency proposals are a credentials deck with a price at the end. A proposal you can actually judge answers what you get, how it is counted, and what happens when it does not work.
The problem with most proposals
They are built to be admired rather than compared. Twenty slides of logos, awards, and process diagrams, then a monthly number with the word "from" in front of it.
You cannot evaluate that. You cannot put it beside another one and see which is better value, which is precisely why it is written that way.
A proposal you can judge is boring, specific, and mostly a list. Here is what should be in it.
The eight sections
1. What problem this is solving, in your words. If the first page does not restate your situation accurately, nobody listened on the call. This is the fastest quality signal in the document.
2. Counted deliverables. Not "content marketing". Four articles of 1,200 words, twelve social posts, one email per fortnight. If you cannot count it, you cannot tell whether it happened.
3. What is explicitly not included. The absence of this section is the single most reliable predictor of an awkward conversation in month three. Good suppliers write down the boundary.
4. Who does the work. Names and roles, and honestly whether it is the person in the meeting. A proposal that hides this usually has a reason.
5. The timeline, with your dependencies marked. Most delays are caused by client side approvals and access, and a proposal that does not say so is setting up a blame conversation later.
6. How it is measured, and when. Which numbers, reported how often, and what a reasonable result looks like at 30, 90, and 180 days. Anyone promising rankings or revenue by a date is guessing or lying, but they should still commit to what they will report.
7. Price, broken into phases. One monthly number is fine for a retainer. For project work, a phased price tells you where the money goes and gives you an exit between phases.
8. Ownership and exit. Who owns the accounts, the files, and the data, and what happens on the last day. See scope, IP, and access.
The three red flags
Guaranteed results. "Page one in 90 days" or "we guarantee 50 leads a month". Nobody controls the ranking algorithm or your market's demand. A guarantee in this category is either meaningless in the small print or a signal that the supplier will hit the number with junk. Read claims that survive scrutiny and then ask them to evidence it.
A rate card with no scope. "$3,000 a month" attached to a list of activities with no quantities is an invitation to argue about what was included. Quantities are what make a retainer honest, which is the point of what a retainer should include.
A twelve month lock in with no break. Some minimum term is reasonable, because most marketing takes months to show anything, as covered in how long SEO takes. But a long term with no exit clause protects only one party. A 90 day break clause after an initial period is the fair version.
How to compare two proposals fairly
Put them side by side and normalise three things: the counted deliverables, the seniority of who does the work, and what is excluded. Most price gaps disappear once you do this, and the ones that remain are usually explained by one supplier including strategy or copy that the other assumes you will provide.
Then ask each supplier the same closing question: what would make you tell us not to do this? A supplier who cannot name a scenario where their own service is the wrong purchase has not thought about your business, only about the sale.
What we do
We quote fixed price per phase, agreed before the phase starts, with counted deliverables and the exclusions written down. There is no public rate card because scope drives everything, and a number without a scope is a number you cannot hold anyone to. The reasoning is on the pricing page.
Frequently asked
Should we ask for a free audit? Reasonable, and most suppliers will do a light one. Be suspicious of a long free audit: it is usually a sales asset, and the effort is priced into whatever comes next.
How many agencies should we approach? Three. Two gives you no baseline, five turns into a full time procurement job for a decision this size.
Can Fixora send one? Yes: a fixed scope quote within 48 hours, with what is included and what is not. Tell us the problem.
Have a project that needs this?
Tell us what you are building. We reply within 24 hours.
The service behind this
AI Marketing Services
A full marketing function without the headcount: strategy, content, campaigns, and outbound, run as one system and reported on the numbers that decide whether it paid.
