What Are the Ways to Structure Marketing Retainers and Pricing?

What Are the Ways to Structure Marketing Retainers and Pricing?

Retainers and pricing work across different companies in different ways but let us check how marketing trainers and pricing are usually structured.

The following are some key factors we can take a lot into. 

1. Retainer Types

There are two different ways to structure marketing retainers:

  • A package of services that is included in the monthly fee
  • A number of hours provided by company experts for a list of services/activities

In both cases, service-based businesses always determine (or at least predict) the workload ahead of time because it’s integral to employing and hiring the right number of people across multiple roles for their corresponding activities.

2. The Core of Retainer Pricing

Even if we account for “value-based pricing” (hours don’t matter, it’s the byproduct that could cost premium), a similar model is applied in most cases.

At the end of the day, the average monthly retainer is determined by:

  • The agency’s rate (average or per expertise)
  • The number of predefined hours included in the contract/package

So, at $100/hr (for example), a package could include 15 social media posts per month, 4 blog posts, and some other work, calculated at 40 hours per month. The package itself would likely be $4,000/mo or so. Different packages may be priced similarly.

3. Pricing Considerations

Of course, the less experienced the freelancer/consultant/agency, the lower the rate. The fewer hours going into the plan, the cheaper the plan itself. Quality also plays a role here—you can probably get $20/mo retainers on Fiverr or something that would be blatant copy-paste from elsewhere or just scheduling blog posts from Feedly.

Large players like HubSpot have invented partner programs with price “suggestions” across different regions. For instance, anywhere between $2,000 to $10,000 is considered a common monthly rate for marketing services across mid-sized agencies out there. Again, freelancers may charge more, top tier firms may easily make 6 figures (and the elite ones more) depending on what they provide.

4. Premium Services

Certain services—very specific ones, like clearing double-click violations—may cost significantly more because they solve a very painful and expensive problem.

Other forms of consultancy, including services like video production or CGI or advertisement, may be priced differently as well. PPC agencies can charge a percentage of the spend or work out a different performance-based plan making a commission off the profits, so this is to be kept into account as well.


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My name is Mario Peshev, a global SME Business Advisor running digital businesses for 20 the past years.

Born in Bulgaria, Europe, I gained diverse management experience through my training work across Europe, North America, and the Arab world. With 10,000+ hours in consulting and training for organizations like SAP, VMware, CERN, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to helping hundreds of SMEs growing in different stages of the business lifecycle.

My martech agency DevriX grew past 50 people and ranks as a top 10 WordPress global agency and Growth Blueprint, my advisory firm, has served 400+ SME founders and executives with monthly ongoing strategy sessions.


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