Home / Lead-to-Retainer Payback Calculator
This is the calculation any competent buyer runs before hiring an SEO firm. Most agencies will not show it to you because it makes their pitch harder. Enter what you already know about your traffic, your close rate and what a client is worth, and see when a retainer stops being a cost and starts being a return.
Every buyer of professional services has a moment where they need to justify the spend to themselves or to a partner, and most agency websites do not help them do that. This is that spreadsheet. Run it, print it, argue with it. If the numbers do not work under your own assumptions, that is a signal to not hire an agency this quarter, and I would rather you reached that conclusion here than in month four.
Enquiry rates on visitors realistically sit between 1% and 5% for most service sites, before any conversion work. Close rates vary wildly and if you do not have a real number, use 10% and revise it. Lifetime rather than first-visit revenue is where good service businesses live and where the retainer math actually pays.
Thirty minutes. Tell me where your last few customers came from and what you could handle more of. I will tell you whether marketing is your constraint or whether something else is, and I will say so plainly if it is not.