In this instructional video, agency owner Joshua Nelson shares a step‑by‑step framework for building high‑ticket monthly retainers ($3,000‑$5,000+) that clients will readily pay. He begins by emphasizing the right mindset: sell outcomes and ROI, not technical deliverables. He then advises agencies to specialize in a narrow niche (e.g., plumbing or HVAC) to become the go‑to expert and command premium rates. Next, he outlines a comprehensive growth program that combines a conversion‑focused website, SEO, local map optimization, paid search (Google Ads, local service ads, retargeting, social), marketing automation, and database reactivation. He stresses the importance of tracking results with dashboards that show spend versus revenue, positioning the service as an investment rather than a gamble. He also recommends creating a unique, branded mechanism (a named system) to differentiate the offer and justify the price. Pricing guidance suggests a base management fee of $2,000‑$5,000 per month plus ad spend billed directly to platforms. Throughout, he provides examples of successful agencies in various verticals and repeatedly invites viewers to book a free “Agency Acceleration” call to apply the 7‑Figure Agency Roadmap. The overall message is that by following this formula—mindset, niche, bundled service, ROI proof, unique branding, and clear pricing—any agency can consistently sell $3,500+ monthly retainers and scale to seven figures.
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If you're a marketing agency owner who's struggling to charge enough for your services, this video's for you. You see, in my marketing agency, we have over 100 retainer clients paying us over $3,500 or more every single month. So in this video, I'm gonna show you exactly how we're able to charge that much and the step-by-step process you can follow to craft an offer that clients will easily pay $3,000, $4,000, or even more for on a monthly basis. You gotta start with your mindset. Clients don't pay for deliverables, they pay for outcomes. They don't care about the technical details, they care about return on investment. Think of it like this. When you go and buy a drill, the technical specs on how fast it turns and how long the battery life is and all of that stuff. You don't care. You just care about the hole in your wall. So sell the hole, not the drill. If you can help your business owner clients grow from $1 million to $2 million, they'll happily pay you $3,500 per month. Your service becomes an investment, not an expense. By the way, if you're looking for more help on how you can scale your agency, you can click the first link in the description below and schedule a free one-on-one agency acceleration call with us where we'll look at your agency's current situation and map out how we can help you take your agency to 7 figures in the next this year. Click the first link in the description, book your free acceleration session, and let's get back to the video. Choose a specific niche. The fastest path to charging high-ticket pricing is specialization. In our agency, we really decided that we needed to focus on plumbing and HVAC companies. We developed deep expertise in the niche. We crafted messaging that speaks directly to their pain points, their desires. We systematized the entire delivery so that we could save time, we can get predictable results, we can engineer wins in advance, and as a result, we're willing to increase and have a premium rate. You know, in 7 Figure agency, none of the 150 agencies that we work with are generalists. They're all specialists in a very specific industry for those exact reasons, right? People want to deal with the expert. When you're serving everyone, you're serving no one. But when you're the expert for your specific industry, you can charge a premium rate and you're not competing with every other agency. Okay, number 3 is you want to have a more comprehensive solution. If we're going to command a $3,500 a month premium, you can't just have one service. You need to develop a growth program for your niche. What we found works best is a combination of building a website, not just a website, but a website that's built to convert, that has all the right conversion elements, that has all the right pages and is a conversion machine. Search engine optimization, making sure they're coming up for the different things that their customers are typing when they need their services. In the case of Plumbing and HVAC, which we work with, we want to make sure they're coming up for their city and cities that they operate in. Plumber, plumbing, plumbing company, drain cleaning, water heater installation, water heater repair. We figure out what those keywords are that actually have search volume, that have commercial intent, and then we optimize optimize the website so that it can come up for those terms. We're also cognizant that more and more people now are using Bing and they're searching on ChatGPT. So we're, we're making sure that we're speaking to that and we're developing that into our program. Google Maps optimization, making sure they're coming up on the map. Paid search. I don't think you should just do organic. We started as an SEO agency. What we found was sometimes we come out of the gates really quick and it was great. Other times it took a long time. And so having paid search as part of our strategy, Google Ads, local service ads, retargeting, potentially even Facebook and TikTok, we're able to have a more consistent, tangible result. So setting up those campaigns correctly, setting up the text ads and the landing pages and structuring the campaigns so that they generate leads, revenue, sales, profitability, and then marketing automation with HighLevel and other marketing automation platforms. It just makes sense to say not only are we going to generate the leads, but we're also going to put automation in place to help you follow up with those leads quicker, to help you follow up in the way your customers want to be touched via two-way text message, via phone, via email. You can build a world-class marketing automation strategy strategy for whatever niche you serve and incorporate that into your service offering. Database reactivation, which is sending text messages and emails to their past customer base, to their past prospect base, to their unconverted leads. You can use that as a quick win strategy. So like out of the gates, while we're building the website, while we're doing the SEO, while we're building out the Google Maps optimization, we can generate some leads and some sales and some opportunities. I think you definitely have to make sure that you're incorporating tracking in your program. You're charging $3,500 a month. You have to be able to show them, here's what you spent, here's the results that we generate? That should be how many leads do we generate, how many booked jobs do we get, what's the actual return on investments. You want to develop a dashboard or an end-to-end tracking mechanism so that they can know, hey, look, I spent what I— maybe they perceive to be a lot of money, but I've got a great return on that investment. And show them that they're not investing in a slot machine, right? Slot machine is you put a quarter in and you hope something comes out, and a lot of times it doesn't. You're investing in ATM. You're going to put a dollar in with me, I'm going to get you $5 to $7 in profitability back. And if it's an investment in that way, makes sense to buy, it makes sense to stick around on. These these services work synergistically and combine to generate better results and better retention. And then you want to create a unique mechanism. It is— stand out and justify premium pricing. You need a unique mechanism. They've heard all of the digital marketing stories a million times. They've hired multiple agencies in most cases. They fired multiple agencies in most cases. You have to be able to come in, and your program needs to speak to why this is different and better, the things that you've incorporated into it to generate a tangible result for them, and why it's really different than who they used in the past. And so we don't just say SEO with paperclip. Create a branded process. And working for— working with roofers, you can call it the Roofing Scale System. Or working with chiropractors, the Chiropractic Patient Attraction System. Working with auto repair shops, the Auto Repair Shop Revenue Accelerator. Come up with a unique name and a unique mechanism, but it should be specific to the industry. It should address their unique challenges. Should have a memorable name. It should follow a clear, structured process that you can show visuals around. It should include at least a couple elements that they're previous provider didn't have, or it's like, okay, I tried all this stuff, but this is different because— and that's why it's going to work. And that's why I need to give this a fair shake. Pricing. We recommend a minimum retainer of $1,000 per month, but preferably between $2,000 and $5,000 per month. Obviously you can charge more. Go for it. That's the management fee for what you do. That's what you get paid, plus any ad spend separate to that. I'm not talking about you eating ad spend costs. You should never do that. Should be your management fee. Plus they're going to spend $5,000 on Google Ads or $5,000 on local service ads or $5,000+ on Facebook ads. That is paid directly to the platform. You're managing the strategy for them in that price point. You might think it's impossible to sell high-ticket packages like this, but I'm going to tell you it's absolutely possible. We have dozens of agencies in different verticals that are selling these types of programs. Just a couple of examples. We think about painting companies, like, that's an interesting vertical that's very specific within home services. Austin Hauser and Brandon Pierpont, both agencies doing multiple 7 figures serving that industry. We've helped agencies in all kinds of different industries sell this. And so start with current situation, where they want to go, the gap between where they are and where they're trying to get. Your solution needs to be the gap, and it has to be a service that actually generates a tangible, measurable return on investment. And then only introduce the price once that value is created, where they see, okay, I'm at $500K, I want to go to $1.5 million, I've tried these other things, here's what's wrong with my website or my SEO or my paid search or my lead follow-up process, here's the solution, right? You've got the solution for me. I understand I'm going to have to invest a certain amount, $3,000, $5,000 per month, but I can also see how I'm going to make that money back with profit into perpetuity. And when you combine that with the right offer to the right market, people will absolutely say yes and not just say yes, they'll stick around with you long term. If you follow this formula, you can absolutely command $3,500 or more per month from your clients while delivering a clear ROI that makes it an easy investment decision for them. However, creating your offer is just one step in our 7-Figure Agency Roadmap, which is the system we've used to help over 150 marketing agencies hit 7 figures per year over the past 10 years. So if you're serious about scaling your agency to 7 figures by implementing our proven roadmap, then you can just click the link in the description to book a free Agency Acceleration session with our team. It's a no-pressure call. We'll reanalyze your agency's current situation and give you the next steps that you can use to scale to the next level. Plus, we'll see if we can help you implement that game plan even faster. So click the first link below in the description, and we're excited to talk with you.
