Pricing
$1,500 to $6,000 a month, plus ad spend. Published, because nobody else does.
Every competitor in this market hides pricing behind a discovery call. Publishing it means the businesses that get in touch are the ones it suits, and nobody wastes an hour finding that out.
Fixed monthly fee, never a percentage of ad spend · Media budget paid directly by you
What moves the number
- How many channelsOne run properly beats four run thinlyScope
- How much we doVersus how much we advise and you executeEffort
- How much to connectCRM, phones and reporting wired togetherBuild
- Ad spendPaid by you, direct to the platform, never a percentageSeparate
How much does a marketing engagement cost?
Monthly engagements at Marketing & Technology run $1,500 to $6,000 CAD plus ad spend. What moves the figure is scope and delivery — how many services are running and how much of the work we do rather than advise on. Website builds, CRM implementations and cabling are quoted separately as fixed-price projects.
The reason for publishing this is not transparency as a value statement. It is that hidden pricing wastes everyone's time. A business with a $600 monthly budget and a business with a $6,000 one both have to sit through the same discovery call to find out they are in different conversations, and one of them leaves annoyed.
There is a second, less obvious reason. When someone asks an AI assistant what a marketing agency in Hamilton costs, it can only answer from what has been published. Every local competitor supplies "contact us for a quote". A real range is quotable, and being the quotable answer in a market of unquotable ones is worth more than the information costs.
Monthly engagements
Three shapes, one range
Focused
$1,500–$2,500/mo CAD
One or two channels, run properly.
- Paid search or SEO, not both
- Conversion tracking built and verified
- Landing page work on existing pages
- Monthly reporting on cost per lead and per booked job
- A working session each month
Where most engagements start. Enough to prove the approach on one channel before widening.
Most common
System
$2,500–$4,500/mo CAD
The demand side and the follow-up, connected.
- Paid search, local search and SEO together
- Lead response and quote follow-up automation
- CRM configuration and pipeline reporting
- Call tracking with campaign attribution
- Ongoing conversion and landing page work
The most common shape. Enough scope that cost per booked job becomes genuinely manageable rather than merely observable.
Full
$4,500–$6,000/mo CAD
Everything, including the technology underneath.
- All channels plus AI search visibility work
- Workflow automation across CRM, phones and accounting
- Offline conversion import and a live dashboard
- Phone system and workspace management
- Content production on a real cadence
For businesses where marketing, sales operations and technology are one problem and want one firm accountable for it.
Plus ad spend, paid by you directly to Google and Meta on your own accounts. Platform subscriptions — CRM, automation tools, call tracking — are also yours and paid direct, so every account stays in your name whatever happens to our relationship.
Project work
Quoted separately, as a fixed price
- Website build
- Quoted per project. Driven by page count, how much copy has to be written from interviews, and how much existing content is being migrated with its redirects.
- CRM implementation
- Quoted per project. Driven by data migration volume and how many systems connect to it. Reconfiguring an existing CRM costs considerably less than migrating to a new one, and is more often the right answer.
- Brand and creative
- Quoted per project. A quote-template redesign is small and returns quickly. A full identity across vehicles, signage, workwear and documents is a larger piece of work.
- Analytics instrumentation
- Quoted per project. Conversion tracking, call tracking, offline conversion import and a Looker Studio dashboard. Frequently the first thing we do, and available standalone.
- Network cabling and phone systems
- Quoted per project from a site walk. Run count, cable grade and how difficult the building is to work in. Fixed price before work starts, never an hourly estimate that drifts.
- Workspace migration or cleanup
- Quoted per project. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 audit, security remediation and drive restructuring. The licence review usually offsets a meaningful share of the cost.
Every project is a fixed figure agreed before work starts, not an hourly estimate that drifts. If scope changes materially we re-quote rather than quietly billing more.
On how we charge
A fixed fee, never a percentage of your ad spend
Percentage-of-spend pricing is common and the incentive is plainly wrong: the agency earns more when your budget goes up, which makes "reduce your spend" advice something it costs them money to give. That advice is frequently the correct advice, particularly in the first three months of an account.
A fixed fee tied to the scope of work removes that conflict entirely. If the right recommendation is to cut a channel, pause spend for a month or stop advertising into a market that is not working, we can say it without it costing us anything. That is the whole argument, and it is why the model is worth explaining rather than just stating.
Fit
When these numbers make sense
The ranges fit if
- You are doing roughly $1M or more in revenue and marketing is a real line in the budget.
- Your average job value justifies paying meaningfully for a lead.
- You want one firm accountable across channels rather than several specialists.
- You can commit to a three-month runway before judging the work.
- You want the numbers reported plainly, including when they are bad.
They probably do not fit if
- Your marketing budget is a few hundred dollars a month. Take the free audit and implement it yourself.
- You want the cheapest available management fee. We are not competing on that and would lose.
- You need a guaranteed cost per lead written into a contract. Nobody can honestly offer that.
- You want ad spend billed through the agency. We will not do it — the markup would be invisible to you.
Questions about pricing
How much does Marketing & Technology cost?
Monthly engagements run $1,500 to $6,000 CAD plus ad spend, depending on how many services are running and how much of the work we do rather than advise on. One-off projects — a website, a CRM implementation, a cabling job — are quoted separately as fixed-price work.
Why do you publish pricing when nobody else does?
Because hiding it wastes both our time. Publishing ranges means the businesses that call are the ones the ranges suit, and nobody sits through a discovery call to learn they were never in the market. It also means an answer engine can quote a real figure rather than "contact for pricing".
Is ad spend included?
No, and it is never billed through us. You pay Google and Meta directly on your own accounts, so you can always see exactly what the platforms charged. Agencies that front ad spend and invoice it on can mark it up invisibly, which is a poor arrangement for the client.
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
No. Percentage-of-spend pricing rewards an agency for increasing your budget, which is the opposite of the incentive you want. Our fee is fixed to the scope of work, so recommending a spend reduction costs us nothing and is therefore honest advice.
What moves the number within the range?
Scope and delivery, not the size of your ad budget. How many channels are running, how much content is being produced, whether we are configuring your CRM or just advising on it, and whether the technology layer is included. A larger media budget does not by itself cost more to manage.
Is there a contract or a minimum term?
Monthly, with no long lock-in. We ask for a genuine three-month runway on any new engagement because meaningful change cannot be evidenced faster than that, but you are not signing a year. Accounts, data and documentation are in your name throughout.
What about smaller businesses that cannot reach the range?
Below roughly $1,500 a month a managed engagement does not make sense for either of us — there is not enough time in it to do the work properly. The honest alternatives are a one-off project, the automation kit, or the free audit and a plan you implement yourself.
Are the audits really free?
Yes, both of them, with no obligation. They take several days of real work, which is why we ask a few qualifying questions before starting one. The written document is yours regardless of what you do next, including handing it to your current agency.
The audit comes before the quote, always.
We cannot price the work honestly without seeing the accounts, and quoting low then discovering the real scope is how engagements go wrong in month three. The audit is free and it is what the proposal is built from.
You talk to Mathew.Not an account manager, and not a sales team.