Pricing and engagement
How digital marketing agency pricing works
Three engagement models, quoted against scope. No packages, no tiers, and no published number that would be wrong for most of the people reading it.
Digital marketing agency pricing is usually either a package table that fits nobody or a refusal to say anything at all. We do neither: every engagement is quoted after a scoping conversation, and the quote is fixed before work begins. Most start with an audit, because scoping ongoing work without having read the account first is how agencies end up selling the wrong thing confidently.
Models
What are the three engagement models?
An audit is a fixed-scope account read, a project is a build with a defined end, and a retainer is ongoing monthly management.
Audit
Fixed scope, fixed fee, one-off
A structured read of one channel or the whole stack. We go through the account, verify the measurement, quantify the waste, and write up the findings in priority order. You keep the document and can act on it with us, with your own team, or with someone else.
Best when
You are spending money and cannot explain the numbers, or you have inherited an account and need to know what you are holding.
What drives the cost
- How many channels are in scope
- Account size, measured in campaigns and conversion actions rather than in spend
- Whether the measurement layer needs untangling before anything else can be read
Project
Defined outcome, defined end
A build with a finish line: a tracking rebuild, a campaign restructure, a landing page set, a reporting pipeline, an automation workflow. Scoped from an audit, so the specification is written before the price is.
Best when
You know what needs building and you need a specialist to build it rather than an ongoing relationship.
What drives the cost
- The size of the specification, which the audit produces
- Whether we implement directly or write specifications for your developers
- How many systems have to be touched, since integrations carry the risk
Retainer
Monthly scope, month to month after the initial period
Ongoing management of one or more channels, with an agreed monthly scope and a change log covering everything we touch. There is an initial period because restructuring an account and then leaving before the learning period finishes would leave you worse off than when we found you. After that it is month to month.
Best when
The channel needs continuous attention, and you want the same person on it rather than whoever is free.
What drives the cost
- How many channels we manage
- Volume of creative and landing page work inside the scope
- How much reporting and stakeholder work the engagement carries
- Ad spend, but only loosely, and never as a straight percentage
Cost guides
What does each service actually cost?
Five guides covering what the market charges, sourced from published third-party figures, and what genuinely drives the number for each service.
These carry real market data rather than our rates. Every figure in them is attributed to a named publisher, linked, and dated, with a plain statement of what it does not tell you. We publish no prices of our own on any of them, and each explains why.
How much does Google Ads management cost?
What the market charges, what actually drives the number, and why we quote against scope.
PPC management pricing, explained
Three pricing models, what each one is actually good at, and which one hides the most.
How much do SEO services cost?
What providers say they charge, why the average misleads, and what actually moves the number.
How much does conversion rate optimization cost?
What the market charges, and the question that decides whether you should spend it at all.
How much does marketing analytics cost?
What implementation actually costs, and why it is the first thing worth paying for.
By service
How is each service scoped?
Each service page states exactly what the work covers, and that written scope is the input to the quote rather than an afterthought to it.
Questions
What do buyers ask about pricing?
Why prices are not published, whether we charge a percentage of spend, how long the initial period runs, what an audit includes, and account ownership.
Why are there no prices on this page?
Because a number without a scope is either a guess or an anchor, and both waste your time. Two accounts at the same ad spend can differ by a factor of three in the work they need, so we scope first and quote against the scope. You get a number in writing before anything starts.
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
No. Percentage-of-spend pricing pays us more for recommending you spend more, which is a conflict of interest built directly into the invoice. We price against the work, so recommending a spend reduction costs us nothing and stays an honest recommendation.
How long is the initial retainer period?
Long enough for the structural work to clear its learning period and produce a readable result, which is typically three months and depends on your conversion volume. After that it is month to month with no notice games.
What does the audit fee include?
The account review, the measurement verification, the written findings ranked by impact and effort, and a call to walk through it. If you then engage us for project or retainer work, we credit the audit fee against the first invoice, because charging twice for the same reading of the account would be indefensible.
Can we start with one channel and add more later?
That is the normal path and it is the one we recommend. Starting on the channel with the clearest problem gives both sides evidence about whether the working relationship fits before anyone commits to more scope.
Who owns the accounts and the work?
You do, in every case. We work inside your ad accounts, your analytics property, and your tag manager through delegated access. If we stop working together you keep everything, including the documentation, with nothing to migrate and no accounts to reclaim.
Get a quote
Tell us what you are running, what is not working, and what you have already tried. We will come back with a scope and a number, not a proposal deck.