Margin for Marketing Agencies.
You know the work. Margin handles the math — so you see whether every retainer, project, and channel is carrying its weight.
How agencies price today
Digital, brand, performance, integrated — the label changes, the math doesn't. You're already pricing retainers, projects, and campaigns. The hard part isn't the work. It's seeing whether the price still holds once the hours start landing.
A $5K/month retainer scoped for 30 hours quietly becomes 50 by month four. The revenue looks consistent. The effective rate has dropped 40%. You'd see it sooner if the math kept up with the work.
Where margin gets lost
- Retainers that drift. A retainer scoped for 30 hours of senior strategy turns into 50 hours of mixed staff. Revenue stays flat. Margin doesn't.
- One blended rate across every channel. SEO, paid, content, brand, and lifecycle each cost different amounts to deliver. One rate hides which service funds the others.
- "Can you also look at our email?" No new deliverable named, no scope change logged. The hours still happen.
- Senior priced, junior delivered. It works until a director rebuilds the work. Role-level cost data makes the gap visible before that happens.
A Website Redesign, priced top to bottom.
Here's a sample project from Margin: a Website Redesign for Meridian Health Systems, priced at $99,412 with a 30.3% margin. Each line — Discovery & Strategy, User Research, Design, Development, Content & Copywriting — carries its own price, cost, and margin %. You see the project's health and every line item's health at the same time.
Price retainers and projects on real numbers.
Your best projects become your pricing playbook
Save the projects that priced well, then adapt them for each new client. The included sample agency has a Brand Strategy & Positioning template at 47.7%, a Content Calendar at 48.4%, and a Monthly Retainer Block at 45.1%. Your team starts every quote from a known-good baseline instead of a blank spreadsheet.
Cost rate and bill rate, role by role
You set up your roles once — your real cost rates, your bill rates, your overhead. The included sample agency shows a Creative Director costing $180/hr fully loaded, billing at $257.14. A Junior Designer costs $95, bills at $135.71. Swap a senior for a junior on a retainer and you see the margin change before the work starts.
Portfolio-level margin, not just project-level
Reports roll up every project, every client, every status. In the sample, an Annual Retainer with PeakForm Athletics runs at 46.6%. A Holiday Campaign with Heirloom Foods runs at 14.6%. An Influencer Program got rejected. You see which work is funding the agency at a glance.
See whether each retainer is carrying its weight.
Price retainers, projects, and campaigns on real numbers — before the proposal goes out.
Try Margin free