Consulting is for stores that can do the work but are not sure what to do. We provide the plan, the standards and the review, and your team carries it out.
This suits three situations. A store with a capable marketer who has never done search work at this scale. A team that is busy and productive but working on the wrong things. And a business that wants a second opinion on what an existing agency is doing.
It costs less than a full engagement and it works well when there is real capacity in house. It works badly when there is not, and we will tell you which situation you are in.
What Does a Consulting Engagement Include?
A written plan, a set of standards your team works to, regular review of what they produce, and someone to answer the questions that come up in between.
The standards document is the part clients undervalue at the start and value most after a year, because it is what stops quality drifting when someone new joins the team.
| Part | What it is | How often |
|---|---|---|
| The plan | A prioritised roadmap of what to do and in what order, with reasons. | Once, then reviewed quarterly |
| The standards | Written rules for how pages, products and content should be built, so quality does not depend on who does the work. | Once, then updated as needed |
| The review | We look at what your team produced and say what is working and what is not. | Monthly |
| The questions | A route to ask us things as they come up, rather than saving them for a meeting. | Continuous |
| Training | Sessions for your team on the parts they are least confident about. | As needed |
Can You Review What Our Current Agency Is Doing?
Yes, and it is a common request. We look at the work, the reporting and the results, and give you a written assessment you can act on.
This is uncomfortable work and we approach it carefully. Sometimes the honest finding is that the agency is doing good work and the client’s expectations were set wrong, in which case we say so.
Where there are real problems, they are usually one of a few kinds. Work being reported that cannot be found on the site. Reports built from tool exports with no interpretation. Effort spent on pages that cannot affect revenue. Or a strategy that was correct two years ago and has not been revisited.
You get a written assessment with specific examples, not a general opinion. What you do with it is your business, and we are equally happy if the outcome is that you stay where you are with clearer expectations.
How Is Consulting Charged?
350 Canadian dollars an hour for sessions and reviews, or a fixed price for a defined project such as a strategy build or an agency review.
Most consulting clients use somewhere between four and eight hours a month, which covers a monthly review, a strategy call and the questions in between.
Project pricing suits one off pieces of work. A full strategy build with roadmap and standards is usually a fixed price, as is an agency review, because both have a clear beginning and end.
If a consulting engagement reveals more work than your team can carry, we will say so and quote for the delivery separately. We will not quietly let a consulting arrangement become a badly organised delivery arrangement.
What Does a Written Standard Actually Contain?
Rules for how each type of page is built, so quality does not depend on who happens to be doing the work that week. Usually twenty to forty pages covering page types, writing, product data, links and publishing.
The most valuable part is the page type rules. What a collection page must contain and in what order. What a product page must answer. What a buying guide must cover before it is finished. Written as requirements a person can check their own work against.
Then the writing rules. Sentence length, how to open a page, when to use a list, which words to avoid, how to state a price or a timeframe. These are the rules that keep a team’s output consistent as people join and leave.
Then the data rules. Which product fields are required, what good looks like in each, and who is responsible for filling them. This part is usually the one that saves the most money, because bad product data is expensive and invisible.
Finally the publishing rules. What has to be checked before a page goes live, and who checks it. A short list, applied every time, prevents most of the errors that otherwise get found six months later.
How Do You Train a Team Without Making Them Dependent?
By writing everything down and teaching the reasoning rather than the checklist. The aim is that your team eventually needs us less, not more.
Training that covers only steps produces people who can follow instructions and cannot handle a situation the instructions did not cover. Search work is full of those situations.
So the sessions cover why a thing is done, what it is trading off against, and how to tell when the usual answer is wrong. That takes longer and it produces people who can make decisions.
It also means the standards document is written to be used without us. If your team can pick it up in two years, after everyone involved has left, and still produce good work from it, it was written properly.