Why is the thinking not in the retainer?
An agency is the first thing most owners reach for when the marketing gets beyond them, and for a business with money to spend and nobody to spend it, it can be the right call. The trouble starts when the owner expects the retainer to include the thinking. An account manager runs the account they were given. Deciding what the marketing is for, in one number, is a different job, and in most agencies it belongs to nobody. So the owner pays for execution, gets activity, and still does not know whether it works.
What does the retainer buy?
Hours, usually. An agency prices a retainer from a staff cost and a margin, and the proposal turns that into deliverables: so many posts, so many ad variations, a monthly report. Media spend, the money that goes to Google and Meta, sits on top and often passes through the agency with a percentage added.
Say a retainer is $3,000 a month at an internal rate of $150 an hour (an example, not a benchmark). That is 20 hours. A weekly check of the ads, two posts a week, the monthly report and a half-hour call use most of them. Nothing is wrong with that. It is just worth knowing that the question "what should we be doing differently" has no hours against it.
What does it not buy?
Direction. An agency will work to a plan if you have one, and will write a plan-shaped document if you ask, but the agency's interest is the retainer continuing, and a plan that says "stop the ads for three months and fix the website" is a plan few agencies write. Knowledge, either: when the retainer ends, the understanding of what worked leaves with the account manager, and the owner knows as little as the day they signed.
How do you tell whether yours is worth it?
Three questions, answered from the numbers rather than the report:
| Question | Where the answer is |
|---|---|
| What number is the work meant to move? | In the plan, if there is one. If the answer is "awareness", there is no plan. |
| Has it moved? | Your enquiries, bookings or sales, month by month, in your own records, not the agency's dashboard |
| What did each new customer cost? | The retainer plus the media spend, divided by the new customers the work brought, against what a customer is worth |
An agency that can answer all three is worth keeping. One that answers with impressions and engagement is being paid for activity.
Where does CoraVision sit beside an agency?
CoraVision is not an agency. It coaches you to do the work, which means you understand your own marketing and the knowledge stays with you. If you want the marketing done for you, an agency is the right choice and CoraVision is not. If you keep an agency, Cora can still read the Google Ads, Meta and Google Analytics 4 numbers every night and tell you whether the work is moving your number.
Questions
Is a marketing agency worth it for a business with five staff?
Only with a plan the agency is working to and a number the owner reads monthly. Without those, the retainer buys activity, and activity is what the owner already had.
What should I ask before signing a retainer?
How many hours the retainer buys and who does them. What number the work is meant to move. What the report will show and who reads it. And what happens to the accounts and the ad data if you leave.
Agency or AI marketing team?
An agency does the work and you see a report. An AI marketing team coaches you to do the work and you see everything. If you want it done for you, an agency. If you want to understand your own marketing, the team.