The money you lose to a marketing agency is almost never lost on the monthly fee. It is lost in the terms, which nobody reads carefully because everybody is focused on the price.
Here is what is standard, what is aggressive, and what I would refuse outright.
The twelve-month minimum
Common, and defensible in exactly one situation. If an agency is fronting significant production work in month one, a longer term protects them from funding a build and then losing the account.
Aggressive when the work is ongoing search or ad management with no large up-front build. There the minimum is not protecting an investment. It is protecting a revenue forecast.
What to ask for instead: a ninety-day initial period, then monthly. If the work is good you will stay, and both of you know it.
One dental agency I reviewed states its twelve-month minimum openly on its own pricing page, which is more honest than most. According to that same review of 23 agency pages in September 2026, it was also the only one of the 23 to disclose its term at all, which tells you what the norm has quietly become.
Automatic renewal with a short cancellation window
Refuse. The pattern is a twelve-month term that renews automatically unless you cancel in a thirty-day window before it ends. Miss the window by a day and you have bought another year.
If renewal is automatic, the cancellation window should be open at any time, not a trapdoor you have to remember a year in advance.
Agency ownership of your accounts
Refuse outright. The domain, the website, the Google Business Profile, the ad account, the analytics property, the call tracking numbers and the content should all be in your name from day one. I have written separately about who owns your website when you leave, because it is the single most expensive term in the document and it is almost never discussed.
Percentage-of-spend pricing
Common in paid media, and structurally awkward. Your agency earns more when you spend more. That is not fraud, but it does mean the person advising you on budget has a stake in the answer.
What to ask: whether they will quote a flat management fee. Mine is flat, at $800 or $1,500 a month, specifically so the advice and the invoice are not connected.
Results guarantees
Be careful here, because the reflex is backwards. A guarantee sounds like the agency taking on risk. Read what is actually guaranteed and you usually find it is a ranking for a term nobody searches, or a number of leads where a lead is defined as any form fill, including spam.
A guarantee is a marketing device far more often than it is a commitment. What you actually want is not a guarantee but a short term, which lets you leave if it does not work.
Vague scope
Refuse. “Ongoing SEO services” is not a scope. It is a placeholder.
The agreement should say how many pages, how many hours or what deliverables per month, and what the reporting shows. Without that, month three looks exactly like month one and you have no basis to say so.
The clause nobody thinks about: what happens to work in progress
If you give notice halfway through a build, who owns the half-finished work? Most agreements are silent, and silence favours whoever holds the files.
The five questions to ask before you sign
Ask who does the daily work, by name.
Ask what the notice period is and whether the term renews automatically.
Ask, in writing, who owns the domain, the site, the profiles, the accounts and the numbers.
Ask what the monthly deliverable actually is, in countable units.
Ask what the last line of the monthly report says. If it is impressions or rankings rather than booked calls or consultations, you will not be able to tell whether any of it worked.
What normal should look like
Ninety days, then monthly. Everything in your name. A flat fee. A written scope in countable units. Reporting that ends at enquiries rather than impressions.
None of that is exotic. It is simply what an agreement looks like when the firm expects the work to keep the client rather than the contract.
If you want someone to read your current agreement with you before you renew it, take the 30-minute call and bring the document.
General commercial guidance, not legal advice. Have a solicitor or attorney review any agreement before you sign it.
