How much in total, honestly
The percentage-of-revenue rule is crude but it stops the conversation drifting. Between 5 and 10% of revenue funds steady, compounding growth. Between 10 and 15% is what taking share from a bigger competitor costs. Below 5% you are maintaining, not growing, and you should say so out loud rather than expecting agency magic.
Count media separately from the cost of the work. A £3,000 monthly programme with £2,000 of Google Ads budget is a £5,000 commitment, and conflating the two is how brands end up furious about results they never actually funded.
5-10%
Of revenue for steady growth, across people, platforms and media
10-15%
Of revenue when you are actively taking share
£250k-£5m
The turnover band these benchmarks are written for
Channel by channel, with real numbers
These are our published prices, all plus VAT, all monthly, with no set-up or onboarding fee. They sit inside the normal UK range for specialist delivery, and you can benchmark them against anything you have been quoted.
SEO & AI Visibility
- Monthly price + VAT
- £1,250 / £2,200 / £3,950 per month
- What the money buys
- Technical work, fixed backlinks, answer-shaped content, prompt tracking
Google Ads
- Monthly price + VAT
- £850 / £1,300 / £1,800 per month
- What the money buys
- Fixed fee, not a share of spend. Media budget is separate
Email & SMS
- Monthly price + VAT
- £800 / £1,300 / £1,750 per month
- What the money buys
- Fixed flow and campaign volumes, deliverability included
Content Creation
- Monthly price + VAT
- £1,150 / £1,800 / £2,850 per month
- What the money buys
- 20, 40 or 80 assets a month across social, video and stills
Growth Bundle
- Monthly price + VAT
- £2,880 / £4,770 / £7,695 per month
- What the money buys
- One tier each of SEO, email and content, 10% below buying apart
Website build
- Monthly price + VAT
- £2,750 / £4,950 / £8,750 one-off
- What the money buys
- Billed 50/50, then a monthly care plan from £79
Bundles are priced at exactly 10% below the three component tiers bought apart, which is a saving of £320, £530 and £855 a month. Google Ads sits alongside a bundle rather than inside one, because media management is a different discipline with a different cost base.
What actually sits behind a price
Ours are derived rather than guessed. Each tier is priced at delivery cost, meaning third-party spend plus labour hours at £50 an hour, plus a target gross profit of £500 on tier one, £750 on tier two and £1,000 on tier three, then rounded to a clean number. That is why the ladder is consistent across services rather than plucked from a competitor’s website.
Why cheap is expensive
- £300 a month SEO buys roughly four hours of junior time. That is a report, not a programme.
- Percentage-of-spend ads fees reward volume, not conversion. Your incentives and theirs diverge on day one.
- Unlimited content offers are throttled by a queue you cannot see. Fixed volumes are honest.
- Onboarding fees usually fund the sales process, not your setup.
If a supplier cannot tell you the number of deliverables you get for the money, they are not selling marketing. They are selling access to hours they intend to allocate elsewhere.
In-house, freelance or subscription
A mid-level UK marketing generalist costs roughly £38,000 to £48,000, so £4,000 to £5,000 a month once employer costs, tools and holiday are counted. You get one person, one skill set, and the recruitment risk. Freelancers are cheaper per hour and excellent for a defined project, but capacity disappears the moment they land a bigger client.
A subscription at the same money buys several specialists, published volumes and a dated delivery per item. The trade-off is that you are not buying somebody who sits in your Monday meeting. If day-to-day presence matters more than depth, hire. If output matters more, subscribe. The longer version of that argument is in subscription vs retainer.
Six questions to audit any quote
- What is the fixed monthly price, and is it plus VAT?
- What exact volumes land each month, in numbers rather than adjectives?
- Who personally does the work, and what is their seniority?
- What is the expected delivery date for each item?
- What does the monthly report measure: pipeline and revenue, or activity?
- What are the notice, pause and term conditions, in writing?
Six straight answers and you can compare two suppliers in a spreadsheet. Ours are all published on the pricing page precisely so you can.
Questions we get asked
How much should a UK business spend on marketing each month?
As a working rule, 5 to 10% of revenue for steady growth and 10 to 15% when you are actively taking share. For a business turning over £1m that is roughly £4,000 to £12,500 a month across people, platforms and media, with ad spend counted separately from the cost of the work.
How much does SEO cost per month in the UK?
Credible UK SEO sits between £1,000 and £4,000 a month for growth-stage brands. Ours runs £1,250, £2,200 and £3,950 a month plus VAT for Launch, Pro and Ultimate, each with a fixed number of backlinks, technical work and content assets. Anything under £500 a month is almost always automated reporting with no real delivery.
How much does Google Ads management cost?
Either a percentage of spend, typically 10 to 20%, or a fixed monthly fee. We charge a fixed £850, £1,300 or £1,800 a month plus VAT regardless of spend, because a percentage model rewards the agency for spending more of your money rather than converting more of it.
Is an in-house hire cheaper than an agency?
Rarely at this stage. A mid-level UK marketing generalist costs roughly £38,000 to £48,000 plus employer costs, so £4,000 to £5,000 a month all in, and you get one person's skill set. A subscription at the same money buys several specialists across SEO, email and content, without recruitment risk.
Should marketing be priced as a retainer or a subscription?
A subscription if the work is repeatable, which for SEO, lifecycle email, content and paid search it is. You get a published price and fixed volumes rather than a block of hours with the scope decided monthly. A retainer still makes sense for genuinely unpredictable work such as a rebrand or a funding event.
What should never appear on a marketing quote?
Set-up, onboarding or activation fees for standard work, a percentage of ad spend dressed up as strategy, unspecified hours, or a 12-month term with no exit. If the deliverable volumes are missing, you are being sold time and asked to trust the timesheet.
Written by
Sam, co-founder, growth and paid media
Runs growth and paid media at Mesmerise Marketing. Ten years of paid and organic campaigns for challenger brands across DTC, B2B services and hospitality.
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