reading a social media proposal.
proposals are designed to look impressive. knowing what to actually read turns a sales document into a clear comparison.
read past the deliverables list to scope, ownership, reporting and what's excluded. the gaps and the fine print tell you more than the headline package.
agency proposals are sales documents — polished to impress and often built to be hard to compare. but underneath the design, the same few things determine whether it's a good deal. once you know where to look, you can cut through the gloss and compare offers properly.
— 01look at scope, not adjectives
strip away the buzzwords and find the concrete scope: how many posts, what type, how many platforms, how much video, how much management. "premium content strategy" means nothing until it's quantified. the real offer is in the specifics.
count the deliverables. finished assets with formats and lengths, production days, and a named response time for community work.
"content" is not a unit and "strategic oversight" is not a deliverable. anything uncountable will quietly shrink over twelve months.
and check who is actually on the account and for how many hours. seniority on your specific business is what you are buying, not the size of the agency.
— 02check ownership and reporting
who owns the accounts, content and data? how often and how will they report? these protect you, and proposals that gloss over them often hope you won't ask. clarity on ownership and accountability is non-negotiable.
the business must own the page, ad account, pixel and domain, with the agency granted access. anything else means you are renting your own audience.
raw footage ownership needs stating explicitly. a shoot you paid for that you cannot re-edit is half of what you thought you bought.
and the reporting section should name the number and its baseline. a proposal promising "regular insights" is promising a meeting.
— 03find what's missing
read for the exclusions and assumptions — is ad spend included? are revisions limited? what costs extra? the gap between what's promised and what's actually covered is where surprises live. compare proposals on what they leave out as much as what they put in.
the omissions tell you more than the inclusions. no notice period, no revision limit, no handover clause, no named approver.
and no mention of what happens when it is not working. a proposal with no review point assumes it will be fine, which is not a plan.
ask what they would cut if the budget dropped by a third. the answer separates what they consider essential from what they consider decoration.
— 04the questions worth asking before signing
who is on my account weekly, what does a month actually look like, how many revision rounds, and what is the notice period.
and ask for one month of a comparable client's report with the numbers redacted. how they report tells you more than how they pitch.
read next: what "solutions" means in a proposal.