How much does a marketing consultant cost in the UK?

Our projects start at £2,500 and most land between £2,500 and £8,000, with a website build running from £3,500 to £15,000. Those are our published bands, listed on every service page before you speak to anyone. They are not a survey of the UK market, because we have not run one, and anybody quoting you a national average has almost certainly not run one either.

What follows is what actually moves the number, so you can judge any quote you are given rather than just ours.

The three shapes a price comes in

Most consultants price one of three ways, and the shape tells you more than the figure.

A day rate is the most common and the least useful to a buyer. You are buying time, not an outcome, and you carry the risk if the work takes longer than expected. It suits open-ended advisory work and suits nobody who needs a specific thing delivered.

A monthly retainer buys ongoing capacity. It makes sense once there is a machine to run: ads that need managing, content that needs publishing, reporting that needs doing. It makes very little sense before that machine exists, which is why a retainer sold at the start of a relationship is worth questioning.

A fixed-price project puts the risk on the consultant. The scope, the price and the dates are agreed before anything starts, and if the work takes longer than expected that is their problem. It is the only one of the three where you know your exposure on day one. It is also the one that requires the consultant to understand the job properly before quoting, which is why it takes a call first.

What actually moves the number

Six things, roughly in order of how much they matter.

How much has to be discovered. A business with clean analytics, a clear proposition and an accessible website is cheaper to work with than one where the first fortnight is spent finding out what is true. This is the single biggest swing.

How many channels are in scope. One channel done properly costs less than four done at once, and usually performs better.

Whether anything is being built. Strategy and advice cost less than a website, because a website is production work with a design stage, a build stage and a testing stage.

Who does the implementing. A plan you execute yourself costs less than a plan someone else executes. Both are valid, and the cheaper one is not automatically better value if it sits in a drawer.

How much access you can give. Access to the website, the analytics and the ad accounts, plus one named person who can approve things, keeps a project moving. Chasing approvals is expensive.

How fast you need it. Compressed timelines cost more everywhere, and marketing is no exception.

Why so few publish a price

Because publishing one means committing to a scope, and committing to a scope means doing the thinking before the invoice rather than after it. "It depends" is easier. It is also the reason so many people have been burned: without a number, there is nothing to hold anyone to.

If a consultant will not give you a range before the first call, ask what the range has depended on for their last few clients. A straight answer to that is nearly as good as a published price. An evasive one tells you what you need to know.

What to ask before you agree to anything

• What exactly is in scope, and what is explicitly not?
• What happens if it takes longer than you thought?
• Am I buying your time, or a delivered outcome?
• What do you need from me, and what does it cost me if I am slow?
• Is there a retainer at the end of this, and is it optional?

Our answers are on the services page and in the FAQs underneath it. The price does not move unless you ask for more work, you get a fixed quote within two working days of the call, and there is no retainer unless you want one.