You know the one. Your marketing agency presents their monthly report, and you're left wondering what exactly you paid for. The website redesign that was supposed to take six weeks is now in month three. The content strategy you approved seems to have disappeared into a black hole of “revisions” and “compliance reviews.”
Meanwhile, your budget keeps climbing with vague explanations about “additional hours required” and “unforeseen complexity.”
In this article, you’ll discover why traditional agency pricing creates the problems you’re experiencing, and how our approach delivers the predictability and transparency your firm deserves.
Key Point: Most agencies fail not because of poor talent, but because of broken systems that reward inefficiency and punish predictability.
Most marketing agencies bill by the hour. On the surface, this seems fair and transparent. In reality, it creates perverse incentives that work against your interests.
When agencies bill hourly, efficiency becomes their enemy. If they complete your project faster than expected, they make less money. If they take longer, they have to justify the extra time to you, leading to those uncomfortable monthly meetings.
This system literally punishes agencies for being good at their jobs.
Every “small revision” becomes a line item. Every compliance requirement becomes an additional charge. What started as a $10,000 project somehow becomes $15,000, with detailed timesheets explaining why everything took longer than originally estimated.
You’re not paying for results; you’re paying for time spent, regardless of the outcome.
Key Point: Hourly billing misaligns incentives, ensuring that delays, revisions, and inefficiency drive revenue instead of results.
We realized this fundamental flaw early in our journey serving financial services firms. That’s why we completely abandoned hourly billing in favor of a points-based system combined with 30-day sprints.
Every deliverable in your marketing program has a point value based on complexity and business impact. In our model, one point equals $100.
So when a client has a 100-point monthly retainer, they’re receiving $10,000 worth of deliverables. A comprehensive content strategy might be worth 50 points ($5,000). A single blog post might be worth 5 points ($500). A website redesign might be worth 75 points ($7,500).
We then use sprint planning to prioritize these deliverables to drive the most impactful results based on where you are in your business and your engagement with us.
Instead of long-term projects that seem to drag on forever, we break everything into 30-day sprints. Each sprint has specific deliverables with clear point values.
At the beginning of each sprint, you know exactly what you’re getting and when you’ll receive it. At the end, you have tangible results to evaluate.
Key Point: Short, focused sprints turn endless marketing projects into visible, measurable progress every 30 days.
Every month, we sit down with you for sprint planning. We present the deliverables we’ll complete in the next 30 days, along with their point values. You can agree, disagree, or suggest changes, but this conversation happens before any work begins, not after.
No more surprise bills. No more wondering what your agency is working on.
We understand the unique challenges of marketing in financial services. Compliance reviews, regulatory requirements, and approval processes are built into our sprint planning from day one.
When we know a deliverable will require extensive compliance review, we factor that into our timeline and communicate it upfront. No surprises, no excuses after the fact.
Key Point: Compliance isn’t an afterthought; it’s engineered into every deliverable from the start.
Most agencies treat compliance as an afterthought that slows things down. We build it into our process from the beginning. Our team understands FINRA requirements, SEC regulations, and the approval processes that govern our industry.
Through our monthly retrospectives, we’ve identified that enterprise financial services firms require different levels of complexity in their marketing materials. We price accordingly from the start, not after discovering the additional requirements.
With points-based pricing, you can budget your marketing spend with confidence. No more wondering if this quarter’s projects will come in over budget due to “unforeseen complexity.”
Key Point: Financial firms need predictability and compliance-first execution, and GK3 delivers both through structured planning and transparent pricing.
What makes your pricing different from other agencies?
We use points-based pricing instead of hourly billing. You pay for results and value, not time spent. This eliminates scope creep and gives you predictable costs upfront.
How do you handle compliance requirements?
Compliance is built into our process from day one. We understand financial services regulations and factor review cycles into our sprint planning and pricing.
What if a project takes longer than expected?
That’s our risk to manage, not yours. Our points-based system means you pay the agreed price regardless of how long it takes us to deliver.
How quickly can you get projects started?
We’ve streamlined our onboarding process to 45 days, compared to the industry standard of three months. You’ll see progress and results much faster.
Do you work with firms of all sizes?
Yes, we serve everyone from individual RIA practices to large asset management firms managing billions in assets. Our system scales to match your complexity level.
Your marketing agency should be a strategic partner that delivers predictable results on time and on budget. You shouldn’t have to wonder what you’re paying for or when projects will actually be completed.
Our points-based system with 30-day sprints eliminates the problems that plague traditional agency relationships. You get transparency, predictability, and results.
We’ve been refining this approach for eight years while serving over 20 financial services firms managing more than $60 billion in assets. Our clients consistently tell us the same thing: “This is actually a good change.”
The systems we’ve put in place prioritize strategic planning and showing value every single day. That’s exactly what your firm deserves from a marketing partner.
Tired of marketing agencies that overpromise and underdeliver? Download our services guide to learn more about the services and strategy GK3 offers to eliminate the frustrations plaguing most agency relationships.