For small businesses, a marketing agency runs about $1,000 to $10,000+ a month. Freelancers and small shops cluster around $1,000–$3,000, mid-size agencies $3,000–$10,000, and full-service or paid-media agencies higher — often plus 10 to 20 percent of your ad spend. The number lands where it does based on scope, the channels you run, and whether you're paying for people doing work or for a dashboard.
We run a marketing company and we run our own service businesses on the same stack we sell, so this isn't a sales page guessing at numbers. Here's what the tiers buy, what moves the price, and when you shouldn't hire anyone.
One person or a tiny team handling a slice — your site, SEO, or social. Quality swings hard with who you hire. The risk: thin bandwidth and, often, you don't own the website or the work, so cancelling means starting over.
A team across SEO, content, paid ads, and reporting. This is where multi-channel work actually ships — but you're also paying for account managers and overhead, and a small local business can end up funding services it doesn't need.
Strategy, creative, and managed ad spend at scale, usually with a percentage-of-ad-spend fee on top. Right for bigger brands; overkill for most local service businesses, where the math rarely works.
We don't post stock testimonials. On a 15-minute call we screen-share the real dashboards behind our own businesses — live leads, rankings, and the exact page that produced each one. See the proof →
We'd rather tell you the truth than take a bad-fit client. Skip a full agency if:
An agency pays off when the profit it generates clearly beats the fee and you genuinely need the breadth. For most local service businesses, you don't yet.
We sit deliberately below the agency tier. $249/month is a hand-built site plus AI lead capture; $597/month adds the monthly SEO content engine and lead attribution; from $1,750/month we add a custom CRM and reputation automation. Month-to-month, no contracts, and you own the site, the domain, and every lead. We priced it where we did because we run the same system on our own companies and didn't want to pay agency rates either. Compare the trade-offs in our agency vs. freelancer guide, see what local SEO runs in local SEO cost, read whether local SEO is worth it, or browse more cost guides.
Roughly $1,000–$10,000+. Freelancers $1,000–$3,000, mid-size $3,000–$10,000, full-service higher, often plus a percentage of ad spend.
Many do — usually 10–20 percent of your budget, on top of a retainer. Ask whether that fee buys real optimization or just a report.
When the profit beats the fee and you need the breadth. For a local business needing mainly a site, local SEO, and lead capture, a focused provider often wins.
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