Marketing Consultant Cost
Day rates from £750. Retainers from £1,500 a month. Published, because you should not have to sit through a call to find out.
Most consultants will not tell you what they charge until they have you on the phone. We think that wastes everybody’s time, including ours, so here are the numbers.
Marketing consultant cost varies enormously across the UK, and a fair bit of the industry relies on you not knowing that. Day rates run from around £175 for someone two years into their career, up to £1,500 at the top of the London market. What you actually pay should come down to two things: who you are getting, and what they are genuinely doing for you.
Straightforward pricing
Starting points, not a rigid menu. Every engagement is scoped properly before anyone commits to anything.
- Strategy sessions and planning days
- Campaign reviews and second opinions
- Workshops with your team
- One off problems that need solving properly
- No minimum commitment
- Agreed days each month, scoped to you
- Strategy owned and kept current
- Direction for your team or agency
- On call for the decisions that matter
- Works out cheaper per day than ad hoc
- Full review of channels, spend and messaging
- Honest assessment of what is working
- Gap analysis and prioritised roadmap
- Delivered as a working plan, not a slide deck
- Often pays for itself in wasted spend found
All prices exclude VAT. These are starting points. Larger or more complex engagements are quoted properly once we understand the scope, and you will always know the number before any work begins.
What you are actually paying for
You are buying 25 years of marketing experience, applied directly to your business by the person who has it. There is no account manager in the middle, no junior doing the thinking and putting a senior name on it, and no team of six billing you for a meeting.
For context, a marketing consultant at director level in the UK typically charges £700 to £1,000 a day, and London firms charge 20 to 40 per cent more than the North West. Independent consultants generally come in 30 to 50 per cent below agency rates for the same seniority, because you are not funding an office, an account team and a new business department.
How this compares to the alternatives
Against hiring someone
A full time marketing director costs a salary, employer national insurance, pension contributions and usually a recruitment fee of 15 to 25 per cent of the first year. A retainer at £1,500 a month is £18,000 a year, and it flexes when your business changes. You get the seniority without the permanent commitment or the risk of getting the hire wrong.
Against an agency
Agencies are good at delivery, and if you already know exactly what you need doing, an agency may well be the right answer. What they will not usually do is tell you the brief is wrong. Bringing in a consultant first to work out what should actually happen tends to make any later agency spend go a great deal further.
Against doing nothing
This is the comparison most businesses skip. If you are spending a few thousand a month on marketing and nobody can tell you what it returned, the audit is not the expensive option. Carrying on is.
What we will not do
We will not sell you things you do not need. If your business does not need a rebrand, a new website, a TikTok strategy or an expensive tool, we will say so, even when selling you one would be the more profitable conversation for us.
We will not bury the work in jargon. If something is explained in language you cannot follow, that is usually a sign the person explaining it does not want you looking too closely at it.
We will not pad an engagement to fill the hours. If the work takes less time than expected, you will be told.
And we will not take you on if we are not the right fit. There is no upside for either of us in an engagement that was never going to work.
What affects the price
Being straight about this too. The number moves depending on:
- Scope. How much there is to do, and how much of it we are doing versus directing.
- Time. A couple of days a month is a different arrangement to a couple of days a week.
- Complexity. Multiple markets, regulated sectors or a large existing setup all take longer to get right.
- Urgency. Work that has to drop everything else costs more, for the obvious reason.
What it does not depend on is how big your budget looks. The price is the price.
Common questions
Is there a minimum commitment?
Not on day rate work. Retainers run on an agreed term because strategy needs time to show in the numbers, but we will talk that through openly before anything is signed.
What if we only need a bit of help?
Then buy a bit of help. A single strategy day is a perfectly sensible purchase and a lot of businesses start there.
Do you do payment plans?
Retainers are monthly by design, which spreads the cost. For larger projects we can usually agree staged payments. Ask.
What if we do not have a marketing team?
That is fine. For smaller businesses we will either set the strategy and show you how to run it yourself, or take the marketing on and run it for you. It does not change the pricing structure above.
Why publish prices when most consultants do not?
Because you were going to ask anyway, and making you work for the answer is not a sales technique, it is just annoying.
Know what you need? Or not sure yet?
Either is fine. Tell us where your business is and we will tell you straight what it would take and what it would cost.