Scope Creep Examples — SEO & marketing
A new CMO wants a bigger strategy than the one that was signed
A new marketing leader joins mid-retainer and wants to expand a scoped local-SEO engagement into a full national content and PR strategy.
The retainer scopes local SEO for a regional business: local listings, a handful of location pages, monthly reporting. A new CMO starts and, in the first strategy call, describes plans for national expansion — a much larger content operation, PR outreach, a bigger keyword footprint entirely outside the local scope that was signed. It's a legitimate ambition for the business; it's also a different retainer than the one currently in place.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Change order clause→ — New leadership setting a bigger strategic direction still needs a formal scope-and-price change before the retainer's actual deliverables expand to match it.
Suggested change-order wording
Suggested change-order wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Excited to hear the national plans. Our current retainer is scoped for local SEO — listings, location pages, and local reporting. A national content and PR push is a meaningfully larger engagement. I'd like to put together a revised proposal reflecting the new goals, with pricing that matches the expanded scope, rather than trying to absorb it into the existing retainer.
How this usually resolves
This is often good news for the agency once it's framed as a retainer upgrade rather than free extra work — most CMOs setting a bigger vision expect a bigger budget to go with it, and naming the scope change explicitly is what actually gets that budget conversation started.
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