Is It Out of Scope? — Web development
Is adding paid search management to an SEO retainer out of scope for a web development project?
Yes. Managing ad accounts and bidding strategy has no technical overlap with development work.
Landing pages built for a campaign sometimes prompt a client to ask if the same team can just run the campaign too, since they're already "in the marketing stack."
Is it out of scope?
Yes. Building a page and managing an ad account are unrelated skillsets — one's engineering, the other's media buying.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Exclusions clause→ — Development engagements exclude campaign management and ad-platform work as a different discipline.
Example contract wording
Example contract wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
We built the landing pages the campaign runs on, but running the paid search campaign itself — bids, budgets, ad copy — isn't part of this engagement. That's a different specialty.
How MarginFlow flags it
MarginFlow flags campaign-management requests outside_scope on development contracts, keeping the classification consistent with how it treats other non-technical marketing-discipline asks.