Strategy first, then the work
There are three ways to work with us, and nearly everyone starts with the same one. Each engagement below says what it is, what it produces, what it costs, and what it commits you to. None of it waits for a sales call.
The first one decides whether you need the other two, and stopping there is a legitimate outcome rather than a failed sale.
We don't diagnose the problem for free in order to sell you the fix.
An agency offers a free audit, a free roadmap or a free strategy session, hands over enough analysis to look credible, and the analysis turns out to be a sales document for the execution sitting behind it. The recommendations lean, quietly, toward whatever that agency happens to sell. Most contractors can feel it happening, and it still works often enough that the whole industry keeps doing it.
We charge for the diagnosis, which changes what it is allowed to conclude. A Strategic Foundation can end with "you don't need an agency yet," or "fix how you're getting prequalified before you spend anything on marketing," because nothing downstream depends on it recommending us.
Before any of that, a first conversation works out whether we're a fit for each other and whether the work is worth doing at all. That conversation costs nothing. It also isn't a diagnosis, and we won't dress it up as one.
Three engagements. The first one decides whether you need the other two.
Each carries its own scope, its own fee and its own boundaries. The common sequence runs top to bottom, but it isn't mandatory.
Strategic Foundation
From $7,500
Rises when the company is genuinely more complex to work through, and the figure is named before you commit to anything.A complete business-to-marketing strategy, built to be worth the money whether or not you hire us to execute any of it.
- Your business and growth direction, written down.
- A market position and the messaging that carries it.
- Where your market presence actually stands today, diagnosed.
- The marketing strategy itself: what marketing has to accomplish, and for whom.
- A prioritized roadmap, in the order the work should happen.
- A readout to your leadership, in person.
- A recommended scope from us, kept as its own document so you can accept every conclusion above and still take the work somewhere else.
- Two to four conversations with the people who set direction.
- Access to your current site and your analytics and search accounts.
- Your leadership group in a room, once, for the readout.
That base scope assumes one operating company, one primary leadership group, one primary footprint and a manageable number of major business lines. More than any of those is what moves the fee, and we say which before you commit. The marketing strategy page covers what's in it in full.
If the diagnosis calls for it
Market Presence Build
$25,000 to $60,000
The foundational systems the Foundation determines are missing. You buy one coordinated build rather than picking items off a menu, and which of these five the diagnosis calls for is what moves the figure inside the range.
- Brand identity
- Messaging and voice
- Website
- Content and proof
- Search and marketing infrastructure
Billed against the project
The range covers most engagements. Larger or more complex transformations can run past it.
Ongoing Market Development
From $5,000 a month
A program that develops visibility, recognition, familiarity and business-development leverage in the markets tied to the work you want next. Those four are the constant backbone, and what runs inside them changes as markets, accounts and priorities do.
Six months, then month to month
It develops the approach. It doesn't change how a sealed low bid gets awarded, and it doesn't replace the work of business development.
Sometimes no execution is warranted. You leave with the strategy and the roadmap, and run it in-house or with someone else.
Those figures are for our work. Media spend, photography, video and other client-specific third-party costs sit outside the fee unless a scope says otherwise, and we don't price ourselves as a percentage of what you spend on media.
A Foundation ends in one of four places, and one of them is nothing yet.
Every route leaves from here. What the Foundation finds is what decides which one you are on.
Ends here
The Foundation, and nothing else.
Sometimes no execution is warranted, or the sensible next move belongs to someone other than us. You leave with the strategy and the roadmap and run it in-house, with the marketing person you already have, or with another firm.
Market Presence Build
Foundational gaps close first.
A site that undersells the company, or content that does not exist yet, limits everything built on top of it. Those gaps close before recurring work has anything solid to stand on.
Ongoing Market Development
What you have is good enough to work with.
What is missing is sustained development in the markets and accounts the strategy named, rather than another round of building.
Market Presence Build and Ongoing Market Development
A coordinated sequence.
Selected foundational work and market development proceed in parallel where that makes sense, rather than holding all visibility until the last asset is finished.
Which one you get is a finding. It isn't a package chosen before we met you.
Each engagement ends somewhere. None of them quietly becomes the next one.
The Foundation is paid up front, and it isn't refundable.
About six weeks from kickoff to the readout, as long as we can get your leadership group in a room when we need them. It ends when all seven parts are delivered and the readout has been given, and that's the whole of what the fee buys: no retainer, and finishing it obliges you to buy nothing.
A Build is billed against the project.
Payments are tied to kickoff, an agreed midpoint and launch, so the schedule follows the work rather than the calendar.
Ongoing starts with six months, then runs month to month.
Six months is long enough to execute, learn and adjust before anyone judges it, without asking you to sign twelve to find out whether it works. After that either side can end it with 60 days' written notice, and the rule is the same in both directions.
A Build and an Ongoing program can run at once.
Each keeps its own scope, fee and boundaries when they do, and the same work is never billed to both.
We work with more than one heavy civil contractor. You should know that before you tell us anything.
Working only with heavy civil is the point of us, and it has an obvious consequence: the next contractor we work with may bid against you. Saying so here, rather than leaving you to work it out, is the whole of what this section is for.
What you tell us stays with us. Your account list, the scopes that carry your margin, where you're going in three years, what's in your pipeline. None of it is shown to another client or used on another client's behalf. That isn't an agency promise we invented. It's the standard your own industry already runs on. The AGC and the subcontractor associations call bid shopping abhorrent. The professional estimators' code requires its members to keep a client's business affairs in confidence. And on federal work, the sealed-bid rules make it law.
There is one thing we won't do at all, and it's the line every profession that deals with this actually draws: we will not advise two contractors on the same pursuit. If that turns up mid-engagement we tell both of you and step off that pursuit for both, rather than picking one.
Before we take work on, we look at what you self-perform, where you work, who awards it and how big you are, against the contractors we already work with. Where the overlap is close enough that we couldn't do right by both, we turn the second one down. That judgment is ours to make and to explain to you.
What we don't sell is exclusivity: not by category, not by territory, not by named competitor. We'd rather tell you who we are than promise you a market we can't fence off. In a business this specialized, an agency that promised exclusivity would either be lying or would run out of clients.
Is $7,500 what it will cost us?
It's the base, and the base assumes one operating company, one primary leadership group, one primary footprint and a manageable number of major business lines. Several operating companies, several markets or more than one leadership group all make the work genuinely larger, and the fee rises with them. You get the figure that applies to your company before you commit to anything, not after.
What does the Foundation need from our people?
Two to four conversations with the people who actually set direction, usually the owner or president and whoever owns business development, plus access to your current site and your analytics and search accounts. At the end, your leadership group in a room once for the readout. Most of what we need is in your head and your estimator's rather than in a system.
What decides where a Build lands in that range?
How many of the five systems the diagnosis says are missing, and how much of each has to be built from nothing. A company that needs a website and search foundations sits somewhere very different from one that also needs identity, messaging and a project library built from scratch. The Foundation's last deliverable is a recommended scope with a figure on it, so the range stops being a range before you decide.
Do we have to buy anything after the Foundation?
No. It ends when the seven parts are delivered and the readout has been given, with no retainer attached, and one of the four ways it can end is that no execution is warranted yet. That outcome is a finding like any other, and we'd rather record it than sell around it.
Can we take the strategy to another firm?
Yes, and the deliverables are structured so you can. What we think we should do next, and what it would cost, arrives as its own document rather than woven through the strategy, so you can accept every conclusion in the strategy and hand the execution to your own marketing person, to another agency, or to nobody at all.
Does any of this replace our business development?
No, and it can't. Marketing improves the conditions around business development: who knows the company before the pursuit starts, and what they can read about it without asking. The relationships, the meetings and the number stay with your people.
Win the Right Work
Bring the work you want more of, the buyers who award it, and where you want the business in three years. The first conversation is about whether we're a fit and whether a Strategic Foundation is worth your money. That part costs nothing. The strategy is the part you pay for.
Talk about the work you want to win