What Does a Brand Growth Retainer Include? (And Is It Worth It?)
If you're a growing brand with regular design output needs and you're tired of briefing a new supplier every time something needs creating, a Brand Growth Retainer is probably something you've started thinking about. This post explains exactly what it includes, who it's right for, and how to know if your business is at the stage where it makes sense.
What is a Brand Growth Retainer?
A Brand Growth Retainer is an ongoing design relationship with a set amount of monthly creative capacity available to your business, handled by a design team who already knows your brand.
Rather than briefing design on a project-by-project basis, you have a standing creative relationship. The team understands your visual identity, your commercial context, your seasonal rhythms. Briefing is faster, output is more consistent, and the brand accumulates coherence over time rather than drifting between suppliers.
What's typically included each month?
The scope varies by retainer level, but a Brand Growth Retainer typically covers social media assets (Instagram, LinkedIn, campaign graphics), email design (Klaviyo templates and campaign graphics), campaign and promotional materials, website graphic updates, print-ready files for packaging, stationery or event materials, and any other recurring design output the business needs.
The key word is recurring. A retainer is designed for brands that have consistent, predictable design output needs not for occasional or one-off projects like new webpages or branding tweaks.
Who is it designed for?
The Brand Growth Retainer is right for brands that have moved past the early stage, typically doing £300k and above, where the volume of design output is consistent enough that a standing creative relationship makes more commercial sense than briefing new suppliers repeatedly. We will work with brands turning over less than this – as well as considerably more – as we see brands make ROI on retainer with us, we just like to ensure that there is social proof behind your product or service that makes working with us an amplifier.
It's particularly useful for brands with small or no in-house design teams, founder-led businesses where the founder is currently making all the creative decisions, and brands that have noticed inconsistency creeping into their visual output as they've grown.
How is it different from project-based design?
The practical difference is in what you're paying for. In a project model, a portion of the fee covers the time it takes a new supplier to understand the brand. In a retainer model, that cost is front-loaded once and then eliminated. Briefs are shorter. First attempts are more accurate. The output is more consistent because the same people are producing everything.
There's also a compound benefit. Six months of consistent creative output from people who understand the brand produces something specific: a brand that looks like it knows what it is. That coherence is a trust signal, and trust is what converts.
What does it cost?
Retainer pricing at Soley Creative is based on the scope of monthly output required. The investment reflects the strategic and executional value of a standing creative relationship rather than individual asset costs. We recommend starting with a conversation about your specific output needs rather than a fixed price list, the right retainer structure varies significantly by business. We charge by time rather than by deliverable in most cases – more on investment here.
How do you know if you're ready for one?
A few signs: you're briefing different designers for different projects and noticing inconsistency across the output. You spend significant time explaining your brand on every new brief. You have recurring design needs across at least two or three channels each month. You've had brand guidelines for a while but the output doesn't always reflect them.
If two or more of these are true, the economics of a retainer are likely to work in your favour.
Next Steps:
Find out more about the Brand Growth Retainer here, or start with a Brand Authority Audit to understand what your brand needs before committing to ongoing output.
