The honest answer is that it depends on what you are actually buying, and most quotes are hard to compare because they are not selling the same thing. One vendor is selling hours. Another is selling a strategy document. A third is selling output with a plan attached. Before you can compare prices you have to work out which of those is in front of you.
Here is how the money breaks down across every route, including ours.
The benchmark: building it in house
Start here, because it is the number every other option is measured against. To actually ship marketing for a B2B software company you need four capabilities: someone to decide, someone to design, someone to build, and someone to write.
These are the fully loaded monthly costs we benchmark against:
- Head of marketing, to set direction: $16,500
- Senior graphic designer, for campaigns and collateral: $6,250
- Web developer, for landing pages and technical work: $9,500
- SEO or content contractor, for the writing and search work: $4,000
That is roughly $36,000 a month for the full set. Most companies never assemble all four. They hire the head of marketing, discover that person cannot design or build, and end up with an expensive strategist making graphics at eleven at night.
Two costs get left out of this comparison and should not be. Recruiting takes months, and the salary starts whether or not the strategy works. Neither shows up in a spreadsheet next to a monthly rate.
Freelancers
Usually priced hourly or per project. The appeal is obvious: you pay only for what you use, and good freelancers are very good.
The cost that does not appear on the invoice is management. Three freelancers is three briefing conversations, three sets of feedback, three invoices and one person holding it together, which is you. Freelancers execute well and coordinate badly, because coordination is not what you hired them for.
This works when you know exactly what you want made. It falls apart when the question is what should we make.
Fractional CMO
Priced by the day or as a monthly retainer for a set number of days. You are buying senior judgement, part time.
The thing to understand is what the fee does not include: the making. A fractional CMO sets direction and expects someone else to execute it. Budget for that someone else, or you will pay for a plan and watch it sit there. We have written about how the two roles differ in more detail.
Traditional agency retainers
Monthly retainer, often with a minimum term, sometimes with ad management priced as a percentage of your spend.
Watch that last part. A percentage of spend means your agency earns more when you spend more, which is a strange incentive to introduce into a conversation about whether to spend more. Flat-fee management removes the conflict. Ask which one you are being offered.
The other thing to ask an agency is how many people actually touch your account and how senior they are. Retainers are often priced on the seniority of the people who won the work rather than the people who do it.
What we charge
We run the outsourced version at $7,900 a month, with a three-month minimum and then month to month. That covers the plan and the production: a monthly strategy call, blog posts, answer pages, social, ghostwritten founder posts, sales collateral, a landing page, email campaigns, a conversion rebuild, ad creative, a technical pass and a performance report. The full list is on the marketing team page.
Against roughly $36,000 of in-house salaries, that is about a fifth of the cost. The tradeoff is real and worth stating: we are not in your standups, and we work with other clients. What you get instead is the whole function running from month one instead of a year of hiring.
If what you need is production rather than the plan, our design subscription is $3,699 a month and works differently: you send requests, we work through them.
What is never included, anywhere
Whoever you go with, these are yours:
- Ad spend, paid directly by you through your own accounts
- Software subscriptions
- Paid PR and placements
- On-location video production
- Outbound tools and purchased contact lists
Hosting is usually separate too. Ours is $399 a month for sites we launch and host, which covers hosting and support. Anyone who will not give you this list crisply is hoping you discover it in month two.
How to compare two quotes properly
- Ask what ships, not what is covered. "Covered" describes a scope. "Ships" describes a deliverable with a number next to it.
- Ask who decides. If the answer is you, you are buying hands. Price it as hands.
- Ask what happens in month one. If the answer is onboarding, ask what actually gets published.
- Ask about ad management pricing. Flat or percentage. The answer tells you whose interests the recommendations serve.
- Ask what you own at the end. Source files, account access, domain. In writing.
The real cost nobody quotes
The expensive outcome is not picking the pricier option. It is paying for a plan that never becomes work, for six or nine months, and concluding that marketing does not work for your company. That is the failure mode we see most, and it is available at every price point on this page.
Whatever you choose, the test after signing is simple. Does work appear? See exactly what lands each month on our plan, or get in touch if you would rather talk it through.
