How Much Does Brand Strategy Cost? A Founder’s Guide
Search “how much does brand strategy cost,” and you’ll mostly get the same non-answer: “it depends.” True, but not useful. Here’s what it actually depends on, and real numbers for each part of the market — including my own.
What the market actually charges
Freelance brand strategists typically run $1,000 to $15,000 for a standalone strategy project, with experienced freelancers billing somewhere between $90 and $160 an hour. You’re paying for one person’s time and judgment, with no team layered on top.
Boutique branding agencies charge $5,000 to $30,000 for a strategy engagement. Larger, full-service agencies start around $30,000 and climb past $150,000 for bigger brands — a lot of that gap is agency overhead (a team of three to eight people: strategists, creative directors, account managers, project managers) rather than deeper strategic thinking.
Fractional CMOs and brand directors, hired on retainer for ongoing work rather than a single project, typically run $4,000 to $25,000+ a month. Early-stage companies tend to land at $5,000–$8,000 a month; scale-stage companies often pay $18,000–$25,000+.
Where I fit, and why
I don’t take on a new client relationship for less than $25,000, regardless of whether the engagement is a single strategy project or ongoing fractional advisory. That puts me above typical solo-freelancer pricing and in boutique-agency-to-enterprise-retainer territory — on purpose. You’re getting 25+ years of experience and Level C brand strategist training directly, with no team markup and no agency overhead. You’re not paying for a junior strategist supervised by someone senior; you’re working with the senior person the whole way through.
What that looks like in practice
I generally steer away from one-off projects in favor of longer relationships — a year or more, sometimes several — because brand strategy holds up better when someone stays close to it as the business grows, rather than handing over a deck and disappearing. That said, if the fit is right, a single project works too.
Two structures, both landing at the same $25,000 floor:
A single strategy engagement. Positioning, messaging, and the strategic groundwork, delivered as one project: $25,000 and up, depending on scope.
An ongoing relationship. For a good number of clients, this looks more like five months at $5,000 a month — the same $25,000, spread across a longer engagement instead of a single upfront project. Structured this way, the monthly rate comes in well below typical fractional retainer pricing, because you’re not paying for a single expensive month — you’re committing to an ongoing relationship, which is the format I’d rather build anyway.
What moves the number
Within that range, a few things push it up: whether the engagement includes design and execution alongside strategy, how complex the business or category is, and how long the relationship runs. A pure positioning engagement for an early-stage company starts closer to the floor. A longer relationship that includes ongoing creative review, vendor guidance, and ongoing execution support runs higher.
The bottom line
If your budget is well under $25,000, that’s genuinely useful to know upfront — better than getting three conversations deep into something that was never going to work on price. If you want senior-level strategic thinking, direct access to the person doing the work, and no agency layer in between, that’s the range to expect — from me or from anyone doing comparable work at this level.
A note on hourly rates
You’ll notice I haven’t quoted an hourly rate anywhere above. That’s deliberate.
Hourly billing assumes an hour of one person’s work is worth the same as an hour of anyone else’s. It isn’t, and everyone in this business quietly knows it. If I can solve a problem in one hour that takes someone else ten, why should I earn a tenth as much for delivering the same result? Hourly rates punish speed that comes from experience and quietly reward the opposite — whether that’s inexperience, modern-day distraction, or loose time-tracking habits padding an invoice nobody’s checking closely enough. None of that is good for the client. It’s good for the agency’s coffers.
I’m not questioning anyone’s honesty. It's just how the incentive works: bill by the hour, and the clock becomes something to manage instead of something to ignore. The client ends up watching a meter instead of watching for a result.
I price by the value of what gets solved, not the number of hours it takes me to solve it. That’s what the $25,000 floor above actually is — not a rate multiplied by an estimate, but what the work is worth.
