Why we record pricing models for every agency

The number changes. The model does not.

A price is a snapshot. Agencies raise fees, run offers, discount for the first three months and quote differently to different firms. Any figure we record will drift out of date within a year.

A pricing model is structural. An agency that charges a percentage of ad spend this year will almost certainly charge a percentage of ad spend next year, because its whole operation, from staffing to sales scripts, is built around that revenue line. The same goes for fixed fees, per-lead charges and scoped retainers. Record the model and you have recorded something durable.

The model predicts behaviour

Every pricing model pays the agency for something, and people do what they are paid for.

A fixed monthly fee pays for retention. A percentage of spend pays for a bigger budget. Pay per lead pays for volume. A one-off project fee pays for completion. A performance guarantee pays for hitting the defined number, whatever that number turns out to mean.

None of these is dishonest. All of them shape the advice you receive. When an agency on a percentage model tells you to double your ad budget, the advice may be right, but it is not disinterested. A tradesperson who knows the model can weigh the advice. One who does not takes it at face value. Our guide to trades marketing pricing models sets out the incentives in each case.

What the field has shown across the directory

Recording the model for every listing produced a few patterns we did not expect.

First, the agencies that publish a figure tend to be at the two ends of the market. Low-cost providers publish because the price is the pitch: £30 a month, £149 a month, £299 + VAT a month. High-end providers publish because they want to filter out small firms: Nivoro Marketing shows retainers from £8,000 + VAT, which saves everyone a wasted call. The middle, where most full-service agencies sit, is where prices go quiet.

Second, 'no contracts' and 'fixed fee' travel together. Agencies that state a fixed monthly price almost always also state rolling monthly terms. The two are the same promise expressed twice: you know what you will pay and you can stop paying.

Third, several agencies now state what they do not do. 'No percentage of ad spend.' 'No per-lead charges.' 'We don't sell leads.' Those negative claims only make sense as a reaction to practices tradespeople have been burned by. The market is telling on itself.

What 'not published' means

It does not mean the agency is hiding something bad. Scoped work is hard to price on a web page, and a serious agency may reasonably want to understand a business before quoting.

It does mean the agency has chosen to have the price conversation on a call, where it controls the framing. That is a sales decision, and a legitimate one. The tradesperson should know it is a decision. We record 'not published' so the reader walks into that call knowing the agency wanted it that way, and arrives with the questions from our worksheet for comparing agency proposals already written down.

The objection: it is unfair to agencies that quote bespoke

We hear this. The argument is that recording 'not published' beside an agency's name looks like a mark against it, when the agency is simply doing careful scoping.

Two responses. The field is factual: the price is not published, and saying so is not a judgement. And agencies can resolve the issue in an afternoon by publishing a from-price or a typical range. Several in this directory have done exactly that, and it has not stopped them scoping each client properly afterwards. Leads 4 Local publishes three tiers. Roofing SEO Services publishes a range from £499 to £2,599 and explains that the figure depends on local competition. Transparency and bespoke pricing are not opposites.

Why it matters more for trades than for other sectors

A marketing director at a mid-sized company compares agency proposals for a living. A plumber does it once every few years, in the evening, after a day on site. The plumber has less time, less context and more to lose relative to turnover. A £500 a month commitment is a rounding error for one and a material cost for the other.

Anything that lets the plumber make a faster, better-informed comparison is worth recording. The pricing model is the single field that does the most work for the least reading.

What we will keep doing

We will record the model for every agency, quote the figure where one is public, say 'not published' where it is not, and note where an agency explicitly rejects a model such as percentage of spend. We will update when agencies change their approach, and we will say when we last checked.

If you are an agency and the field beside your name says 'not published', the fix is in your hands. If you are a tradesperson, read that field first. It will tell you how the conversation is going to go before you have it. The agencies in our round-up of cheapest fixed-fee options are a good illustration: every one of them put a number on the page, and that choice tells you something about how they expect to be judged.

Frequently asked questions