90-Day Cancellation Policy
One of the purposes of a Termination clause is to define the notice that is necessary to terminate a contract.
Termination clauses differ by company. Some marketing agencies require a 12-month contract without early termination. Others operate on a month-to-month agreement with no advance notice required.
At Markitors, our Termination clause gives either party the option to terminate an agreement at any time if a 90-day written notice is provided.
This blog post aims to add more reasoning as to why we structure our agreements around a 90-day cancellation policy.
To understand the window of our Termination clause, let’s take a look at three of our departments: Digital PR, Content, and Technical SEO.
Digital PR
Our Digital PR team works with editors, bloggers, and journalists to secure external placements for clients.
There’s a lot of coordination to secure these opportunities. Content calendars, out of office away messages, and editorial review processes significantly impact publication dates.
Our 90-day termination clause is meant to protect our Digital PR work more so than any service.
To give you some insight as to what goes into our efforts, take a look at our Digital PR Manager’s inbox.
The exchange below shows that we are about 60-90 days out from publication. We’ve written the article, but are subject to an editorial calendar.
The screenshot below shows a portion of a conversation between Markitors and a notable publication with a Domain Rating in the 90s. We completed the initial article in June, worked on revisions in July, and are just getting the article approved by internal stakeholders in August for a Q4 publication date.
Here’s another email exchange with a publication who has a Domain Rating in the 90s. You can see that multiple holidays passed (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day) before an initial publication date was set.
And then, there are some of the more ordinary Digital PR occurrences that tend to push back publication dates. This is an “in the works” email…
A typical “in review” email…
Things are hectic…
You get the point.
As you can see, the bigger the opportunity, typically the longer the delay. 90-day advance notice gives us the confidence to pursue the big opportunities that move the needle when it comes to SEO. It also gives us enough runway to work out the details among opportunities that we have already secured.
Content
Our Content production process revolves around ongoing 90-day content strategies. These content strategies guide the production of all blog posts, landing pages, and premium pieces of content.
Lots of analysis goes into these content strategies. Keyword research, Google Analytics trends, and industry trends all drive our decisions on what content to produce.
Content strategy is an ongoing activity at Markitors. Our Director of SEO Content is always adding new ideas to the strategy so that our Content team can work well ahead. Being ahead enables us to maintain our desired publishing frequency within a content schedule.
To provide a behind the scenes look at our Content Strategy efforts, take a peek at our Content Strategy spreadsheet template.
From this spreadsheet, we are always building out our project management system to stay ahead of schedule on content:
Content is always fresh, always thrilling at Markitors. Having a 90-day notice as a security blanket enables our team to work ahead, and invest the time to innovate on industry opportunities.
Technical SEO
Most Technical SEO engagements do not need a 90-days notice.
Even when Markitors hosts and maintains a client website, our team is still able to migrate and transfer a client’s website assets to a hosting platform of their choice.
90-day cancellation notices primarily exist to protect the two other functions of our efforts.
Let’s Review
90-Day Cancellation Notices enable a marketing agency to:
- Fearlessly pursue large editorial opportunities within Digital PR
- Innovate and capitalize on Content opportunities within the industry
- Migrate technical systems like web hosting, databases, and websites
What’s Next?
If you would like to dive deeper into our agreement terms, we are compiling a “frequently asked contract questions” blog post in the near future. These questions will range from “why do you invoice at the beginning of the month” to “how do you approach work edits?”
It will be worth a look when it’s published.
In the meantime, does this post help explain why we operate on a 90-day cancellation clause? If so (or if not), contact us and we’d be happy to talk more.
