TL;DR. A performance-guaranteed marketing engagement contractually ties the fee to a measurable outcome. If the outcome misses by the end of the engagement window, the fee gets refunded. WRKS Online structures the guarantee inside our 90-day Catalyst engagement: industry-specific benchmark KPIs locked on day one, contractual refund language if the benchmark misses by day 90. Most marketing vendors disclaim outcome responsibility. The performance-guaranteed model absorbs the risk on the operator side.
What Does the Guarantee Actually Cover?
The metric the engagement gets sold on. Per vertical:
- Law firms: Qualified case volume at a target cost-per-signed-case. For personal injury, the benchmark is 45 qualified cases in 90 days at the firm’s case-acceptance criteria.
- Dental practices: Booked new-patient appointments at a target cost-per-booking. The benchmark scales by ad spend.
- Healthcare providers: New patient inquiries at a target cost-per-inquiry, qualified by procedure interest and insurance fit.
- Real estate: Signed listing agreements at a target cost-per-signed-listing.
- SaaS: Trial signups converting to paid at a target cost-per-paid-conversion.
- E-commerce: Profitable orders at a target ROAS or contribution margin.
- Other verticals: The equivalent acquisition outcome scaled to spend.
Every vertical benchmark is documented in the engagement contract before launch. The benchmark is not “best efforts.” It is a contractual number with a refund clause attached.
How Does the Refund Work?
If the benchmark misses by the end of the 90-day Catalyst window, the WRKS engagement fee gets refunded. Not partially. The full fee. The client keeps the assets the agent shipped during the engagement (website, copy, ad creative, email flows, sequences). The refund covers the strategy and operations fee WRKS charged to run the agent.
The refund clause is written into the Catalyst contract before signature. It is not contingent on a long internal review process. The number either hit or did not hit. The math is unambiguous because both sides agreed on the metric upfront.
Ad spend itself is not refundable because ad spend goes to Meta and Google, not to WRKS. The engagement fee that WRKS charges to run the agent is the refundable portion. For most engagements, that fee is between $9K and $30K depending on engagement size.
Why Don’t Most Marketing Vendors Offer This?
Three structural reasons:
Their economics depend on selling time. Agencies and freelancers bill on hours, retainers, or seats. The unit they sell is input, not outcome. Tying the fee to outcomes inverts the business model.
They cannot underwrite the outcome. Without a system that has produced the outcome across many accounts, the vendor has no actuarial basis for predicting whether the next account will hit. They sell hope, not probability. Selling hope with a money-back guarantee is a bad business.
They cannot afford to refund. A traditional agency at $5K per month retainer cannot absorb a $15K refund if the quarter misses. The unit economics break.
WRKS can offer the guarantee because the AI Growth Agent ships across many client accounts on the same architecture. The architecture has produced measurable results. The probability of the architecture hitting a benchmark for a new account in a comparable vertical is high enough that the guarantee is underwritable.
How Does WRKS Calculate the Benchmark Per Account?
Three inputs:
Vertical historical performance. What the agent has produced across past clients in the same vertical. For verticals where WRKS has shipped many engagements (law firms), the baseline is dense. For newer verticals, the baseline borrows from structurally similar accounts.
Account-specific constraints. Geography, budget level, offer quality, sales-team capacity to handle inbound, existing brand strength. The benchmark adjusts down for accounts with tighter constraints.
Realistic ramp curve. The 90-day window does not produce 90 days of steady-state performance. The first 30 days are Build phase (no leads yet). Days 30-60 are Launch and early Adapt (ramp). Days 60-90 are Adapt and Scale (full output). The benchmark accounts for the ramp.
The Concierge walks every prospect through the benchmark math during the discovery call. If the math does not pencil out for the account (budget too low, vertical too narrow, offer too weak), Catalyst is not offered. The guarantee depends on accounts being structurally fit for the model.
Is the Guarantee a Marketing Tactic or a Real Risk?
A real risk. WRKS has paid out refunds when the benchmark missed. The frequency is low enough that the model works, but high enough that we treat the guarantee as actual cost.
Refunds happen most often when one of three things goes wrong:
- Offer-market mismatch. The offer the agent runs does not resonate with the audience the spend reaches. The Concierge tries to catch this in Build phase, but sometimes the mismatch only shows up after live spend.
- Sales-team capacity gap. The agent produces leads. The client’s sales team cannot keep up with the volume. Leads that do not get worked do not convert. The benchmark misses despite agent performance being strong.
- Compliance or platform interruption. Healthcare ad rejection, state bar advertising disputes, Meta account restrictions. Rare but real. The agent runs hard inside compliance constraints, so this is uncommon for established engagements.
WRKS publishes refund rates internally and uses them to update vertical eligibility. Verticals where refund rates run high get tighter prospect qualification before sale.
What If the Account Hits the Benchmark Early?
The engagement continues. Most clients renew at the end of the 90-day window because the system that produced the benchmark continues compounding through month 12.
For accounts that hit benchmark by day 60, the Concierge typically uses the extra 30 days to scale spend against winning combinations and explore adjacent channels the original engagement did not include. The renewal conversation in month three sets the next quarter’s targets against the new baseline.
For accounts that hit benchmark by day 30 (rare but happens with strong-fit verticals like personal injury), the engagement typically transitions to a higher-ambition target before the 90-day window closes.
Does the Guarantee Apply to Enterprise Engagements?
Different structure. Enterprise engagements are application-only and run on a different commercial model because the work is custom architecture inside the client’s own repositories. Refund language exists but the metric and the timeline are tailored to the specific build.
For most prospects, Catalyst is the right starting point. Enterprise comes after Catalyst proves the architecture fits the client’s situation.
How Do I Know if a Performance-Guaranteed Engagement Is Right for My Business?
Three criteria:
- Your business has a measurable acquisition metric. If you cannot name the number that decides whether marketing worked this month, the guarantee structure has nothing to attach to.
- Your sales motion can absorb the lead volume. If the agent ships 200 leads per month and your sales team can work 50, the benchmark misses for capacity reasons, not agent reasons.
- Your budget supports the engagement. Catalyst requires a minimum ad spend that varies by vertical. Below that, the math does not pencil out.
If all three are in place, the guarantee is structurally available. Book a discovery call to see whether your account fits.