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Retainer Fees

by www_retireonme_com
11 replies
IF you are going to charge a client a retainer fee and or a maintenance fee of $149 per month to just maintain their Google Places listing position and to keep a video of their business ranked high in the local search results. Do you think we are taking advantage of that client by not adding anymore services for that price?

So, are you sending them the links that you build every month?
(a report?) Or something to show them that you are atleast doing something? A possible client asked me " How do I know you are doing anything each and every month/" I wanted to say " What does YP's do for you each month?"

I did say " You can search the keywords we came up with and see your video at the top of the page" I will also send them some reports per month of the new backlinks.

I guess I could send them qrtly reports as well. IF you have 20 clients, that is a lot of emails every month. Maybe quarterly reports would be more efficient.

ANy comments?
#fees #retainer
  • Profile picture of the author Voasi
    We typically work on clients like so: First X-XX months, we're in hyper-SEO mode; get them links, on-page seo, places, video, "whatever". Then, all the months after, they go into maintenance mode, where they just pay a small retainer to make sure we keep them at the top, along with slowly going after some broader (usually non as ROI-driven) keywords.

    If you've done everything you've said for them and they're seeing a good ROI, they should have no problem paying you a small retainer each month - to ensure they stay PUT!

    As for reports, based upon the service, you could offer a monthly ranking report or whatever simple metric they need to see to validate their small retainer - but I have clients that don't even need that. They're just comforted knowing that I'm getting paid, they're staying at the top and making a ton of money.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tiduslite8
    Or you could look at it as they are bribing you not to work for their competition.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bill Jenkins
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      What is fair to charge comes down to how much your services make your client. If you're making them thousands then $149 a month is dirt cheap. If you're making them nothing then $149 is expensive. See what I mean?

      I always make sure my clients are happy above all else. If they're happy, I'm happy. That's how I've worked it and it's been great so far. Lots of referral business and good vibes.

      Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author MWGrubb58
    Are you looking to just keep the client exclusively for their local market?

    Is it a matter of just keeping them up in the search engines or do you want to do more?
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    • Profile picture of the author rafterman
      YP full page and half page ads have to be thousands for the year. One hotel that I'm trying to work for is paying $1,800 per month, and getting nothing.

      Look at it from a ROI perspective. Say you drive a dentist 15 clients a month. They pay the dentist $250 (which is a conservative estimate I think) That's $3750 for the dentist. $500 retainer for you. 650% ROI for the dentist. Ever heard of 650% ROI on stock? Don't think so. I don't think Madoff could pull something off like that. Now some crazy retainer like $1,500 I believe is ridiculous. But just charge them $500 initially and keep it that way.

      I'd say don't charge some ridiculous start up price and just give a flat rate. Low maintenance fee is a rip off for you. You know the techniques, tricks, tips and secrets. They don't. That knowledge is worth the money. If you don't need to implement every technique to keep them at the top, well then its for you to know and for them to keep profiting.
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  • Profile picture of the author Micheal Perkins
    Don't be too quick to short change yourself with the view that $1,500 per month is ridiculous to charge a dentist. You have to look at the value of the service you are providing to the client.

    The average lifetime value of a customer for a dentist in my area is $30,000.00. So in rafterman's example if you are driving 15 new clients into the dentists office each month, those 15 new customers are an additional $450,000.00 value to their practice.

    So if they are paying you $1,500.00 to drive 15 new customers a month, which will earn them $450,000.00 over the lifetime of those customers, how gladly do you think they will hand you a check for $1,500.00 each month?
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    • Profile picture of the author rafterman
      Originally Posted by Micheal Perkins View Post

      Don't be too quick to short change yourself with the view that $1,500 per month is ridiculous to charge a dentist. You have to look at the value of the service you are providing to the client.

      The average lifetime value of a customer for a dentist in my area is $30,000.00. So in rafterman's example if you are driving 15 new clients into the dentists office each month, those 15 new customers are an additional $450,000.00 value to their practice.

      So if they are paying you $1,500.00 to drive 15 new customers a month, which will earn them $450,000.00 over the lifetime of those customers, how gladly do you think they will hand you a check for $1,500.00 each month?
      Great point, I really think this will be the basis of my pricing plan. I've said before, you can't charge a bakery the same price as a dentist.

      What is the Value of a New Dental Patient?

      This link references another survey which I read that has a whole bunch of stats and scenarios to estimate patient retention rate and average profit of a new patient.

      It's estimate varies of course, but the overall average is about $1,000.

      So driving 15 new patients every month supplies the dentist with a 14,000% ROI if you charge $1,000 per month.

      My area gets about 600 searches per month for city + dentist, shouldn't be too hard. Just have to get someone to bite.
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      • Profile picture of the author billrice
        Originally Posted by rafterman View Post

        I've said before, you can't charge a bakery the same price as a dentist.
        I think this is the key point on retainers. Doing the market research to determine the ROI will help you sell the value, and more importantly keep you out of the markets that can't sustain you.

        As for the heavy front-end, I think that causes too much friction to the sale.
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        • Profile picture of the author GCooper
          Great info all. Thank you.

          -G
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  • Profile picture of the author www_retireonme_com
    good comments guys.

    Tommy
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  • Profile picture of the author Creativegirl
    You don't need to give them more unless "you" want to. Monitoring and maintaining their ranking is all the proof they need.
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