Why your SME client won’t say yes to a retainer agreement
While your agency might forever be chasing the big hitters for that all-important retainer agreement, it’s actually your SME clients you should be focussing on, writes Generate’s Ben Fletcher.
You don’t have to look far, or think very hard, to see why a retainer arrangement could be great for an agency. It offers steady and predictable income (for a creative business – who’d have thought it?!) and allows you to build a deeper relationship with your client as you’re guaranteed to be working with them for the duration of the retainer period.
If it’s so great, why are your clients, especially the SME ones, not signing on the dotted line?
The core problem that business owners have with retainer agreements is that they typically require them to commit a certain amount of spend each month without any agreed output aside from head hours.
Sure, the agreement offers to provide 100 head hours a month to ‘manage the marketing function’… but what does that mean? What outcomes can the business expect from that spend?
