At $2,000/month you are buying roughly 20 to 30 hours of senior attention. That is enough to run two ad platforms properly, or one platform plus real funnel work. It is not enough to run ads, produce creative, rebuild landing pages and manage email — and any agency promising all four at that price is either using juniors or not doing most of it.
This is what each tier actually buys, and how to check you're getting it.
What each price buys
| Retainer | Hours of senior time | Realistic scope |
|---|---|---|
| $1,200 – $2,000 | ~15–30 | One or two platforms managed. Reporting. Creative iteration only |
| $2,500 – $4,000 | ~35–50 | Both platforms + creative direction + monthly strategy |
| $5,000 – $8,000 | ~60–90 | The above + creative production + CRO |
| $10,000+ | Dedicated pod | Full funnel, multi-channel, in-house studio |
The hours are the real unit. Everything else is packaging.
What $2,000 should include
Anything less than this and you're overpaying:
- Campaign management on your main platform, restructured where needed — not just maintained
- Creative iteration: new hooks, new copy, resizing, testing plan against your existing assets
- A named person who knows your account, not a shared inbox
- Reporting that reconciles to Shopify, not just the ad platform's own numbers
- A monthly call where someone explains what changed and why
What $2,000 should not promise
Be suspicious of any of these at this price:
- Full creative production — new video concepts and UGC coordination is a $500–$3,000/month line of its own
- Email and SMS management on top of paid
- Ongoing landing page building — an audit and recommendations, yes; a build queue, no
- "Full-funnel management" with no line-item scope behind it
A full-service agency offering five or more services under $2,500/month is the clearest pricing red flag in this market. The maths doesn't work. Something in that list isn't happening.
The reconciliation test
Here's the check that separates real management from dashboard babysitting, and it costs you nothing.
Ask for a report that shows platform-reported revenue next to Shopify-reported revenue for the same period.
Most agencies report Meta's number. Meta's number is generous. One brand we worked with was seeing 4.1 ROAS in Google Ads and 2.6 in Shopify — a $31K/month gap, invisible on the dashboard they were being shown. We wrote up the mechanics in what your Google Ads attribution is hiding.
An agency that reconciles the two without being asked is doing the job. One that can't produce it is reporting, not managing.
What $2,000 bought at Basic
We charge $2,000/month for performance marketing. Some results from that scope:
- A DTC apparel brand cut CAC by 38% in three months — same ad spend, better fundamentals
- A pet products brand had $12,000/month in wasted spend found and cut, without revenue dropping
- A supplement brand went from unprofitable to profitable in 45 days by fixing the offer and the page, not the targeting
The pattern in all three: the fix was in the system underneath the ads. That's what 20–30 focused hours buys when they're pointed at the right thing.
What to do today
Take your current or proposed retainer and divide it by $70 — a fair blended senior rate. That's roughly how many hours a month you're buying.
Now compare that number to the scope you were promised. If you're paying $2,000 and the deck lists ads, creative production, CRO, email and SMS, you're being sold about 100 hours of work for 28 hours of money. Ask which parts are actually happening this month.
If you want the version with the scope written down before you pay anything, our pricing is public and the full market pricing breakdown shows where $2,000 sits against everyone else. Book a 20-minute call and we'll tell you what we'd fix first.