What a personal branding agency costs in Australia
Nobody in this industry wants to answer this in public. Here is the honest version, including why the number on its own tells you almost nothing.
It is a monthly retainer, and the range is wide
Personal branding in Australia is normally a monthly retainer rather than a one-off fee, because the work is ongoing production rather than a single deliverable. What moves the number is how much is done for you. Advisory costs least. Done for you costs most, because someone else is carrying the labour every week.
Two agencies quoting the same monthly fee can be selling completely different amounts of work.
Why almost nobody publishes a price
Some of it is legitimate. Scope really does vary. Filming a founder once a month in a studio is a different job to filming a trades business on site every fortnight, and pretending otherwise would produce a number nobody could honour.
The rest of it is less noble. A published price invites comparison on the one variable that means least. If you are choosing between two agencies on monthly fee alone, you are almost certainly comparing different amounts of work and calling it the same thing.
Which is why the useful question is not what does it cost. It is what do I get every month, and who does it.
What actually moves the number
- →How much is done for you. The single biggest factor. Strategy is cheap to deliver. Filming, editing and publishing every week is not.
- →Filming frequency and location. A monthly studio session costs less than fortnightly on-site shoots across Sydney.
- →Output volume. How many finished pieces land each month, and in what formats.
- →Number of platforms. Each one adds editing, formatting and scheduling, not just a copy and paste.
- →Whether they write. Scripting and captions in your voice is real work, and it is what most cheap packages quietly drop.
- →Term length. Shorter commitments usually price higher per month.
You are buying one of three things
Advisory
Strategy, positioning, maybe a calendar. Lowest cost. Right if you have the time and just need direction. Wasted if you were never going to execute it.
Production
They film and edit what you brief. Mid range. You still carry the thinking and the decisions about what gets made.
Done for you
Positioning, filming, editing, scripting, publishing. Highest cost, because it removes the most from your week. You turn up and approve.
The expensive mistake is not overpaying. It is buying advisory when you needed done for you, then paying again a year later having posted nothing. That is the same money spent twice with nothing to show, and it is the most common story I hear on first calls.
Questions that tell you if a quote is reasonable
What lands in my feed each month, specifically?
A number of finished pieces, in named formats. Vague answers here usually mean the scope has not been decided, which means it will be decided later in their favour.
How many hours do I personally spend?
Ask whether camera time is batched or spread across the week. Batching is what makes a retainer survivable when you are busy.
Who writes it, and will it sound like me?
Scripting in your voice is the first thing cut from a cheap package. If the sample work could have been posted by anyone in your industry, you are buying volume, not a brand.
What happens if I stop?
Ask about term length, and who owns the footage and the accounts. You should own both. It is surprising how often that is not the default.
When the answer is do not spend anything
If you cannot service more work, if your offer is not clear in one sentence, or if your last ten leads went cold for reasons unrelated to visibility, no retainer will fix that. Content makes an existing situation louder. Fix the underlying thing first, it is cheaper.
I tell people this on first calls and it costs me work. It is still the right call, and if an agency has never said it to anyone, that tells you something.
Want a number for your situation?
Book a content audit. We look at your market, what your competitors are publishing, and what would actually need to happen. If content is not your bottleneck, I will say so and that is the end of it. If you are still comparing options, read how to choose an agency in Sydney.