You don't need a proposal, you need a market feasibility report

Anyone who has run an agency pitch knows how it ends. A brief goes out, a few weeks pass and a stack of decks comes back that all look the same: a team slide, a process slide, a confident forecast, a price, and a recommendation that happens to match the agency's service list.

Whether it is an SEO proposal, a PPC proposal or a full search plan, that deck is a sales document. It was written before the agency knew your business, your data or your constraints. You don't need a proposal. You need a market feasibility report.

Pay an agency for its time to do real research on your market, rather than accept a free deck selling you what it wants to sell. This article sets out why, what that research should contain, how to commission it well and when an ordinary proposal is fine.

Why a free SEO proposal is a sales document

A free proposal is written at the point the agency knows least. It has your brief, your public website and perhaps one call. It has not seen your analytics, your Search Console data, your margins, your CRM or the reasons the last agency did not work out. Whatever it recommends is an educated guess presented as a plan.

Free pitching also has to be paid for somewhere. The cost goes into the retainers of the clients who sign, or it comes out of the work itself, as hours spent on slide design and rehearsals rather than research. When the IPA and ISBA, the UK trade bodies for agencies and advertisers, announced the Pitch Positive Pledge in January 2022, the IPA's then president Julian Douglas described pitching like this: "Largely unfunded, it demands significant investment in time and money for agencies and clients alike."

Then there is the incentive. An agency pitching for free has every reason to recommend the services it sells and the team it has spare. Nobody wins a pitch by telling the client that the channel it asked about will not pay back.

And proposals compete on confidence and polish. The boldest forecast and the best-designed deck tend to win. A pitch rewards the best salesperson in the room, not the best answer.

What a market feasibility report is

A market feasibility report answers one question before you commit a budget: is there a profitable opportunity for us in search, and what would it take to win it? It is research, paid for and owned by you, with a recommendation at the end.

It is not a site audit. An audit looks at your website: crawl errors, page speed, tracking and the content on your own pages. A feasibility report looks at the market: the demand, the competitors, the channels and the economics. An audit can feed into it, but the work starts outside your site.

It is not a proposal either. A proposal starts from what the agency sells and works back to your problem. A feasibility report starts from your market and can end with a recommendation the agency makes no money from. A good one covers:

• Demand: search demand in the category and in each market you sell in, how it is trending and how seasonal it is.
• Who wins today: the sites that take the clicks in Google and the brands that appear in AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, measured as AI share of voice.
• The gap: where you stand against those competitors on content, authority and links, technical health and brand demand.
• Channel fit and order: which of SEO, PPC, Digital PR and generative engine optimisation suit the opportunity, and which should come first.
• Scenarios, not promises: a cautious, central and strong case, each with its assumptions written down.
• Effort and time: the work, the people and the months each scenario needs, inside your team and outside it.
• Risks: what could make it fail, from a platform change or a site migration to a competitor with a far bigger budget.
• A recommendation: a clear call, which can be "not yet" or "this channel will not pay back".

Proposal or feasibility report: side by side

The two documents can look similar on the page. The differences are in who they serve and what they are allowed to conclude.

• Who it serves: a proposal serves the agency's sale; a feasibility report serves your decision.
• When it is written: a proposal before the agency has seen your data; a feasibility report after.
• Where it starts: a proposal with the agency's services; a feasibility report with your market.
• Forecasts: a proposal gives a number to win the pitch; a feasibility report gives scenarios and the assumptions behind them.
• Competitors: a proposal mentions them in passing; a feasibility report names them and measures the gap.
• The answer: a proposal nearly always says yes, to the full scope; a feasibility report can say no.
• Ownership: a proposal belongs to the agency; a feasibility report is yours to use with anyone.
• Cost: a proposal is free up front and paid for later; a feasibility report is paid for once, in the open.

Why paying for the research is better for you

You own it. The research is yours to take to any agency, to brief an in-house team with, or to put in a drawer if the answer is no. A free proposal is only useful if you buy from the agency that wrote it.

It gives you a business case. A board will ask what the opportunity is worth, what it will cost and what could go wrong. A feasibility report answers those questions with evidence, and a fixed piece of research is something procurement can raise a purchase order against without committing to a retainer.

It tests the agency on real work. You see how it thinks, how it handles your data, how it explains uncertainty and whether it will tell you something you do not want to hear, all before you sign up for twelve months.

It changes the incentive. When the agency is paid for the research, its job is to get the answer right, not to win the biggest scope. That is the whole point.

And it is cheap next to the alternative. Paying for research costs less than six months on the wrong strategy, which costs the retainer, the internal time and half a year you cannot get back. If you are setting a budget for what follows, our guide to what drives the cost of SEO covers the main factors.

How to commission a feasibility report well

The output is only as good as what you give the agency and what you ask it to decide.

1. Give access to real data. Read-only access to analytics, Search Console, ad accounts and, where you can, CRM or sales data. Without it, the agency is back to guessing from the outside.
2. Share goals, margins and constraints. Say what a customer is worth, what you can afford to pay to win one, which markets and products matter, and what cannot change, such as a platform, a budget ceiling or a development freeze.
3. Agree the questions up front. Decide what the report must settle: whether to enter a market, which channel to fund first, or whether the current approach is worth continuing.
4. Ask for assumptions and sources. Every forecast should state where the demand figures came from, what click-through and conversion rates were assumed and why.
5. Judge it on reasoning, not polish. A good report shows its working and is clear about what it does not know. Ask the authors to walk you through it and to defend the parts you disagree with.

Red flags in a feasibility report

Paid research can still drift back into a sales document. Watch for these:

• It recommends the agency's full service menu, in the order the agency sells it.
• Forecasts with no stated assumptions, or a single number with no range.
• No named competitors, or competitors picked because they look easy to beat.
• No "no" anywhere: every channel, market and idea comes back as an opportunity.
• Little sign that the data you shared was used.

When a proposal is fine

Not every piece of work needs this. If the job is small and well defined, such as a PPC account rebuild, a link building campaign against agreed targets or a migration with a known scope, a written proposal with a clear scope and price is enough. The same goes for a renewal, where the agency already has your data and a track record you can judge.

Feasibility research earns its cost when the decision is large: a new market, a new channel, a replatform, a significant budget, or a strategy that has stalled with nobody sure why.

But other agencies will do it for free

They will, and some of those free documents will be good. The question is what you are getting. A free document is paid for by the work you buy afterwards, so it leans towards selling that work. It is also limited by how little time an agency can justify on a prospect who has not committed.

If procurement rules require a competitive process, there is a middle route. Run a short, light pitch to choose an agency on team, approach and fit, then pay the chosen agency for the feasibility research before you commit to a retainer. The IPA and ISBA's Pitch Positive Pledge already asks advertisers to set out in writing why a pitch is necessary, and to approach the right number of agencies rather than an excessive list. Both are worth doing before a brief goes out.

How we approach new work

We would rather be paid to research your market properly than pitch for free. We do this as a paid piece of research: demand, competitors, AI visibility and channel fit across integrated search, ending in a recommendation you can act on with us, with another agency or in-house. Sometimes that recommendation is to wait.

If you are weighing up a new market, a new channel or a new agency, book a growth plan call. That is the conversation we want to have.

Frequently asked questions

What is a market feasibility report in marketing?

A market feasibility report is paid research that tests whether a market or channel is worth investing in before you commit a budget. For search, it covers demand in each market, who wins today in Google and AI answers, the gap between you and them, which channels fit and in what order, scenarios with stated assumptions, the effort needed, the risks and a clear recommendation.

What is the difference between an SEO proposal and a feasibility report?

An SEO proposal is usually free and written to win the work, before the agency has seen your data, so it starts from what the agency sells. A feasibility report is paid research that starts from your market, uses your data, names competitors, states its assumptions and can conclude that a channel or market is not worth pursuing yet. You own it and can use it with any agency.

Is a feasibility report the same as a site audit?

No. A site audit looks at your own website: technical health, tracking, content and links. A feasibility report looks at the market around you: search demand, seasonality, the competitors that win in search and AI answers, which channels fit and what it would take to compete. An audit can be one input to a feasibility report, but it cannot answer whether the opportunity is worth funding.

Should you pay an agency for research before hiring it?

For large decisions, yes. Paying for research gives you something you own, a business case for the board and a fixed cost procurement can approve on one purchase order. It also tests the agency on real work and removes the pressure to recommend the biggest scope. For small, well-defined jobs or renewals, a normal written proposal is usually enough.

Does Marketing Signals do paid market feasibility research?

Yes. Marketing Signals does market feasibility work as a paid piece of research rather than pitching for free. It looks at demand, competitors, AI visibility and channel fit across SEO, PPC, Digital PR and GEO, and ends with a recommendation the client owns and can act on with any agency or in-house team. The first step is a growth plan call.

Sources

• IPA: IPA and ISBA announce plans to transform industry pitching process with Pitch Positive Pledge (27 January 2022)
• ISBA and IPA: The Pitch Positive Pledge