Contractors' promises.

Why promises sound so convincing

Marketing is not magic, and a contractor is not a magician. Yet contractors are often sold precisely as magicians: “500 enquiries in a week”, “first place in search within a month”, “we guarantee to double your sales”. A quarter later the picture is different: the budget is spent, the enquiries are off-target, the website is unfinished and the account manager has changed.

Promises work because they hit a real pain point. A business owner wants predictability: they are willing to pay, but they want to know what they will get. A contractor who names a specific figure looks more confident than one who says “we need to look at the data first”.

The paradox is that the second answer is the more honest one. Nobody can promise a number of enquiries without knowing your niche, seasonality, competition for the search queries and how enquiries are handled on your side. A figure named before an audit is not a forecast but a sales tactic.

Let's look at which phrases should raise a flag, which questions to ask in return and what to put in writing so that a dispute about results does not turn into a dispute about words.

Promises not to believe

• “We guarantee first place in search.” Rankings are set by the search engine's algorithm, and nobody outside controls it directly. You can guarantee the work, not the position in the results.
• “So many enquiries in a week.” A figure named before your demand and competition have been studied is plucked from thin air. It can be hit, but the quality of the enquiries will be such that there are no sales.
• “Results straight after launch.” Advertising has a learning period and needs time to gather data; search engine optimisation takes several months before the effect is noticeable. A promise of instant results means the contractor either does not know this or is counting on you not knowing.
• “We work with every niche.” Formally true; in practice it means no specialisation and learning at your expense.
• “All inclusive for a fixed fee.” Until the scope of work is named, a fixed fee is a fixed fee, not a fixed scope.
• “We have our own secret methods.” There are no secret methods in internet marketing, only working tools and the skill to use them. Secrecy usually hides a reluctance to explain what you are paying for.

The common feature is that the promise concerns the result, not the work. A contractor controls their own actions: set-up, copy, bids, hypotheses. The result also depends on the product, the price, competitors and how you handle enquiries.

Awkward questions in return

The best way to test a contractor is to ask questions the salesperson has no prepared slide for.

What happens if the targets are not met? A normal answer describes a course of action: revising hypotheses, reallocating the budget, analysing the causes. The answer “that never happens” is a warning sign.

What exactly is included in the price? How many specialist hours, which work is done every month, what counts as an additional task, whether content production and analytics are included.

Who runs the project and who is responsible for deadlines? The sales meeting is often attended by one person while others will do the work. It is worth meeting the people who will actually run the project.

Show a case study with figures, not logos. A well-known brand's logo only says that the company once ordered something. A case study with a starting point and a result speaks about the work. Our projects with tasks and results are collected in the case studies section.

What will you do in the first month? If the answer is “launch ads and start running social media”, that is a start without a diagnosis.

Transparency matters more than promises

The second marker after case studies is a transparent process. You can check it before signing the contract simply by asking how the work is organised.

Is there a task tracking system where you can see what is being done right now. Where the history of enquiries is kept — in your CRM or in a manager's notebook. Are there regular meetings and how often. What the report looks like and who prepares it.

Access is a separate question. Ad accounts, analytics counters and the website admin panel should be registered to you, with the contractor granted rights to work in them. A set-up where everything is registered to the agency looks convenient right up until the moment you part ways.

Transparency does not mean you will control every action. It means that at any moment you can see what is going on and do not depend on the contractor's willingness to explain.

Why start with an audit

A contractor who starts with an audit is thinking about strategy. A contractor who immediately launches posts and ads is selling a process.

An audit answers simple questions: where enquiries come from now and what they cost, how the website is doing in terms of search and usability, where visitors are lost, what competitors are doing, which queries actually bring buyers. Without these answers any work is an experiment at your expense.

Often an audit shows that the problem is not the volume of traffic. Visitors arrive but there are no enquiries — and the cause is the website itself, its speed, an unclear enquiry form or the absence of an answer to the buyer's main question. The typical causes are covered in our piece on a website that gets no enquiries, and the reasons for low search visibility — in our breakdown of visibility factors.

If, after the audit, the contractor says the website needs fixing first rather than pouring budget into ads, that is a good contractor — even if right now they are selling you less work.

What a working metric looks like

A metric used to evaluate a contractor must satisfy three conditions: it can be measured in a single data source, the contractor genuinely influences it, and it is tied to the company's money.

Impressions and reach satisfy the first condition but not the third. Revenue is tied to money directly but depends on the sales team's work, so pinning it entirely on marketing is unfair. The working middle ground is the cost per qualified enquiry, the number of qualified leads, and the share of enquiries that reach a deal — with shared responsibility for the last one.

You also need to agree on the evaluation period. A week shows nothing; a year is too long to correct mistakes. A reasonable horizon for most projects is one to three months for the first conclusions.

How to link promotion spend to returns and what to count correctly is covered in detail in our article on data analysis and return on investment.

What to put in writing

1. The scope of work for the period and what counts as a task beyond the scope.
2. The metrics by which results are evaluated and the evaluation period.
3. The format and frequency of reports and their mandatory sections.
4. Deadlines by stage and the procedure if they slip.
5. Ownership of ad accounts, analytics counters, the domain and source files.
6. The termination and handover procedure.

It is also worth agreeing who makes decisions on your side. A project where approval goes through four people with different opinions stalls regardless of the contractor's qualifications.

Choosing a contractor is a partnership, not buying hours. A good one understands your business, brings bad news in time and explains decisions in plain language. At epic name. we start every engagement with an analysis of the current situation: we do not launch search engine optimisation without a preliminary audit. The full procedure for choosing an agency is described in a separate article.