Our honest pricing guide.

Helping you make informed business choices

The cost of marketing services varies hugely, from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of pounds. However, it’s difficult to get a clear sense of what a marketing consultant costs, because so few are open about their prices. This makes it hard for business owners to plan, budget for and progress marketing improvement work.

At LOCK, we want to help you do business better. That’s why this page gives you clear, honest and straightforward information about our prices to help you make informed choices that suit your business and your budget.

What do you charge?

Maximising the impact of your day-to-day marketing

We deliver quality, marketing director-level support, and, with a combined 30 years of experience behind us, we’re very good at it. We know how to supercharge your marketing function and empower you, your team and your external suppliers to run effective and efficient tactical marketing.

We charge our worth in line with the market

In the UK, the average employed marketing director earns just under £50 per hour (checkasalary.co.uk, 2021). Plus, they get pension contributions, paid annual leave and sick pay on top of that.

Our hourly rate per director is £65 per hour.

This rate covers our salaries, annual leave, pension contributions etc, as well as our business’ running costs such as accountancy, insurance, software, subscriptions - and, of course, our own marketing and promotion.

It also accounts for the fact that, as business owners, a large proportion of our working week is dedicated to non-income generating tasks such as business development, pitching and proposal writing, and business admin.

How do you charge?

We charge clients for the time we spend working on their project

When we create a proposal for you, it includes an estimated cost for your marketing project, clearly broken down into individual stages based on the time we think it will take to do the work.

We estimate because we provide creative, strategic marketing services that can vary widely depending on each client’s specific needs. We estimate to the best of our ability, based on information you provide in our initial discussions and our experience working on similar projects.

Wait, does that make sense?

It’s been pointed out to us that working efficiently when we charge by the hour reduces our final fee. But that’s exactly what we’re about: helping businesses save time, money and energy by running efficiently and effectively.

In addition, developing a reputation for honesty, efficiency and quality has served us well. Most of our work comes through referrals from happy clients. And, to say thank you for supporting us, we’re happy to pay a referral fee when that happens.

Will you tie me into a long retainer?

Most marketing agencies work on retainer agreements by default. This works well for their business model, providing them with assured regular income so they can cover their overheads and pay their staff.

In addition, many marketing suppliers use retainers to secure their time to provide ongoing services and activities to your business, particularly around digital marketing management, social media management, campaign implementation and regular content production.

We’re different, because our services are different

We’re strategists; we don’t provide day-to-day tactical marketing support. Instead, our services create solid marketing foundations that empower businesses to run their tactical marketing efficiently, effectively and confidently, whether they have in-house marketing staff or engage external suppliers.

Retainers don’t make sense for our services

Our projects run for a fixed period of time, taking a business from a place of confusion to one of clarity. Our costs reflect the time we spend working on your project, and once it’s completed to your satisfaction, our involvement can end if that suits you best.

Your brand guardian

That said, we do offer our clients the opportunity to retain our services when it suits them. After developing and implementing their brand strategies, we’ve become experts in their business and their brand while also maintaining the invaluable outside perspective that enables us to assess and critique activity productively.

We often find clients come back to us for brand advice and practical support as their business evolves. They may launch new product ranges or services, need support hiring and training internal marketing staff members, or simply want us to check in regularly and ensure they’re on track with their brand strategy.

No white labelling

What is white labelling?

Marketing agencies often ‘white label’ services that they don’t actually offer in-house. This essentially means they recruit a subcontractor you don’t know to do work for you without your knowledge, and then charge you the subcontractor’s fee plus a markup.

What does white labelling mean for you?

Well, you’ll get what you’ve been promised, but you’ll likely be paying more for the service than if you’d gone directly to the subcontractor. However, crucially, you also have less awareness of and choice over the suppliers working for your business.

Why we don’t white label

At LOCK, we don’t white label any services or hire subcontractors, because we strive for efficiency and believe that transparency benefits everyone. Most importantly, it benefits you. Together we have the shared freedom to identify the contractor most suited to your business, your project and your budget. We can either:

• identify and recruit the best supplier for your project needs and budget
• recommend a partner from our trusted network
• work effectively with a supplier you already know and trust
• work with a member of your in-house team

Put simply, you choose who works for you (supported by our advice and guidance), and can then rely on us to get the job done smoothly. We do charge for the time we spend working for you, because our involvement adds significant value to the project.

But at all times you can rest assured knowing where your money is going, to who and on what.