Terms of Service
Smart Marketing Department
Effective date: September 3, 2026
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) explain how Smart Marketing Department (“SMD,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) does business with the clients we serve and the visitors who use our website at smartmarketingdepartment.com. By purchasing services from us, paying an invoice, or using this website, you agree to these Terms.
We wrote these Terms in plain English on purpose. If anything here is unclear, ask us before you buy.
1. Signed agreements come first
Most of our client work is covered by a signed Master Services Agreement and a Statement of Work. If you have signed an agreement with us, that agreement controls your engagement. These Terms apply only where the signed agreement is silent. If these Terms and your signed agreement ever conflict, the signed agreement wins.
If you purchase services from us without a signed agreement, these Terms are the agreement.
2. What we do
SMD provides marketing services to businesses, including:
search engine optimization (SEO)
Google Ads and other paid advertising management
website design, development, and hosting
marketing strategy and consulting
automation and CRM implementation
reporting, analytics, and related services
The specific scope, deliverables, pricing, and timeline for your engagement are set out in your Statement of Work, proposal, or invoice.
3. Payment terms
Subscriptions. Recurring services such as SEO, ad management, and hosting are billed in advance of each service period. By starting a subscription, you authorize us to charge your payment method on file automatically each month, or on the billing frequency stated in your Statement of Work, until the subscription is cancelled.
Project work. Website builds and other one-time projects are billed by milestone as described in your Statement of Work. Invoices are due within fifteen (15) days of receipt.
Late payments. If a payment is not received by its due date, we may charge interest at 1.5% per month on the overdue balance. If any invoice remains unpaid more than fifteen (15) days past its due date, we may suspend all services, including active subscriptions and hosting, until the account is current.
Third-party costs. Advertising spend and third-party platform costs (for example, Google Ads budgets, software licenses, or domain registrations) are paid directly by you unless we agree otherwise in writing. Our management fees do not include ad spend.
Pricing changes. We may change subscription pricing with at least thirty (30) days written notice before the change takes effect.
4. Refund policy
All payments to SMD are non-refundable.
This includes subscription payments, project deposits, milestone payments, setup fees, and any prepaid service periods. Each payment is earned in full at the start of the service period it covers, regardless of how much of that period has elapsed or how much visible work product exists at the time of cancellation.
Here is why. Our services are delivered through skilled labor, strategy, and tools that are consumed as the work is performed. Rankings, ad campaigns, and websites are built over time, and the work done in a given billing period cannot be returned.
What this means in practice:
If you cancel a subscription, the current and any prepaid service periods are not refunded. Because cancellation requires thirty (30) days notice, your next scheduled payment will be charged in full and is your final payment. Services continue through the end of that final period, and you will not be billed again after it.
If a project is cancelled or goes inactive after work has started, payments made to date are retained and any completed milestones remain due.
Advertising spend paid to Google or other platforms is governed by those platforms, not by SMD, and cannot be refunded by us.
Exceptions. We may, at our sole discretion, issue a partial or full refund in unusual circumstances. Any such refund is a one-time courtesy and does not change this policy or create an obligation to do the same in the future.
Billing questions and disputes. If you believe you have been charged in error, please contact us first at the email address in Section 15 within thirty (30) days of the charge. We will review the charge and respond within five (5) business days. Most billing questions are resolved this way in a single conversation. You always retain the right to contact your bank or card issuer. If a charge is disputed with your bank, we may pause services while the dispute is open.
5. Cancellation
Subscriptions. Either party may cancel a month-to-month subscription with thirty (30) days written notice. Email counts as written notice. The notice period begins on the date we receive your written notice. Your subscription continues through the end of the final billing period described in Section 4, and all work scheduled during that period will be completed.
Projects. Project engagements follow the cancellation terms in their Statement of Work. If you cancel a project, you remain responsible for payment for all work performed and all milestones reached before cancellation.
Our right to cancel. We may end an engagement with thirty (30) days written notice, or immediately if you fail to pay, provide unlawful or infringing content, or otherwise materially breach these Terms.
After cancellation. You keep the deliverables you own under Section 9. We have no ongoing obligation to host, maintain, update, or support anything after the engagement ends unless we agree to it in writing. Post-engagement help such as data exports, transfers, or training is available at our standard rates.
6. What we need from you
Good marketing depends on your participation. You agree to provide:
timely approvals and feedback
access to the accounts, websites, domains, and platforms we need to do the work
accurate information about your products, services, claims, and locations
We are not responsible for delays or performance problems caused by slow communication, missing access, or inaccurate information. If a deliverable sits without written feedback for fifteen (15) business days, it is considered approved. If a project sits inactive because of client delay for more than thirty (30) days, we may put it on hold and a restart fee may apply. After sixty (60) days of inactivity, we may close the project with five (5) business days notice, and any remaining balance becomes due.
7. No performance guarantees
Marketing results depend on factors we do not control, including competition, market conditions, seasonality, and the algorithms and policies of Google, Meta, and other platforms.
We do not guarantee specific rankings, traffic levels, lead volume, conversion rates, or revenue. We do commit to applying commercially reasonable effort and professional expertise to every engagement.
8. Your content
You are responsible for the content, claims, images, trademarks, and data you give us. You represent that this material is accurate, that you have the right to use it, that it can legally be used for marketing, and that it complies with applicable laws and advertising rules. You remain responsible for the legality and accuracy of your own products, services, and marketing claims, including any regulated-industry requirements.
9. Ownership
Your deliverables. Once your invoices are paid in full, you own the final deliverables we created specifically for you, such as live website code, finished graphics, exported videos, and published content, unless your Statement of Work says otherwise. Final deliverables do not include raw source files, layered design files, or our internal working files.
Your accounts. You own your advertising accounts, analytics accounts, CRM records, and business data.
Our tools. We keep ownership of our templates, frameworks, workflows, scripts, prompts, automations, internal tools, methodologies, and systems. Where any of these are embedded in your deliverables, you receive a non-exclusive license to use them as part of that deliverable.
Agency-licensed tools. Some functionality in your website, landing pages, or automations may depend on software, plugins, or subscriptions licensed through SMD’s accounts. Those tools are provided for use during the active engagement. We are not obligated to keep licensing them after the engagement ends, and functionality that depends on them may stop working. We can help transfer or replace such tools as a separate paid service if agreed.
10. Third-party platforms
We are not responsible for outages, policy changes, account suspensions, or algorithm updates on third-party platforms such as Google, Meta, hosting providers, or software tools, and we are not liable for performance impacts caused by them.
11. Confidentiality and portfolio use
We keep your non-public business information confidential and use it only to perform your services. We may retain anonymized or aggregated performance data for internal analysis and marketing, without disclosing anything confidential.
Unless you tell us otherwise in writing, we may name you as a client and show non-confidential work we created for you in our portfolio, case studies, and marketing.
12. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, SMD’s total liability to you for any claim arising out of our services or these Terms is limited to the total fees you paid us during the three (3) months before the claim arose.
SMD is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages, including lost profits, business interruption, or loss of data.
You agree to defend and hold SMD and its personnel harmless from third-party claims arising from your content, your products or services, or your breach of these Terms.
13. Using this website
The content on this website, including text, graphics, logos, and case studies, belongs to SMD or its licensors and is provided for informational purposes. You may not copy, scrape, or reuse it commercially without our written permission. We try to keep the site accurate and current but make no warranty that it is error-free. Links to other websites are provided for convenience, and we are not responsible for their content. Any information you submit through our forms is handled according to our Privacy Policy.
14. General terms
Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida.
Independent contractor. SMD is an independent contractor. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship.
Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control, such as natural disasters, outages, cyber incidents, or government actions.
Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms from time to time. The current version will always be posted on this page with its effective date. Continued use of our services after a change means you accept the updated Terms. Signed agreements are not changed by updates to this page.
Severability and waiver. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
Entire agreement. These Terms, together with any signed Master Services Agreement, Statement of Work, proposal, or invoice, make up the entire agreement between you and SMD.