Your marketing. Running. Every month.

InvestmentMonthly retainer DurationOngoing, month-to-month ServicesPaid media, local search, content, lifecycle CRM ReportingRegular, finance-ready numbers Best forConsistent lead generation, specialist management What a retainer includes

Ongoing management of one or more services, billed monthly. You get a specialist running the work instead of watching a dashboard and hoping the numbers stay flat. Regular reporting that answers the question your finance side actually asks: what did the spend return in dollars against the number you are trying to hit. Strategy adjustments when your market or your season changes. Direct access to the team when something comes up between reports.

A retainer is not a set-it-and-forget service where SBS builds a campaign in month one and lets it run on autopilot. The account gets worked every month. Bids are adjusted. Copy is tested. Budgets shift with your season. What is not producing gets cut and the budget moves to what is. That is what ongoing management looks like in practice, as opposed to what most agencies deliver under the same name.

Which services run on retainer

Paid media and content services are natural retainer fits because they require continuous attention to perform. Google Search Ads need bid management, negative keyword maintenance, copy testing, and budget pacing against your demand cycle. Leave them alone for two months and cost per lead climbs while the quality of what comes through drops. The account does not manage itself and it does not hold its performance without someone actively working it.

The services most commonly managed on a retainer include Google Search Ads, Google Local Services Ads, Bing Search Ads, Google Business Profile management, retargeting, social media strategy, and seasonal campaign management. Lifecycle and CRM services also run well on a monthly rhythm, including customer retention automation, reactivation programs, and referral marketing. These require ongoing monitoring of trigger conditions, list management, and message testing across the customer lifecycle.

Most businesses start with the channels that match their most immediate lead generation need. A remodeler who gets most of their work from Google searches starts with Search Ads and GBP management. A restoration company with low repeat rates adds a retention automation and reactivation sequence. The scope builds around what you actually need, not a fixed bundle priced to include things you do not use.

How a retainer runs month to month

The first month is setup and calibration. We audit what exists, build what does not, establish baseline metrics, and agree in writing on what success looks like in measurable terms. If you have existing accounts, we take them over, document the current state, and begin making changes. If you are starting from zero, we build from scratch in the same window.

From month two forward, the work follows a set rhythm. Ad accounts are reviewed and adjusted on a defined schedule. Reports go out on a fixed cadence. You have a standing line of contact for questions or anything that needs attention between reports. When your market shifts, demand spikes, or your slow season arrives, we adjust before you have to ask us to. That is what a specialist relationship looks like versus a platform that sends you automated emails about account health and calls it management.

Scope changes are handled as they come up. If a new channel makes sense to add, we bring that to you with a clear reason and a projected outcome. We do not add services to protect our billing number. We add them when the evidence supports the expansion and recommend removing them when it does not.

What reporting looks like

Reports go out on a fixed schedule, typically monthly, with access to real-time numbers from a shared dashboard between reporting windows if you want them. The report answers four questions: what did the marketing spend, what did it return, what changed this period, and what is changing next period based on what we are seeing in the data.

The numbers are cost per booked job, return on ad spend by channel, lead volume with a quality breakdown, and budget pacing against your monthly target. We do not fill the report with click-through rates and impression share figures because those numbers do not appear on your P&L. You get the numbers that tell you whether the marketing is producing, and when it is not, the report says so directly along with what is being done about it.

If your close rate drops, the report surfaces it and asks why. That is usually a front desk or intake problem rather than an advertising problem, and we will tell you that plainly. We have watched strong campaigns pour qualified leads into a booking process that converted half of what it should. The advertising was not the issue. Good reporting shows you that instead of burying it in green arrows and calls the problem by its real name.

Why retainer beats a generalist agency or an in-house hire

A generalist agency charges the same rate for your trade account as it does for a software company or a dental practice. They do not know your season, your crew capacity, your average ticket, or what a soft winter does to cash flow. They do not know the difference between a homeowner three bids into a comparison exercise and one whose basement filled overnight. SBS has run trade marketing through a lot of winters and slow seasons. That context lives in the account and in the team working it, not in a kickoff deck that gets handed to a new coordinator every year when the last one quits.

An in-house hire who can actually run Google Ads, Local Services Ads, and CRM at the level a growing trade business needs costs more than a retainer, and when they leave, you start over. You lose the account history, the negative keyword lists built over two years, the copy variants that won and the ones that did not. The retainer holds that knowledge across years instead of headcount. The account does not reset every time someone changes jobs.

The third comparison is doing it yourself. If your time is worth what it should be at your level of the business, buying it back from marketing management and putting it toward operations, estimating, or hiring is almost always the better allocation. The retainer costs less than the true cost of your time spent managing campaigns you did not design, and it produces better outcomes because the person doing it does nothing else all day.

How pricing works

Retainer pricing is based on the scope of services managed and is discussed on a call. We do not publish a rate card because scope varies too much between clients. A single-channel Search Ads retainer for a local plumbing company is priced differently from a multi-channel retainer covering Search, LSAs, GBP, retargeting, and a retention automation sequence for a regional restoration company. The price reflects what is actually being managed each month.

We quote a flat monthly rate for the agreed scope. That rate does not change unless the scope changes. Media spend is separate from the management fee and passes through to the platforms at cost with no markup. You know exactly what you pay us and exactly what goes to the platforms. There are no blended billing arrangements that obscure how the money is allocated.