A remit, a price, a finish line
Internet marketing specialists in Cavan with a defined remit
Ceol Digital works as internet marketing specialists for firms that already have someone in house. Bring us a defined problem: which channels to run, how to split a budget, or a piece of work nobody internally has time to finish. You get a written remit, a price and a finish line, and you keep the findings whether or not the work continues. We are not built to sit on a retainer answering emails, and we will say it plainly if a retainer is what your business actually needs.
- Scope written before work
- No open ended retainer
- Reviewed against the brief
The usual agency arrangement is a monthly fee covering vaguely defined work that never quite ends. That suits some businesses. It suits fewer than the industry would have you believe. A marketing team with an in-house manager often needs something narrower: judgement on where the budget should go, an audit of what the channels are actually doing, or a specialist to finish one piece of execution properly. We take that kind of work on a defined remit, complete it, report it and step back out. The knowledge stays with you rather than being held back to keep the arrangement alive. An engagement that survives only because the client cannot see what has been delivered is not worth having.
What a specialist remit covers
Specialist work is narrow on purpose. A remit names the problem, the deliverable and the date, and everything outside it is left alone. That might be a channel audit telling an in-house team where its spend is wasted. It might be building one campaign properly, training a manager to run it, then handing it across. It might be deciding whether the business should be on paid search at all, which is a question that deserves an answer rather than a proposal. Narrow is not the same as small. A remit done well often moves more than a year of general marketing support.
Remits fall into four kinds, and we will point you at a fuller service when the brief is larger than one of them:
Channel and spend audit
What each channel costs, what it returns and where the money is being wasted. You get the findings in writing and a priority order, whether or not we do the work.
Direction on the mix
An outside view on which channels deserve budget, which have had a fair trial and should be dropped, and where the next euro is best spent.
One piece of execution
A campaign, a content set or a technical fix delivered to a standard and a date, with the handover written down so your team can keep it running afterwards.
Review against the brief
At the close of the remit we report against what was agreed at the start, including the parts that did not work, and then we leave you to run it.
We turn down retainers we do not think will earn their keep. If your team can run the channels once somebody has told them where to point them, paying monthly for oversight is money spent on reassurance. The opposite is also true: if the work clearly needs someone full time, we will say a specialist remit is the wrong shape for it and name the fuller service instead. Either answer is more useful to you than a proposal written to be signed.
Why a defined remit beats an open retainer
An open retainer is comfortable for the agency and vague for the client. Nobody has to say what was delivered, because nothing was specified in the first place. A remit forces that clarity onto paper before any invoice is raised: this problem, this deliverable, this date, this price. It also makes the end of the work a normal event rather than an awkward conversation. When the brief is finished, so is the engagement, and both sides can see it. A specialist you are free to release is a specialist who has to justify staying.
The proof of the approach sits in the programmes we already run. Remits on this side of the business mirror the search and paid campaigns delivered for clients, so the advice comes out of work somebody is managing now rather than out of a slide. To give one reference, an automotive client moved from roughly 100k to 1.5m euro in annual turnover under the search work we ran, and that came from direction and execution rather than from a monthly oversight fee. Where the brief turns out to be wider than a remit, a digital marketing agency arrangement covers the ground above it.
Execution, not endless advice
How a specialist remit runs
The shape is short and deliberate. We agree the brief, do the work, report it and step back. There is no attempt to grow the engagement into something longer than the problem deserves, and no month where you are paying for a meeting you did not ask for.
Agree the remit
A short session turns the problem into a written brief: what is included, what is not, what it costs and the date it finishes.
Audit what exists
The accounts, the site and the numbers reviewed before any recommendation, because advice given without reading the current state is a guess with a fee attached.
Write the direction
The findings set out as a short document with a priority order, so your in-house team knows what to do first, second and not at all.
Do the work
Where the brief includes execution, it is delivered to the agreed standard and date, and handed over with the settings and the reasoning written down.
Report and close
At the end of the remit we report against the brief, flag what did not work, and either close the engagement or quote a fresh one.
Specialist remit questions
What does a defined remit include?
A named problem, the work we will do, the date it finishes and a fixed price. It also sets out what is deliberately excluded, so neither side is guessing. You get the findings in writing, and they are yours to act on however you choose, with or without us.
Can we keep our in-house team and bring you in alongside?
That is exactly who this suits. We work beside a marketing manager or an owner who runs the channels day to day, and the brief is written around what those people cannot reasonably get to. Nothing is built to make your team dependent on us afterwards.
How is a specialist remit priced?
As a fixed fee for a fixed brief, quoted before the work begins. Audits and direction work are priced by the scale of the accounts involved, and execution is priced by the deliverable. There is no monthly minimum and no fee for a meeting nobody agreed to.
Who decides which channels we run?
You do, once you have the evidence in front of you. We give you a view on what the numbers say each channel can do and the trade offs involved, and then you make the call. We will argue our case once and work with your decision rather than reopening it every month.
What happens when the remit ends?
It closes cleanly. You keep the reports, the settings and the reasoning, and your team carries on with them. If a new problem arrives later, we quote a fresh remit. There is no automatic renewal and no fee that keeps running unless somebody remembers to cancel it.
Where a specialist works best
Where a specialist remit fits
This suits a firm with somebody already running marketing who needs judgement rather than manpower, or an owner who wants a defined piece of work priced and finished. It fits businesses that have outgrown guesswork on channels and spend, and teams confident enough to act on findings once they are written down. It also suits a company that has been burned by an open retainer and wants the next engagement to have an end. The test is simple: if you can describe the problem in a sentence, it can be scoped as a remit.
Where a full team is the better buy
If the marketing is something you want off your desk entirely, a remit is the wrong shape, and an SEO agency or a Google Ads agency running a continuous programme is the more honest route. Where the channels span search, paid, content and social and nobody in house is running them, a digital marketing agency takes the whole job on properly. If the site sits at the centre of the problem, a web marketing agency approach starts from the page rather than the channels. We will say plainly which shape your situation needs, including when it is not the one sold on this page.
Bring us the brief you want delivered
Write the problem down in a sentence or two and send it over. We will tell you whether a remit is the right shape and what it would cost. Ring +353863487761 and we will answer that in a short call, or use the contact form to send the brief.