Keep ad spend off your fee

Invoice the fee. Let the ad account bill the client directly when you can. If you must pass through spend, show it as a separate line with no markup unless the markup is explicit.

Do not bury spend inside "monthly social." You will forget what was fee and what was media. So will they.

Write who may change a daily budget and the ceiling. An intern with a login and no ceiling is not a process. A founder who changes budgets in the ad tool without telling you is also not a process.

Log the change. A note with the date and the new number saves the end-of-month argument.

You can be responsible for craft and for tending the account. You usually cannot be responsible for a market. Do not price the retainer as a guaranteed return. If you want performance pay, write the metric, the source, and the window.

Vanity metrics make bad bonus math. Pick a number the client already uses to make a decision.

Show spend, result, and fee in three lines. A deck that blends them will be quoted back to you incorrectly.

If you do not run ads, say that in the proposal so "social media management" is not heard as "performance marketing."