The easiest service to sell and the hardest to check, because the product is a document. The document can be excellent or worthless, and the difference is not visible on a first read.
What you are actually buying
You are buying judgement: what to do, what not to do, and in what order. You are not buying execution unless it says so explicitly.
A good strategy tells you less about what to do and more about what to skip. If the document proposes everything at once, nobody made a decision on your behalf, and that decision is what you are paying for.
What each budget realistically buys
500 – 1 500 €
A few days of work: review of the current state, competitors, priorities for the coming months. Useful for a small business that already knows its direction.
2 000 – 4 000 €
A week or more: market analysis, channels, audiences, a content plan and numbers with assumptions behind them.
Free
A strategy given free with an execution contract. Not necessarily bad, but written by someone whose interest is selling the execution. Read it with that in mind.
The first questions
D1
What problem are we solving, and how did you establish it?
Why you ask
A strategy that starts with channels instead of a problem is a service list. This question shows whether anyone looked at your business or opened a template.
A good answer
Asks more questions than they answer in the first conversation. Wants numbers: where customers come from now, what sells and what does not.
A bad answer
Arrives with a finished proposal at the second meeting without having asked you for a single number.
How to check
Read the first page of the strategy. If you swap in another company name and the text still holds, it was not written for you.
D2
What assumptions sit behind these numbers?
Why you ask
Every forecast rests on assumptions. When they are not written down, the number looks like a fact but is an opinion with a decimal point.
A good answer
Lists them without hesitation and says which are least certain. Gives a range rather than a single value.
A bad answer
"These are industry averages." Industry averages know nothing about your catalogue, your city or your prices.
How to check
Pick the largest number in the document and ask what happens if it is half that. If the whole plan collapses, the plan is fragile.
D3
What are we not going to do, and why?
Why you ask
This is the question that separates judgement from a catalogue. Every business has limited budget and attention. A strategy with nothing excluded made no decisions at all.
A good answer
Excludes channels by name, with reasons: no audience there, no resource to sustain it, does not pay back at your average order value.
A bad answer
The plan includes everything: SEO, ads, social, email, video. It looks thorough and means the prioritising is still yours to do.
How to check
Count the channels in the document. If there are more than three for the first six months, ask who executes them and with what budget.