When businesses are interviewing potential marketing agency partners and weighing their options, there are financial factors to consider in addition to the quality of the agency’s work. One of the most important considerations is whether to choose an agency partner that works on a retainer or one that invoices individual services with an a la carte pricing model. Each option has benefits and drawbacks, and the best fit will depend on the amount of work needed as well as the company’s comfort level in investing more money upfront.

Agency on Retainer

Benefits

Working with a marketing agency on a retainer basis gives your brand access to a guaranteed number of hours of work from the agency, as well as predictable monthly deliverables. Agencies on retainer essentially work as your outsourced marketing department, often covering a larger scope of work to keep your brand’s promotional activities running regularly. There are fewer parameters on what the work can entail, and the marketing activities they’re focused on can be updated over time to evolve with business needs. As a result, your brand can benefit from the agency’s wide range of experience and expertise, rather than being limited to the specific services you pre-selected and paid for.

Drawbacks

Partnering with retainer-based marketing agencies often requires a more significant investment upfront, and may require a minimum contractual commitment, which is often six months or one year. If your company is unhappy with the agency’s work early on, you could still be on the hook to continue paying their monthly fees for the remainder of the contract. Some agencies may also not provide as many measurable results for their retainer-based activities, knowing that the work is already ongoing. When you’re vetting potential agencies, it’s important to ask specifically how they will measure their results on a regular basis, to both weed out unaccountable partners and set an expectation for accountability.

Best For…

Retainer-based agencies provide the convenience and end-to-end service many companies need from a marketing partner. For brands who need a team to handle a variety of marketing activities, and who would like to see a full-service strategy with coordinated activities across different media, working with an agency on retainer is a great choice. It’s also an ideal choice for companies who received a referral or recommendation for the agency from a trusted colleague – it can give peace of mind that the monthly investment will be worthwhile.

Not Right For…

If your company wants to test-drive a new marketing service without a long-term commitment, a retainer-based agency will not provide the flexibility and quick, transactional results you’re looking for. While agencies on retainer can be a great resource for testing new, experimental tactics, they’re best suited for brands who want to use them as an extension of their internal marketing team to handle a wider scope of their marketing strategy. Retainer-based agencies are also not ideal for companies seeking expertise from highly specialized partners on very specific pieces of your overall marketing program.

A la Carte Marketing Services

Benefits

One of the biggest advantages of working with a marketing partner offering a la carte services is the specificity and highly detailed nature of their projects. Because you’re only paying for specific individual services, the parameters and expectations of the project will be clearly outlined, which leaves little left up to interpretation or misunderstanding. These clear guidelines can make it simple for brands to measure the effectiveness of the project and fit the short-term cost into their budget. Using a la carte services means your business can also use different niche agencies for each marketing specialty to ensure you’re getting the most expertise for each project. For example, you might work with an agency specializing in paid digital advertising for pay-per-click ads and a content marketing agency for SEO projects. Your brand can begin working with these agencies on smaller projects to gauge their work before committing to a longer contract agreement, which provides more flexibility and avoids sunk costs if their services fall short of expectations.

Drawbacks

If you’re exclusively running your marketing plan with a la carte services, it can be difficult to effectively scale up the scope of work. Paying for dozens of individual a la carte projects from different providers will add up quickly and become much more expensive than one retainer-based agency. Managing all those different projects can also result in segmented and uncoordinated strategies. If your various agencies aren’t in communication with each other, they may all be duplicating efforts and even using competing messages that will confuse your audience. Without an internal team dedicated to closely overseeing and monitoring each project, using exclusively a la carte marketing services is difficult for most brands to maintain long-term.

Best For…

A la carte marketing agencies are a great resource for businesses who want to dip their toes into working with a marketing partner or but aren’t yet ready or able to commit to the larger budget required by an agency on retainer. Working on an a la carte basis is also a great option for those who value specific expertise from different partners who exclusively specialize in a small subset of marketing services.

Not Right For…

Companies who are looking for a partner to take over the full scope of their marketing department will find that adding a la carte marketing services can quickly become complicated and unnecessarily expensive. Using many different a la carte marketing providers may also be disappointing for brands looking to unify their marketing activities under one, over-arching, coordinated strategy, because it can be challenging to manage communication between each partner.

The Small Agency Solution

If you’re like most businesses, your unique marketing goals probably make both retainer and a la carte marketing programs look appealing. To satisfy all their marketing needs, some brands ultimately find themselves hiring a full-service marketing agency on retainer to handle their standard marketing activities and adding supplementary a la carte providers to work on other individual projects. It’s a logical approach; however, it can also quickly lead to very high costs and a workflow that is difficult to manage long-term.

Smaller marketing agencies can offer the best of both retainer and a la carte worlds. Smaller teams often have a more flexible working model, which means their clients can combine retainer work and individual projects without switching providers. For example, a brand might start with an a la carte project and later switch to a retainer agreement once results show the work has been effective. Others could begin work with a standard retainer and add one-off a la carte projects as needed to experiment with new strategies. Working with a smaller full-service agency means these and other options are available to fit your business’ goals and budget.

At Radius, our small team of marketers has experience providing value to our clients through a combination of retainer-based and a la carte marketing services. To get a small peek at how we bring value to clients using our social media management services, you can check out and download our social media organization guide or send us a message to get the conversation started about how we can help your brand.