You are not buying hours. You are buying a system that runs.
Apex runs growth systems rather than one-off projects. One monthly retainer buys the whole machine: strategy, paid media, creative, content, social presence, email and SMS, funnels, CRM and the automation that ties it together. Built by us, run by us, and reported back to you in numbers you can check. Billing is a flat monthly fee, never hours and never a percentage of your ad spend. There are three levels of scope, and a free audit call before either of us commits to anything.
3 months, then month to monthA build phase, an honest read, then compounding. After that, 30 days notice, with no annual lock-in.
Ad spend is separateMedia budget goes from your card straight to the platforms, in accounts your business owns, and it is never marked up.
The way in is freeAn audit call where we look at your numbers and tell you what is actually broken, including when the answer is "not us".
Who These Retainers Are Built For
The businesses these retainers were built around.
The components are the same everywhere: traffic, creative, conversion, follow-up, measurement. What changes is which lever matters first, and that is what the audit call decides.
Local & home services
Roofing, contracting, restoration, HVAC, med-spas and clinics. Demand exists in your ZIP codes already. The work is capturing it, answering it in seconds, and never letting a lead go cold in a spreadsheet.
E-commerce & DTC
Brands where creative volume and margin discipline decide everything. Paid acquisition, a creative studio that keeps the account fed, lifecycle email and SMS, and attribution honest enough to spend against.
Professional services
Law firms, agencies, financial and B2B service firms selling on trust and expertise. Positioning, content and authority up top; intake, qualification and pipeline discipline underneath.
The Three Tiers
Pick the tier that matches your bottleneck.
Every tier is fully managed: we do the work, you approve the direction. The difference between them is scope and capacity: how many channels we run, how much creative and content we produce, how deep the automation goes, and how much of our month is reserved for you.
Tier 1
Foundation
The core growth system, installed properly and running on one paid channel.
$4,997per month
Who it is forOne business, one market, one primary channel. You have an offer that already sells when a human is in front of it, and you need the machine around it built before you pour money into ads.
The full multi-channel engine. Paid, creative, content and lifecycle running together.
$9,997per month
Who it is forYou have proven the offer converts, and the bottleneck is now volume and variety: more channels, more creative, more surface area, more places a buyer can find you and be followed up properly.
Everything in Foundation, plus
Multi-channel paid media. Meta, Google and TikTok as the market warrants, budgeted and managed as one account rather than three silos.
Creative production studio. A standing monthly slate of UGC-style video, statics and motion edits, judged on hook and cost data instead of taste.
Content strategy & social presence. The calendar, the posts, the captions and the repurposing engine, managed for your main platforms rather than left to you.
Email & SMS lifecycle. Welcome, nurture, abandonment, post-sale and win-back flows, plus the regular campaign calendar on top.
Outbound & database reactivation. Your existing list and every past enquiry worked systematically instead of forgotten.
An ongoing CRO programme. Page, offer and headline tests running continuously; winners rolled out, learnings fed back into the ads.
Full automation build-out. Booking, routing, reminders, review requests and pipeline stages wired end to end.
Bi-weekly strategy calls. Twice the cadence, so decisions land in the same month you spot them.
Deliberately not included
Dedicated capacity (you share the studio queue)
Quarterly deep-planning strategy sessions
Multi-location or multi-brand rollouts
Custom internal tooling built for your team
Move up when your calendar, not your budget, becomes the constraint.
A full outsourced marketing department with capacity reserved for you.
$12,997per month
Who it is forMulti-location, multi-offer or fast-moving businesses that would otherwise be hiring a marketing team. You want dedicated capacity, a strategist in the room, and one party who owns the whole number.
Everything in Growth, plus
Dedicated monthly capacity. Hours reserved for your account rather than shared across the roster.
Priority build queue. New pages, funnels, campaigns and landing tests jump the line when you need them live.
Quarterly strategy sessions. The annual plan, offer architecture, budget modelling and the channel roadmap, worked properly instead of squeezed into a status call.
Multi-location & multi-brand support. Separate budgets, creative, tracking and reporting per location or brand.
Custom automation & internal tooling. Dashboards, AI intake assistants, CRM builds and integrations shaped around how your business actually operates.
Sales-side enablement. Call scripts, follow-up sequences, pipeline hygiene and coaching on what to do with the leads once they land.
A direct line to the founder. Shared channel, same-day responses, on call around launches and campaigns.
If you only read one part of this page, read this table. It is the same information as the cards above with the marketing removed.
Comparison of the Foundation, Growth and Command monthly retainers
What you get
Foundation$4,997 / mo
Growth$9,997 / mo
Command$12,997 / mo
Best for
One market, one channel
Multi-channel scale
Multi-location or in-house replacement
Strategy & positioning
Included
Included
Included + quarterly sessions
Paid media channels
One (Meta or Google)
Meta, Google, TikTok
Meta, Google, TikTok, per location
Creative production
Monthly batch
Full studio slate
Full studio + priority queue
Content strategy & social presence
Not included
Included
Included
Email & SMS
New-lead follow-up only
Full lifecycle + campaigns
Full lifecycle + campaigns
Landing pages & funnels
One build + iterations
Ongoing CRO programme
Ongoing CRO + priority builds
Outbound & database reactivation
Not included
Included
Included
Tracking, attribution & dashboard
Included
Included
Included + custom reporting
CRM & automation
Pipeline + lead routing
Full automation build-out
Custom tooling & integrations
Sales enablement
Not included
Not included
Included
Strategy cadence
Monthly review call
Bi-weekly calls
Bi-weekly + quarterly sessions
Dedicated capacity
Shared queue
Shared queue
Reserved for you
Multi-location / multi-brand
Not included
Not included
Included
Ad spend
Separate
Separate
Separate
Minimum term
3 months, then monthly
3 months, then monthly
3 months, then monthly
Scroll the table sideways on smaller screens. Scope is confirmed in writing before month one starts.
Flat monthly retainer
The Commercial Terms
How the engagement actually works.
Four things that are true of every engagement, printed here so nobody has to ask them on a call.
i.
The free audit call comes first
Nothing is quoted until we have looked. On the call we go through your offer, your numbers, the channels you are running and where the leaks actually are. You leave with the diagnosis and a straight recommendation, including "not yet" or "not us" when that is the honest answer. It costs nothing and there is no obligation attached to it.
ii.
Three-month minimum, then month to month
Month one is the build. Month two is the first honest read. Month three is where compounding starts. That is why the minimum exists: anything shorter and you would pay for the construction and leave before using the building. After three months it is month to month with 30 days notice. No annual lock-in, no auto-renewing term, no cancellation fee.
iii.
Ad spend is always separate
Your media budget goes from your card straight to Meta, Google or TikTok, inside ad accounts owned by your business. We never mark it up, never bill a percentage of it and never hold it. A flat retainer means our incentive is to make the spend work, not to make it bigger.
iv.
You own everything we build
Ad accounts, pixels and conversion setups are created in your business name. Landing pages, creative files, copy, CRM data, automations and your email and SMS lists are yours from day one. If we part ways you keep all of it and we hand over access cleanly. No hostage situations, no accounts you cannot log into.
The One Build We Point To
One client, built end to end.
United Citizen Law, a personal-injury firm in Sacramento, is the flagship engagement: a website live in five languages with 988 hand-translated strings across 20 pages, an AI intake assistant that qualifies enquiries and books consultations, a CRM pipeline, and six automations running in production.
5 languages live988 strings translated by hand20 pages6 automations in production
That is what the Command tier's tooling looks like when it is finished. It is one client, not a portfolio, and we would rather show you a single system built end to end than a page of badges. Whatever your vertical, the same components get sized to your business. The capability is the proof, and you can go and click it yourself.
Answered the way we would answer them on the phone.
What actually happens in month one?
Month one is a build month. We run the audit and the positioning sprint, take ownership of (or create) your ad accounts and tracking, wire the CRM and follow-up automation, build the first landing page or funnel and produce the first creative batch. Campaigns normally go live inside the first few weeks, but we say up front that month one is infrastructure work rather than a performance month. Anyone promising otherwise is selling you the month, not the system.
Is ad spend included in the retainer?
No. The retainer pays for the team, the build and the management. Media budget is billed by Meta, Google and TikTok directly to your card, inside ad accounts owned by your business. We do not mark it up and we do not charge a percentage of it. Percentage-of-spend pricing rewards an agency for spending more of your money, which is exactly the wrong incentive.
Who owns the accounts, assets and data?
You do, from day one. Ad accounts, pixels and conversion setups are created in your business name. Landing pages, creative files, copy, CRM data, automations and your email and SMS lists belong to you. If we stop working together, you keep every piece of it and we hand over access. Nothing is built inside an account you cannot log into.
What if it is not working?
We tell you before you have to ask. Every engagement has agreed KPIs and a live dashboard from week one, so "working" is defined in numbers we both signed off on rather than a feeling at the end of the month. If the numbers are not moving we diagnose it openly across offer, market, creative, follow-up speed and spend level, then change the plan, including telling you when the problem is not marketing. After the three-month minimum you can leave with 30 days notice and we hand everything over cleanly. We would rather lose a client than defend a losing account.
How does reporting work?
You get a live dashboard you can open any time — spend, leads, cost per lead, booked appointments and pipeline, built on reconciled server-side data rather than whatever the ad platforms would like to claim. On top of that: a monthly review call on Foundation, bi-weekly on Growth and Command, plus quarterly strategy sessions on Command. Every call ends the same way: what moved, why, and the next three decisions.
Can I pause?
After the three-month minimum, pauses are handled case by case. Seasonality, a capacity crunch or a genuine operational emergency are all reasonable reasons to stop the meter for a cycle, and we would rather pause you than watch you churn. Ask before the cycle starts so we can stage the work properly. What we will not do is pause mid-build, because a half-installed system wastes the money you already spent on it. If you would rather stop entirely, 30 days notice ends it.
Why is there a three-month minimum?
Because month one is the build, month two is the first honest read on live data, and month three is where the compounding starts. Anything shorter and you would be paying for the construction and walking out before you use the building. After that it is month to month with 30 days notice, with no annual lock-in, no auto-renewing twelve-month term and no cancellation fee.
Which tier should I start on?
Most businesses belong on Growth, because that is the level where paid media, creative, content and lifecycle all run at once, which is what actually compounds. Start on Foundation if you are proving a single channel in a single market, or if cash flow means the system has to earn its way up. Start on Command if you are multi-location, multi-offer, or you would otherwise be hiring in-house. The free audit call ends with a straight recommendation, and "start smaller than you were planning" is one we give often.
Every engagement starts with the same free call.
A free diagnostic call: your offer, your numbers, your channels, and an honest read on what to fix first and which tier (if any) makes sense. No deck, no pressure, no obligation.