Internal pricing reference
Marketing services, and what to charge for them
Two shapes, because there are two buyers. Organisations take marketing as a named line inside the setup fee. Coaching businesses buy it ad hoc, off a ladder that starts well below an agency retainer because that is what they can actually carry.
The principle
Read this before quotingThis is cost recovery with a margin on top, not a new business line. The delivery system already exists, so the marginal cost of one more client is low, which means the price should track what the market pays rather than what the hours add up to.
The rate below is the floor. Everything productised gets checked against it, and nothing gets sold under it.
Blended hour
$125
Boutique agencies bill $100 to $300. Clutch puts content marketing at $100 to $149.
Day
$950
The unit for anything scoped by time rather than deliverable, including library production.
Break-even test
1.4×
A fixed price should clear the hours it costs by roughly this much, or the scope is wrong.
Coaching businesses
Ad hoc · priced per engagementSold separately from the software, in whatever combination the coach wants. The ladder is deliberately front-loaded, because a one-off sprint is easier for a coach to say yes to than a monthly commitment, and it is the piece that actually creates their remote revenue.
| Tier | What they get | Price | Why this number |
|---|---|---|---|
| ToolkitSelf serve | Canva templates, caption bank, the remote offer launch checklist, and the athlete announcement scripts. | Includedwith annual Pro, or $290 one time | Assets already exist, so marginal cost is near zero. Giving it away with annual drives activation and retention, which is where the recurring revenue sits. |
| Launch sprintOne time | Remote offer defined and priced, booking page, six weeks of scheduled content, athlete announcement sequence, ad account built. | $1,850one time | Roughly 14 hours. Agencies charge $2,500 to $5,000 for the equivalent package, so this undercuts on purpose. |
| Content, standardMonthly | Twelve posts, one email, monthly report. Capped scope, three month minimum. | $750per month | Six hours a month at the rate. Sits at the bottom of the $500 to $2,500 band, and above the white label floor so it can be handed off later at margin. |
| Content, extendedMonthly | Twenty posts, two emails, reels cut from their own coaching footage. For businesses running more than one coach. | $1,400per month | Lands inside the $1,500 to $3,000 standard retainer band without touching the top of it. |
| Ad managementMonthly | Campaign build, audience setup, weekly optimisation. Their ad spend billed to their own card at cost. | $350per month, plus spend | A flat floor, because a percentage of a $400 monthly budget is not worth invoicing. GSMBC currently runs $100 a week. |
Why the ladder starts low. A solo coach grossing $6,000 a month can carry somewhere between $180 and $300 of marketing, going by the three to five percent of revenue rule that holds in fitness. That is the whole reason this is a sprint plus a capped monthly tier rather than a retainer. Quoting $1,500 a month into this market is how you end up with no customers and a confirmed suspicion that software people do not understand coaching.
Associations, NSOs and distribution
Folded into setupQuoted as named lines inside the deal, never absorbed. Onboarding is mandatory on every organisation contract. Marketing is the optional module beside it, which is the thing to reach for when they ask what marketing support looks like.
| Line | What it covers | Price | Why this number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onboarding and enablementRequired | Admin configuration, coach training session, reference library slotted into the app, rollout plan. | $2,500one time | Raised from the roughly $1K figure floated earlier, which clears neither the hours nor the benchmark. SaaS implementation fees run 18 to 35 percent of contract value. |
| Launch marketing moduleOptional | Member announcement sequence, co-branded landing page, social kit for their channels, coach-facing enablement templates, ninety day calendar, and one case study produced at the end. | $4,500one time | The number to quote when marketing comes up. Prices at roughly five days of work plus the templates, and the case study is an asset sportsense keeps. |
| Managed marketingOptional, ongoing | Their channels run for them. Six month minimum. | $1,500per month | Only worth offering to organisations with a real comms budget. Most NSOs have a communications person already, so expect this to be rare. |
| Reference library productionPass through | Trimming, tagging, descriptions, slotting into the app, sent back to them for approval. | $950per day, or $18 per clip at volume | Cost recovery by design, consistent with the intent already set. The revenue comes from licensing and seats, not from the editing. |
The trap when seats are discounted. As soon as software is given away cheaply to win content, tagging and distribution, annual contract value goes to near zero and the percentage of ACV rule stops meaning anything. In those deals the setup and marketing fees are the only place the arrangement pays for itself, so they are the one thing that should not also be discounted.
Worked example
Climbing Canada shapeCraig controls roughly $20,000 of tech budget for the year, so everything has to fit under that ceiling together. Quoting it as three lines rather than one keeps the marketing visible as a choice they made.
Keep the lines separate. If marketing is folded invisibly into the licence it gets cut first when they trim the number, and what gets cut is the piece that drives adoption. A named line can be defended. A hidden one just makes the licence look expensive.
What the market actually charges
2026 benchmarksThe evidence behind every number above. Worth having on hand, because the most common objection from a coach is that the price sounds high, and the most common objection from an organisation is that it sounds too low to be serious.
| Benchmark | Range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance social media manager, hourly | $25 to $100 | Sprout Social |
| Boutique agency, hourly | $100 to $300 | Digital Applied |
| Content marketing, hourly | $100 to $149 | Clutch marketplace |
| Small business social management, monthly | $500 to $2,500 | WebFX, Social Champ |
| Standard retainer, 15 to 20 posts across 3 to 4 platforms | $1,500 to $3,000 | SocialRails |
| Full service retainer, small client | $1,000 to $5,000 | ClicksGeek |
| B2B content marketing retainer | $5,000 to $15,000 | Column Five |
| Fitness specialised agency, monthly | $2,000 to $5,000 | Fitness studio buyer guides |
| Social spend as a share of revenue, fitness | 3 to 5 percent | Boutique gym benchmark |
| SaaS implementation fee, share of contract value | 18 to 35 percent | CFO Pro Analytics |
| White label wholesale, basic posting | $300 to $800 | Apaya, Cloud Campaign |
| White label wholesale, full service | $1,200 to $3,000 | Apaya |
Partnering with marketing services
Both directionsThere is a standard here, and it runs two ways. One is buying delivery in so this stops consuming founder time. The other is agencies bringing customers to sportsense.
Buying delivery in, white label
Wholesale runs $300 to $800 a month for basic posting across two or three platforms, and $1,200 to $3,000 for full service with strategy, design and community management. Standard markup on top is 40 to 60 percent, or two to three times cost.
The $750 tier can be delivered by a white label partner at $300 to $400 and still clear margin. That is the exit path, and it is worth setting up before the client count makes it urgent.
Agencies bringing customers in
Referral partners who simply pass a name take 10 to 15 percent. Partners who own the relationship and close on their own paper take 20 to 35 percent. Median B2B SaaS sits at 20 percent, and the common structure is a higher first year with a smaller renewal share.
Recommendation is 20 percent of year one and 8 percent on renewal, which is defensible on a $25 a month product where the absolute dollars per seat are small.
On whether attaching services is normal at all, it is. Onboarding and implementation fees of 18 to 35 percent of annual contract value are standard practice in SaaS, and the accepted rule is that the services line runs at or near break even. Its job is faster time to value and lower churn, not margin. That matches the instinct to cover cost rather than build a profit centre, so there is nothing to correct there.
Guard rails
Decide these now, not later- Do not invoice the sportsense co-marketing. Reshares, story collaborations, joint reels and case studies are marketing budget, on exactly the same logic that already treats free software to associations as value in kind. Charging for it removes the reason the paid tiers are attractive in the first place.
- Cap every monthly scope in writing. Post counts, email counts, revision rounds. Uncapped social management is the single reliable way this turns into unpaid work, and coaches will ask, because they are used to a relationship rather than a scope.
- Set the exit before the first client. After roughly five paying engagements the delivery moves to the template pack plus a white label partner, or founder time becomes a permanent tax on the product. The case studies and the proof that the remote offer converts are what this is really buying.
- Keep the currencies apart. Services in CAD, platform in USD, never blended on one invoice. The moment they appear on the same line, the licence price stops being comparable to what is published on the pricing page.