We get asked for a 30-day trial about once a week. We say no, and this is why.
What actually happens in month one
The first month of any serious engagement is construction, not performance:
- Tracking gets rebuilt so results mean something
- Landing pages get rewritten around the offer
- Creative gets produced for the first test round
- Campaigns launch into a learning phase with no history
Judging that month on cost per lead is like judging a restaurant by the week it was being built. You will see numbers, but they are not the numbers you are paying for.
What a quarter buys you
By day 90 you have:
- Three full creative test cycles
- Enough conversion data for the platforms to optimize against real outcomes
- A clear read on which channels deserve more budget and which should be cut
- A landing page that has been through at least two rounds of revision
That is the point at which the numbers stop being noise and start being a system you can make decisions on.
Why this protects you, not us
A 30-day trial rewards agencies that skip the foundation and chase a quick win. Push spend into whatever converts cheapest, show a nice screenshot, sign the retainer. Six months later the account has no tracking, no creative library, and a dependency on one campaign that is fatiguing.
We would rather lose the deal than do that. The first quarter is the commitment because that is how long the work takes to compound — and after that we are month to month, because if it is working you will not want to leave.
- strategy
- engagements