If you are a business owner, you may have heard the advice to charge by the value you are providing rather than an hourly rate because time is a finite resource and it places a ceiling on your revenue potential.

Every business is different, however here is how I see things with Flex Marketing and why we mainly use time as a unit of measurement for billing. 

• Flex Marketing is all about flexibility and the nature of our services involve mostly acting as an outsource marketing manager – which includes clients being able to chop and change what they get us working on…as sometimes there are circumstances beyond their control that impact focus
• When prospective clients reach out to Flex Marketing, often they don’t know exactly what ‘help’ they need to ask for. Until we get to know them better and start working with them, we are often not in a position to make recommendations
• Scope creep – as much as a client may think they know what they want, even if they have a proper brief, things can take an unexpected path
• We aim to create an environment of maximum potential – it can stifle creativity and be limiting to be strict about what is “in scope” or “out of scope” by defining a project or task too highly
• The administrative load of having to precisely define every little task we get involved in for approval before we can proceed isn’t feasible – a business should be able to ask for an opinion on an idea and be able to quickly/easily get an answer just like they would if they had an in-house marketing manager
• Charging by value can be very subjective and difficult to assess in many circumstances
• We try and customise our services to meet customer requirements – whether that is budget, depth of service, duration etc – every request is unique

Having said all of the above, we do have some defined services with fixed pricing where there are standard deliverables involved such as creating a marketing plan, doing a deep dive with outlined steps etc. but a lot of the time it can be a bit “how long is a piece of string?!”…there are too many variables to apply a fixed price without an in-depth conversation. 

For example, with copywriting for a website – how many pages, how text heavy are the pages, how challenging is the writing, what style is the writing, how many people at the client’s business do we need to collaborate with, are there any rough drafts or reference materials we can use, is any research required etc. As you can see, there are a lot of unknowns to provide a set price and if we did offer a 5 page, well defined description of a website copywriting package, it would not suit the majority of needs that are usually unique.

So …how do we work with time to maximise flexibility? We offer packages for an agreed amount of time for us to work on clients’ marketing requirements per month in the case of ongoing outsource marketing. In the case of other projects such as copywriting or consulting, we have a client meeting to identify requirements before providing a rough estimate or formal proposal.

Then it is all about working in a way that is as efficient and productive as possible, with great attention to management, communication and prioritisation to deliver the best possible return on investment to clients. Managing, meeting and exceeding their expectations is our goal and that’s why Flex Marketing is considered an asset by clients who currently are not in the position to hire a full time senior marketing manager…they appreciate the flexibility. Get in touch if you'd like to discuss your marketing requirements.