For contractors, the honest range is wide — and the monthly number is the wrong thing to shop on. Here's what actually decides whether it's worth it.
For contractors, sales-and-marketing help usually runs between about $1,500 and $10,000+ a month, depending on how much of the system you hand off — but the monthly number is the wrong thing to shop on. The number that decides whether it's worth it is your cost per booked job: what you pay, divided by the sold jobs it produces. A cheap retainer that produces no booked jobs is expensive; a larger one that produces profitable jobs is cheap. Price the outcome, not the hours.
What the market charges
Typical market ranges for contractor sales & marketing help — what you're paying for, not just what it costs. Where your number lands is set by the drivers below.
Market ranges, not a quote — and not our rate card. These reflect what the category charges; what we charge is on our pricing page. Your real number depends on the three drivers below — and on where your revenue is actually constrained.
A rate tells you what something costs. It tells you nothing about whether it works. What decides your real price isn't the vendor's menu — it's these:
Just marketing is one price. Marketing plus lead handling, sales process, and attribution — the whole revenue system — is another. You pay for the layers you own, not for hours.
A $30,000 job carries more room than a $1,200 one. What a booked job is worth to you sets what the help is worth paying for — and what a mistake costs.
The one nobody prices honestly. If your problem isn't demand, paying an agency for more leads is money lit on fire. Finding the constraint first is how you avoid buying the wrong help at any price.
Typical market ranges for the whole category, in one place — so you can see where a number belongs before anyone quotes you.
| Option | Typical monthly range | What you're paying for |
|---|---|---|
| Entry · done-with-you | $1,500–$3,000 | One or two channels, run with your involvement — often marketing only. |
| Full growth engine | $3,500–$7,500 | Multi-channel marketing plus the sales and attribution layer, done for you. |
| Scaling · CMO-level | $8,000+ | Senior strategy and execution across locations or an aggressive push. |
| Ad management only | $500–$2,000 +10–15% of spend | One channel's ads set up and managed — media buying, not the system. |
| Fractional CMO | $5,000–$10,000 | Part-time senior leadership ($200–$350/hr) vs. a ~$174k/yr full-time hire. |
| In-house hire | ~$174k/yr + tools | One full-time marketer you employ, manage, and keep busy yourself. |
Market ranges, not our rate card — what we charge is on our pricing page. Where you land inside these ranges is set by the three drivers above.
Price isn't the risk; buying the wrong thing is. These are the signs a retainer will cost you more than it makes, at any number:
The retainer isn't the risk; buying the wrong thing is. Ask these on the sales call, and listen for the answer that means walk away.
Search "marketing consultant cost" and you'll get rate cards — $75 to $250 an hour, $1,500 to $5,000+ a month. Those numbers are real, but they answer the wrong question. Two contractors can pay the identical retainer and one gets ten booked jobs a month from it while the other gets one. So don't shop the rate. Judge the spend the way you'd judge a truck or a crew — by what it produces.
The honest metric is cost per booked job: total spend ÷ the sold jobs it created. On that basis the cheapest option is often the most expensive one, because it produces the fewest jobs. That's why we don't quote a number before we understand your system: we price to the layers you hand off and the outcome they produce — not a fixed meter that runs whether it works or not — we find your constraint first, and we'd rather you prove it small, then fund it than sign a big program on faith.
And the constraint isn't only what's wasting your money — unblocked, it's the single lever that moves you to the next number. Priced right, marketing help isn't an expense you're trying to minimize; it's the fastest paid path from the revenue you have to the revenue you're after. See cost per booked job, and — if you're weighing an agency against a consultant or a fractional CMO — what a contractor actually needs.
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