While many marketing agencies, including YDM, offer project-based pricing, there are many benefits to marketing retainers, in which the client pays a set fee each month for services that are typically performed on a regular basis. This could be anything from a social media or public relations retainer to a comprehensive marketing retainer that includes graphic design, website updates, social media, PR, email and more. Here are the top reasons why a marketing retainer can benefit your business or organization.

Consistent & Proactive Support

Think of a marketing retainer as being an extension of your business, like having your own marketing department right down the hall. Clients on retainer typically receive a higher priority of attention and the agency will actively engage to move projects and ideas forward rather than only being responsive to what you ask them to do.

Strategic Planning

A marketing retainer allows the agency you partner with to have a full view of your company and execute your marketing plan more strategically. Marketing agencies work with retainer clients to understand their goals and timelines for deliverables and make recommendations about how their vision can be executed over the next 12 months. Without a marketing retainer, your campaigns or projects may lack strategic oversight and feel disjointed. We can also help keep things on track to quarterly objectives and goals.

Developing Relationships

Partnerships or collaborations require networking and relationship-building, which is difficult to accomplish on a project basis. Particularly with public relations, a retainer allows the agency to be proactive in reaching out to writers and editors to develop stories over time, rather than through a one-hit press release. We can’t tell you how short the memory is of a journalist because they are bombarded every day.

On-Call Crisis Communications Needs

Many businesses don’t plan for crisis communications at all, but even when you do, you may not be prepared for all situations. What happens if there’s a death at your business? A major plumbing issue that shuts you down for weeks? A customer service conflict that goes viral on social media? When you have a marketing agency on retainer, they have prepared for how to handle crisis situations and understand your business thoroughly to be able to respond quickly and accurately.

Predictable Budgets

With a retainer, you know your marketing budget is set month to month, which helps your organization budget more efficiently for the quarter or the year. Even if your needs grow or shift, you can adjust your retainer budget to accommodate those changes.

One-Stop Shop

A comprehensive marketing retainer means you can get all your marketing needs covered through a single agency rather than working with separate organizations to handle social media, graphic design or website management. Some agencies, including YDM, allow you to shift your budget around among different areas depending on your needs each month. So, if you need several different collateral pieces quickly, more retainer time might be used towards graphic design that month, but the following month, you may need more for PR or website updates.

Marketing retainers provide a strategic, cost-effective and efficient approach to meeting the marketing needs of a business while fostering long-term relationships between clients, their agency and outside partners.

Want to know more about how a PR or marketing retainer might work for your business? Reach out to us!