Marketing and lead generation · team and contractors: You pay an agency every month and can’t tell what it bought you.

• A brief your contractor can be held to, written so it can only be answered one way
• What each of them is measured on, and who agreed it
• The work checked against what was actually agreed
• A written record, so a settled decision stays settled
• Where we go further: the priorities set, the tasks issued and the KPIs held by somebody who is not you

You end up able to tell a good contractor from a badly managed one, and to prove which you have — with somebody senior holding it there while your team gets used to it.

• What your contractors were asked to deliver, in writing if it exists
• What the last three months cost and what is traceable to a customer
• Last quarter’s agreed actions, and what shipped

Replacing a contractor who is doing fine and being managed badly.

A title without access to the decisions.

A pair of senior hands to execute what has already been decided.

Monthly once it runs itself. Weekly, and inside the business, while it doesn’t.

Priced per engagement, agreed before anything starts.

40% of small businesses that outsource their marketing leave the agency, and 56% of those leave within six to twelve months. The most common reason given was not seeing a return — 60% said the return was inadequate.

What the survey establishes is that not seeing a return is the common reason these relationships end. It does not say whether the cause was the work, the measurement or the supervision. What it does show is that replacing a contractor cannot fix an accountability system nobody ever defined.

Source: inTandem / vcita, 2025 SMB Marketing Report. 500 US small-business owners, surveyed April 2025, published July 2025. A software vendor’s survey of its own target market, not an audited market estimate. Read the source

With a free first call of about an hour. Bring what is happening and any numbers you trust; if this isn’t the right domain, I’ll tell you on that call.