Pricing
Simple, transparent pricing.
Three bundles, published rates, and an itemised list of what is inside each one. You should not have to sit through a discovery call to find out whether an agency is in your range.
How much does a marketing agency cost?
VIS Mountain publishes three monthly bundles. Organic is $2,400 a month and covers search, the map pack, content, listings, reviews and the website. Organic + Ads is $3,600 a month and adds Google and Meta advertising. Organic + Ads + AI is $4,800 a month and adds the AI intake, follow-up and answer-engine monitoring layer.
Each additional business location is $150 a month added to an existing bundle. Advertising budget is paid by the client directly to Google and Meta and is never included in these figures, so the monthly fee is the fee.
Most agencies hide this. We would rather not.
Every agency pricing page on the internet explains pricing models without ever quoting a number. If you have spent an afternoon reading them you already know the feeling.
The reason they hide it is not sinister, it is commercial: a published price lets you disqualify them before a salesperson gets to explain the value. We take the opposite bet. If the number does not work for your business, both of us are better off knowing that in the first minute rather than the fourth meeting.
So here it is. Three bundles, one add-on for extra locations, and a table further down showing exactly what sits inside each one. There is no fourth tier that appears once you are on a call, and there is no different number for people who seem willing to pay more.
What is not on this page is a quote for work that genuinely varies: a large website build, an e-commerce store, an unusual integration, or a business with a dozen locations. Those get priced properly against a real scope instead of being guessed at here. Everything in the standard program is above.
Pick what you need running.
Every bundle includes the organic program, because it is the part that compounds and the part everything else depends on. Advertising and the AI layer stack on top of it.
Organic
$2,400 a month. Search, the map pack, content, listings, reviews and the website, with no advertising spend required. The right starting point when the phone rings enough to survive and you want it to ring more without renting every call.
- Map pack and organic search
- Answer and generative engine work
- Website management included
- Review collection and response
Organic + Ads
$3,600 a month. Everything in Organic, plus Google and Meta advertising built, managed and measured against booked work rather than clicks. For when you need demand now as well as demand later.
- Everything in Organic
- Google Ads management
- Meta ads management
- Campaign landing pages
Organic + Ads + AI
$4,800 a month. Everything above, plus the AI layer: intake and answering on your site, automated follow-up and routing, and monitoring of what assistants say about you.
- Everything in Organic + Ads
- AI chat and intake
- Automated follow-up and routing
- AI search visibility monitoring
What is actually in each one.
Deliberately no counts. A line that promises a fixed number of posts turns the work into a quota, and a quota is the fastest way to get content nobody needed. What you get is the discipline, run continuously, at the volume the account warrants.
Open the full comparison: What is actually in each one.Hide the full comparison: What is actually in each one.
| Included | Organic | Organic + Ads | Organic + Ads + AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile management | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Map pack and local search work | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Technical SEO and site health | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Keyword and topic research | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Authority content published to your site | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answer engine optimization (AEO) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Generative engine optimization (GEO) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Local listings and citation consistency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Review collection and response | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Organic social posting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Website management, hosting and updates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Call, form and chat tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Ads management | No | Yes | Yes |
| Meta ads management | No | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign landing pages and funnels | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI chat and intake on your website | No | No | Yes |
| AI follow-up and routing automations | No | No | Yes |
| AI search visibility monitoring | No | No | Yes |
| Dedicated project manager | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| One consolidated monthly report | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monthly | $2,400 | $3,600 | $4,800 |
Additional business locations are $150 a month each, added to an existing bundle rather than sold on their own. Advertising budget is separate and is always paid by you directly to Google and Meta.
The parts that are never a separate line.
These are not upsells and they are not conditional on the tier. They are how the work is done, so they are in the price.
- You own the website, the domain, the Google Business Profile, the ad accounts, the analytics and the data
- Advertising budget is paid by you directly to the platforms, never routed through us
- A project manager who owns your account and is the person you contact
- Working sessions weekly or monthly, at your cadence
- One consolidated monthly report covering every channel, with one agreed headline number
See the full checklist: The parts that are never a separate line.Hide the full checklist: The parts that are never a separate line.
- Access to every tool and dashboard we use on your account
- Content and campaign changes reviewed with you before they go live
- A transition plan of 30 to 60 days if you are moving from another agency, with nothing going dark
Anything genuinely outside the standard program, such as a large custom build, an e-commerce store or an unusual integration, is scoped and quoted separately rather than absorbed quietly.
A monthly fee is not one thing.
It helps to see a retainer as a portfolio rather than a single purchase, because the parts pay back on completely different timescales.
Some of the work pays back inside a month. Fixing a conversion path, correcting a Google Business Profile category, turning off the campaign that has been buying irrelevant clicks since March. These are the changes that make the first invoice feel reasonable.
Some of it pays back over quarters. Content, internal structure, citations, review velocity and the answer layer. None of it moves a number in week two, and all of it is the reason a business that has been doing this for two years pays less per enquiry than one that started last month.
And a slice is measurement, which pays back indirectly by making everything else decidable. Without it you are choosing between channels on instinct, which is how businesses end up defending a spend they cannot evaluate.
When you read a proposal from anybody, including us, the useful question is not what it costs. It is which of those three buckets the money is going into, and whether the split matches how urgently you need the phone to ring.
SEO, AEO and GEO, without the jargon.
SEO, search engine optimization, is the work that earns a position in a list of results. It covers what your pages say, how the site is built so a crawler can read it, how fast it loads, and how many credible places on the web point at you. If somebody types a search and scrolls a list, SEO decides where you appear in it.
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work that gets a clean answer lifted out of your page and shown directly. It is less about persuasion and more about structure: asking the real question as a heading, answering it immediately underneath in two or three plain sentences, and making sure that answer still makes sense when it is quoted with no surrounding context. Every page on this site is built that way, including this one.
Read the full breakdown: SEO, AEO and GEO, without the jargon.Hide the full breakdown: SEO, AEO and GEO, without the jargon.
GEO, generative engine optimization, is the work that makes an assistant name your business when somebody asks it a question in your category. There is no secret mechanism here and no file you submit. Google's own documentation states there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI features and no special structured data to add. What actually moves it is being described consistently and specifically everywhere you appear, having real substance on the pages that answer the question, and being independently corroborated by sources the model already trusts.
The three overlap far more than the acronyms suggest, and that is why they are one line item rather than three. The same content investment feeds all three. What differs is how you check whether it worked: a ranking report for the first, a look at whether your answer is the one being shown for the second, and asking the assistants themselves, repeatedly and on the record, for the third.
One honest limit. Nobody can guarantee a citation in an AI answer, any more than anybody can guarantee a ranking. What can be done is to make a business the most quotable option in its category and area, and then to measure month over month whether the assistants are naming it. If a vendor tells you otherwise, ask them to put the guarantee in the contract and watch what happens.
A reference point, not a rule.
The most quoted answer to this question, that small businesses should spend seven to eight percent of revenue on marketing, cannot be traced to any source that actually published it. Here is a number that can. The CMO Survey, run by Duke's Fuqua School with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association, asked 308 US marketing leaders in January 2026.
SourceThe CMO Survey, Duke Fuqua with Deloitte and the AMA, 308 US marketing leaders, fielded January 2026
Those respondents run much larger companies than most of our clients, so this is context rather than a target. A more useful question for a local business is what one new customer is worth over their lifetime, and how many of them a month would justify the fee. We will work that through with you on the call using your numbers, not a benchmark.
What a click and a lead cost on search.
Advertising budget is separate from the management fee and is paid by you directly to the platforms. LocalIQ publishes annual benchmarks drawn from its own customers' Google and Microsoft Ads accounts, which makes these vendor figures rather than a market average, but they are stated with a methodology and they are a reasonable starting frame.
SourceLocalIQ, Search Advertising Benchmarks 2026
Costs vary enormously by category. In the same 2026 dataset, legal averaged $9.87 per click and $131.63 per lead, while physicians and surgeons averaged $4.76 and $40.04. Your market, your radius and your competitors move these more than any management technique does, which is why we size the budget on the call rather than on a page.
Three fee models, and what each one rewards.
Worth understanding before you compare any two proposals, because the model quietly determines what the agency is motivated to recommend.
| Model | What it rewards | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | Doing the work regardless of spend level | Scope has to be written down or it drifts |
| Percentage of ad spend | Nothing you want. It pays more when you spend more | The advice to increase budget is never disinterested |
| Per project | A clean deliverable with a clear end | Nobody owns what happens after it ships |
We charge a flat monthly fee. Ad budget goes straight from you to Google and Meta, so recommending a larger budget earns us nothing extra. That is the whole reason to structure it that way.
What the first 60 days look like.
No long silence between signing and seeing something. The order is designed so you can tell within a month whether this is working.
Access and measurement
We get read or admin access to what already exists, then wire up call, form and chat tracking so every enquiry is attributed from day one. Nothing is rebuilt that does not need rebuilding.
The audit you can argue with
A written read on the site, the profile, the listings, the campaigns and the competitive picture, with the fixes ranked by how quickly they should move. You get the reasoning, not just the list.
Fast fixes, then the build
The quick leaks get closed first while the compounding work starts underneath. If you are transitioning from another agency this runs over 30 to 60 days so nothing goes dark.
First report and first decision
One consolidated report, one working session, one decision about what changes next month. From there it is a monthly rhythm at whatever cadence you prefer.
In-person sessions run 8:00am to 6:00pm and every office is by appointment only, including the headquarters. Most working sessions happen remotely.
Contract, ownership and what happens if you leave.
Services run for an initial 90 days, then continue month to month with 30 days' notice. Ninety days is not a lock-in tactic, it is the shortest honest window in which organic work can show a direction. If we could show it in 30 we would ask for 30.
Ad spend is never included in the monthly fee and never passes through us. You pay Google and Meta directly from your own accounts, which means you can see every dollar, you keep the account history that makes future campaigns cheaper, and our advice about budget is not a commission decision.
Read the full breakdown: Contract, ownership and what happens if you leave.Hide the full breakdown: Contract, ownership and what happens if you leave.
Every recurring service carries a one-time setup and implementation charge, billed with your first month. It covers the access, tracking, audit and build work described above. The exact figure is confirmed in writing with your scope before you commit to anything, and there is nothing in it that appears after you sign.
You own the work. The website, the domain, the Google Business Profile, the Google Ads and Meta accounts, the analytics property, the customer records and the content we publish are yours and stay in your name throughout. If you leave, we transfer administrative access and hand over documentation. We do not hold a domain or an ad account hostage, and any agency that would is telling you something important about itself.
We carry the Google Partner badge, which is a Google programme with its own requirements rather than a logo anyone can add to a footer. For Facebook and Instagram work we describe ourselves as a Meta ads agency, which is the accurate description of what that is.
Not sure which one fits?
Book a free strategy call and we will map your market, your competitors and the right starting bundle. Twenty minutes, exact scope, no pressure.
Straight answers.
How much does VIS Mountain cost per month?
Organic is $2,400 a month, Organic + Ads is $3,600 a month, and Organic + Ads + AI is $4,800 a month. Each additional business location is $150 a month on any bundle.
Advertising budget is separate and is paid by you directly to Google and Meta, so the monthly figure above is the full fee we charge.
Is ad spend included in the price?
No, and deliberately so. You pay Google and Meta directly from accounts in your own name. That keeps the spend visible to you, keeps the account history with you if you ever move, and means our recommendation about budget size earns us nothing either way.
Are there setup fees?
Yes. Every recurring service carries a one-time setup and implementation charge, billed with your first month, covering access, tracking, the initial audit and the build work. The figure is confirmed in writing alongside your scope before you commit, and nothing appears later that was not on that document.
Am I locked into a long contract?
Services run for an initial 90 days and then continue month to month with 30 days' notice. The 90 days exists because organic work cannot show a direction in less, not because we need the runway.
What do I get for an extra location?
Each additional location is $150 a month added to an existing bundle, never a plan on its own, and carries its own Google Business Profile management, its own local listing consistency, its own review handling and its own local search work, so the locations do not end up competing with each other for the same searches.
Can I buy just one channel?
The bundles exist because the channels feed each other, and a single channel run in isolation usually underperforms what the same money would do inside a program. If your situation genuinely calls for one thing only, say so on the call and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing.
How do I compare two agency proposals fairly?
Line up four things and the rest becomes obvious. What is actually included, stated as work rather than as adjectives. Who owns the accounts and data. How the agency is paid, because a percentage of ad spend rewards spending more. And what happens on the day you leave.
A proposal that is vague about any of those four is not cheaper, it is just less specific.
Do you charge based on results?
No. Performance-based pricing sounds fair and reliably goes wrong, because it pushes an agency towards whichever metric is easiest to move rather than the one that matters, and it falls apart the moment attribution is disputed. A flat fee, a written scope and an agreed headline number is the cleaner arrangement for both sides.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- The CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua, Deloitte and the AMA) (opens in a new tab)Twice-yearly survey of US marketing leaders on budgets, spend growth and AI adoption.
- LocalIQ: Search Advertising Benchmarks (opens in a new tab)Cost per click, click-through rate and cost per lead by industry, from one vendor's account data.
- Google Ads Help: About Ad Rank (opens in a new tab)How Google decides which ad shows and in what position, in Google's own words.
- FTC: Advertising and marketing basics for business (opens in a new tab)The truth-in-advertising standards every claim on a client site has to meet.
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website (opens in a new tab)Google states plainly that no special file, feed or markup is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- Google Search Central: Do you need an SEO? (opens in a new tab)Google's own guidance on hiring help, including the line that nobody can guarantee a number one ranking.
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.