What marketing costs a small insurance agency: an agency retainer, a freelancer, or a system

What does a marketing agency charge a small business?

A marketing agency retainer for a small business most often lands between $2,500 and $5,000 a month, according to ClicksGeek’s 2026 retainer guide. Entry-level full-service retainers start around $1,000 to $3,000 a month, per WebFX. That buys a slice of a team’s attention, usually on one or two channels, and it stops the month you stop paying.

What does a freelancer cost?

A freelance marketer charges $50 to $200 an hour depending on experience, according to Upwork’s 2026 rate guide. A freelancer coming in, doing a mood board, and quickly building a website is something I’ve seen work. The scope is tiny, but sometimes it’s exactly what an agency needs. The limit is that a freelancer builds a thing and leaves. Nobody is posting next Tuesday.

What does hiring someone cost?

A marketing coordinator earns about $57,000 a year on average, according to Indeed, before benefits, taxes, and the software they’ll ask for. Canva Pro alone is $18 a month. A hire makes sense when there’s a full week of marketing work every week. Most small agencies have a full week of it about once a quarter.

What does the carrier’s free marketing help cost?

Nothing, and that’s about what it’s worth. I’ve never seen a carrier produce anything substantive or of value when it comes to marketing assets for an agency. If a carrier rep promised you a marketing program and went quiet, you’re not the first.

How does DoBetter price a marketing build?

Every DoBetter build is fixed-fee and scoped after discovery, so the price matches the job. It works in four steps:

1. A free 30-minute intro call.
2. A $1,500 paid discovery. Half is credited to your first month, and it’s a full refund if I can’t help.
3. A fixed-fee build.
4. Optional monthly support.

Nothing is billed by the hour.

What makes a marketing build cost more or less?

The size of a marketing build depends on the channels, the formats, and the time each format takes. A landing page is small. A landing page plus a LinkedIn content system plus monthly video is not.

The first thing I look at is what you already pay. If you have two or three vendors each doing a piece of your marketing, we look at what those pieces cost. If a trained AI system, governed by a person, can take some of that work off their plate, that’s what sets the scope. Sometimes the scope is bigger than anyone expected, because once the system exists, the list of things it could make gets long.

Other things that move the price:

• How many channels it runs: a landing page only, or pages, LinkedIn, email, and video
• Whether you already have photos, a logo, and brand colors, or whether that’s step one
• How much video, since video takes the most time per piece
• How many people at the agency will use it

What does it cost to not do marketing?

Doing nothing costs an agency every client who never heard of it. When the only marketing is the sign out front and the website, almost everything at the agency that has to do with revenue is a guess. A marketing system doesn’t make revenue predictable. It does make it something you can see coming.

Quick answers

Is there a refund?

Yes. If discovery shows I can’t help, the $1,500 comes back.

Can I start with just a landing page?

Yes. It’s the most common first build and the fastest.

Do I need a big budget to start?

No. Start with what you already spend on vendors and see what the system can take over.

Is there a monthly fee?

Only if you want ongoing support. The build itself is a one-time fixed fee.