Package and price agency services

An offer is what a client actually says yes to: what you do, in what order, what each step includes and leaves out, what it costs, and what happens if it does not work. These are the practices I use to package and price my own one-person practice, written for marketers building an agency and useful to any owner judging an agency's offer. I do not publish my own numbers, because I set each price to what the business in front of me can afford; this page is the reasoning I use to get there.

Say the offer in one sentence

If you cannot say what you do in one sentence, a prospect cannot repeat it to their business partner, and you end up selling a menu instead of an outcome. Mine is: I help small business owners fix the marketing and business systems holding them back, so they finally know what is working, own their data, and stop guessing.

It has three parts. Who: a client you can describe to a stranger. What is broken: the problem in the client's words, not your method. Owners do not lie awake wanting server-side tagging; they lie awake not knowing which marketing works. The outcome: what changes afterward, in phrases owners actually use on calls. Test the sentence by reading it to an owner and asking them to explain it back. If they reach for jargon, rewrite it.

Build an engagement path where each step earns the next

My engagements follow the same three steps, in order, and everything I sell is one of these steps or an add-on to one. A client who already has a sound website starts further along, but nobody starts at the deep end cold.

The openerA concrete, low-risk first project, such as a website build or a fixed-price diagnostic, that proves competence before anything recurring.
The recurring baseA modest ongoing relationship, such as hosting and managing the site, that gives you access, context, and a reason to talk every month.
The system workThe deeper retainer: CRM and follow-up, tracking and reporting, or running the marketing. This is where the meaningful revenue lives.

Selling the deep tier to a cold prospect fails for predictable reasons. You are asking a stranger for their ad accounts, their CRM, and their customer data before you have delivered anything. The product is abstract: a tracking system is hard to picture, while a rebuilt homepage or an audit full of findings is not. And a large monthly number with nothing behind it invites negotiation, so you discount to make up for the missing trust.

When the opener and the base come first, the system work is sold on evidence from the client's own business: the calls nobody could trace, the leads that went unanswered, the gaps a diagnostic found. For a prospect whose website is already sound, a paid diagnostic like my Journey Audit is the opener, and its findings become the scope of the retainer.

Cap the scope of every tier

A service ladder is a short set of tiers, each with a written list of what it includes and what it does not. The exclusions do the real work: they turn a request for more into a conversation about the next tier, instead of an argument about what the retainer covers. Here is a ladder shaped like mine, without prices.

Tier	Includes	Explicitly excludes
Website build	A set number of pages, mobile layout, a working contact form, basic analytics, one round of revisions	CRM, email and SMS, ads, social posting, tracking systems, custom development
CRM and follow-up	CRM setup, a set number of forms wired into it, a short welcome email sequence, Business Profile management, hosting, a monthly call and a one-page report	Ad management, social posting, campaign sends beyond the welcome sequence, a tracking system, a site rebuild
Tracking and reporting	A closed-loop tracking system, its integrations, and monthly reporting on which marketing produces customers, while the client keeps running their own marketing	Running campaigns, writing and sending emails or texts, a site rebuild
Full management	Everything above, plus running the ads, content, email and SMS campaigns, and customer conversations	Anything outside the written scope, which is quoted separately

Write caps as numbers. "One round of revisions" ends arguments. "Revisions until you are happy" starts them. Forms, posts, and reply times get a number too.
Put the exclusions in the proposal. The client should read what is not included before signing, not the first time they ask for it. My proposal format gives exclusions their own section.
Turn scope creep into an upgrade conversation. Say it plainly: "That is not in your current plan. I can quote it as a small project, or move you to the plan that includes it." Doing it free once makes it part of the plan.

Set price floors and enforce them on new deals

A price floor is the lowest monthly retainer and the lowest hourly rate you will quote to anyone new. Write both down before you need them, because you will need them on a call with a likable owner who wants a smaller number.

An exception is not a benchmark. An introductory rate for one client becomes the anchor for the next, unless it is labeled in writing as an exception, with a reason and a date.
Old rates are grandfathered, never quoted. A long-standing client can keep an old rate by decision. Nobody new hears that number.
Review below-floor accounts every month. Raise each one, grandfather it with a dated written reason, or plan the exit. Leaving it alone is not one of the options.
Check your effective hourly rate. Divide each monthly fee by your own hands-on hours for that client. When the result drops below your hourly floor, the price goes up or the scope comes down.

Low prices compound. A cheap client gets less of your attention, which produces modest results, which produce no case study worth showing, which leaves nothing to justify a higher price for the next prospect. Pricing is a client-selection decision disguised as a number, and the floor is where you make that decision.

Charge a setup fee, and never bundle it away

The setup fee pays for the build. The retainer pays for the ongoing work. Keep them on separate lines in the proposal and on the invoice.

Folding the build into a flat monthly price feels friendlier, but it means you finance the build yourself. If the client leaves in month three, you have done the most expensive work of the engagement for a fraction of its price. A separate fee also changes how the build is seen: a line item is a project with a result, while a build hidden inside a retainer looks like a free extra.

Invoice the setup fee when the proposal is accepted; the billing routine covers the mechanics. If a prospect asks you to waive it, or to fold it quietly into the monthly price, the answer is no. A prospect who will not pay for the build is telling you how much they value it.

Price on value to the client, not on your cost

Cost-plus pricing asks what the work costs you. Value pricing asks what the work is worth to the client, and whether they can believe it. My rule of thumb: before signing, the client has to believe the work will bring in at least three times what they pay for it. If I cannot make that case with their real numbers, they will not make it either, and I would end up discounting to close a gap I created by pitching the wrong engagement.

Run the arithmetic with numbers from the discovery call:

Step	Calculate	Where the number comes from
1	First-year cost: the setup fee plus twelve months of retainer	Your proposal
2	The return they must believe in: three times step 1	The rule of thumb
3	What one new job is worth	The owner's own average job value
4	New jobs needed per year: step 2 divided by step 3	Arithmetic
5	Whether their market can produce that many	Real search demand in their area, and their current lead flow

The same offer can be cheap for one business and absurd for another. A high-ticket service in a growing metro clears the test with a handful of extra jobs a year. A low-ticket service in a small town, where the searches that matter barely register, may never clear it; the honest quote there is a smaller engagement, not the large one at a discount. When you present a price, compare it with what it replaces (a marketing hire, a bigger agency, or more months of marketing that does not work), and walk through the problems and fixes before naming the number.

Offer guarantees you can actually keep

A guarantee moves risk from the client to you, which is why it helps close. It only counts if it promises something you control. A promise that depends on the client's decisions ends in a broken promise or an argument about whose fault the result was.

What you deliver	A guarantee you can keep	A guarantee to avoid
An audit or diagnostic	If it does not surface a minimum number of specific, fixable problems, it is free.	More leads after the audit. You are not the one implementing the fixes.
A tracking system, while the client runs their own marketing	If it is not tracking leads from every connected channel by a date written into the proposal, you keep working at no extra cost until it is.	Any revenue or lead promise. The client controls the spend.
Full management, where you run the campaigns	A conditional target, such as a number of booked jobs in the first 90 days, with you working free until it is met.	A cash refund you could not fund if several clients claimed it at once.

Buy risk down with time, not cash: working free until something is fixed costs effort, while a money-back promise you cannot afford is worse than no guarantee. And name the client's side out loud. A performance guarantee only holds if the client answers the phone, follows up with leads within a day, and leaves the budget alone mid-campaign. Say so before they sign. A prospect who cannot commit to that will not get results from anyone, and saying it is part of what makes your price believable.

Publish your prices

Plenty of agencies keep prices off their websites, and an owner who has been burned by one tends to assume a hidden price is either high or negotiable. Publishing mine does four jobs:

It answers the first question before the call, so discovery is about fit instead of cost.
It qualifies. An owner who cannot afford the entry tier finds out privately, without spending thirty minutes with you first.
It holds the price. A number on your website is hard to cut on a call, for either side. The quote becomes a question of which tier fits.
It forces you to productize. You cannot publish a price for custom everything, so publishing makes you define the tiers, caps, and exclusions.

Publish each tier with what it includes, what it excludes, and its price. Note that the final price is confirmed in a written scope, then quote from the page every time.

Decide what you will not sell

An offer is also a list of work you turn down. Mine:

One-off ad campaigns with no system underneath. With no tracking or follow-up, nobody can tell whether the campaign worked, and you take the blame when the owner decides it did not.
Standalone social media posting. Posting with nothing in place to capture and follow up on the attention is what plenty of agencies already sell. Social belongs inside the system.
Rankings-only SEO. Rankings with no way to see whether they produce calls invite the same argument as an untracked campaign.
Branding-only work, such as logos and identity. It is real work, just not the problem my practice exists to solve.
Recurring work below the floor. It takes a spot a proper retainer could fill.

The common thread is work with no system underneath it. Nothing measures the result, so the client judges you on feel, and clients who judge on feel eventually leave. Refer those requests to someone who does that work well.