Your marketing department
Hire a whole marketing department for less than the cost of one hire.
A CMO and the entire marketing department behind them — strategist, designer, web, copywriter, AI — in one flat monthly plan.
Best of all: nobody to manage. Say what you want done; we work out the rest.
A CMO in every plan
You need a marketing department. You don't need one more thing to manage.
Running it isn't your job. Your time belongs to your clients, and marketing leadership isn't the expertise you built your practice on. But the work still has to be led. A website, a CRM, campaigns, content, follow-up, and all the people it takes to do the work — with nobody directing that, you get a pile of invoices and no pipeline.
That's the job every plan comes with: your CMO. Not a junior anyone. The strategy, the direction, the weekly meeting, and the ownership of whether it actually worked — at an experience level you couldn't put on payroll. Plans differ in exactly one thing: how much we build for you at once. Same CMO. More firepower.
- Spike as your CMO — strategy & direction
- A weekly strategy meeting
- A dedicated team — every skill, no add-on fees
- Unlimited requests (run sprint by sprint)
- Always-on upkeep, baked in
- A live work board you can see anytime
- A weekly shipping recap — value on display
- Unlimited revisions until it's right
- Pause anytime after the first 90 days
How it works
You don't buy hours. Your marketing department runs sprints.
A sprint is one focused piece of work, scoped up front and driven to done — big projects break into several. Send us as much as you want: your marketing department runs it, one sprint after another, until it ships. No timesheets, no metering, no nickel-and-diming. When a sprint ships, the next one starts.
Every plan comes with a board like this example. It's always live, yours to open at any time, so you never have to ask what we're working on.
Your marketing department
Welcome back, Albert.
Up next
- Seminar funnel
- Nurture sequence
- Client newsletter
In sprint
Website refresh
Shipped
- Referral program
- Landing page test
- Review campaign
We catch what you didn't know to ask for.
Database hygiene, SEO, software updates, monitoring — the upkeep a great marketing department just handles. Three decades inside the trusted advisor world is how we know where to look, and it's why the thing you'd have discovered in six months gets fixed this week. Always on, always included, no sprint required.
We promise momentum, not deadlines.
Every active sprint moves every single week. Big builds get phased and keep advancing — you'll never wonder whether work is happening, and you'll never chase us for a status update.
Choose how much you want done
Pick how many sprints your marketing department runs.
Build
One thing at a time, done properly. The right way to start.
- Your CMO, and a strategy meeting every week
- One sprint running — one priority, start to finish
- Your own work board, so you always know what's moving
- Upkeep handled in the background, no sprint needed
Grow
Two things moving at once. Where most advisors settle.
- Everything in Build, plus:
- Two sprints at once — build one thing while another ships
- A monthly review of what the marketing actually did
- Time with us between meetings, whenever you need it
Lead
Everything moving at once, with your work first in line.
- Everything in Grow, plus:
- Three sprints at once — several initiatives in parallel
- We own the numbers, and report on them every month
- A direct line to us, and your work goes to the front
Three sprints at once is more than most advisors will ever need. If yours is the exception, custom plans start at four and up, built around your goals.
Whichever plan you pick, your marketing has to run on a platform — the CRM, the pipelines, the email and texts, the calendars, the tracking that tells you what actually worked. Ours is HighLevel. It is not part of the prices above: it's a separate subscription in your name, from $97/mo, because the account and everything in it is yours to keep. Building it and running it is sprint work, included. See GoHighLevel plans
What it costs to build this in-house
This is what your payroll would actually be.
Every function, priced the way payroll actually works — salary plus the taxes, benefits, recruiting and software that come with a person. Every one of them belongs in a real marketing department, but you may only be feeling one of them right now. Take out anything you wouldn't hire right away, and see how the two sides still compare.
Every marketing department needs somebody running it. That's the one role you can't switch off.
In-house that's a Head of Marketing, $18,937 a month, and that's what a real one costs. Cheaper isn't one; it's just another person who still needs your directing. And if it's neither, it's all your time and responsibility. With Spike, it's included in every one of our plans.
Always on. Can't be switched off.
Head of Marketing
Average cost to hire one in-house
$18,937
total payroll, a month
Interactive — try it
Use the calculator below to price it yourself
Every role starts switched on. Tap any you wouldn't hire right away and the payroll drops — the comparison holds either way.
Your in-house payroll
$100,262
a month · 10 of 10 roles
The hire advisors start with
To hire one junior marketing coordinator, in-house:
$6,566total payroll, a month
Your entire marketing department:
$3,500/moBuild
The most junior person you could put on payroll costs 88% more than all ten of us — and they'd spend half the week chasing contractors to do the actual work.
The senior hire
To hire one Head of Marketing (fractional CMO), in-house:
$18,937total payroll, a month
Your marketing department, running at pace:
$6,500/moGrow
Nearly three times what the whole marketing department costs — and that's the honest price of the role, not a bargain version of it. They'd still have no team to direct.
The team you'd build
The ten functions you kept, in-house:
$100,262total payroll, a month
Your marketing department, at full power:
$9,000/moLead
More than eleven times the cost to build that marketing team in-house — the same ten functions, and a year of hiring before any of it ships.
Payroll is never just the salary.
- Salary70%
- Taxes & benefits21%
- Recruiting7%
- Software seat2%
$4,583 + $1,375 + $458 + $150 = $6,566/mo. Every role above is priced the same way.
No hiring
Typically ~7 weeks to fill a seat and about 30 hours of your time — screening, interviewing, deciding. And no way to know you chose right for months.
With us: the seat is already filled.
No training
Averages say ~90 days to full productivity. In this industry it is longer — compliance, the regulators, how advice actually gets given — and you write the manuals and the SOPs to teach it.
With us: three decades in the advisor world, up to speed in week one.
No managing
About 4 hours a week per person, every week, plus reviews, PTO and turnover.
With us: one CMO, one point of contact.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (May 2024) for salaried roles; Glassdoor (2025–26) for AI, SEO, social & CRM; BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for the employer load. Recruiting at the industry-standard 15–25% of first-year salary, spread across a 24-month average tenure; time-to-fill per SHRM. Full-time US market medians — your numbers will vary by role and region.
Every figure above is a full-time hire. You don't need to hire and manage ten people. You need ten marketing jobs done.
You're probably thinking you'd never put ten people on payroll, and you're not wrong — most advisory firms don't need a full-time video editor. The trouble is the market doesn't sell you a third of a person. You hire a whole one, or you parcel the work out. There is no half.
A real marketing department needs all ten functions covered. We cover them in sprints: the work, when there's work, and nothing when there isn't. That's the entire reason that hiring Spike costs a fraction of the payroll figures above.
And parcelling it out doesn't shrink your side of it. "I'll find someone on Fiverr" is ten freelancers to find, brief, teach your compliance rules to, chase, and replace when they vanish. And worst of all, you'd be the one holding it all together. That's a job. You already have one.
Hire Spike, and a whole marketing department costs less than one junior hire.
$6,500
$6,566
Grow plan
all ten functions
One marketing coordinator
full-time, entry level
- Buildall ten functions
- $3,500
- Growall ten functions
- $6,500
- Leadall ten functions
- $9,000
All ten marketing functions. One flat monthly rate. Nobody to manage.
All ten, even on the smallest plan
Moving up a plan buys more running at once — one sprint, two, or three. It never buys more of the department: Build gets the same ten functions Lead does.
All the work included, sprint by sprint
Send as much as you want; it runs one sprint after another until it ships. Nothing is metered and nothing is quoted per project, so the rate is the same whether a sprint turns out easy or hard.
You approve a direction, not a workload
One person owns the plan and brings you a recommended order every week, then runs it once you agree. Nothing to assign, chase, review, or cover when somebody's out.
Thirty minutes, and you'll know exactly what your marketing department could look like.
Nothing to prepare, nothing to sign.
Your weekly meeting
We run the meeting. You just tell us what you want.
That's what your CMO is for. No plan to arrive with, no brief to write, and no explaining your business from scratch — we already speak your language and know which questions to ask. You bring the goal — more clients, a better website, a seminar that fills — and we work out what it takes and what comes first. Thirty minutes a week, and you leave with one agreed order of work.
Shipped
What's finished and live this week — your value, on display. This is what replaces the timesheet.
Active sprints
What's in flight right now, and what's about to free up.
Planned
What fills the next open sprint, scoped to the outcome you want. Anything new from you gets folded in here.
Prioritized
What comes first, second, third. Most weeks something is quietly blocking something else, and getting that order right is worth more than working faster. We recommend the order; you set it.
Guidance
The things you didn't ask for, because you had no way to know to ask. That's the CMO part.
Not ready for the whole marketing department?
Then hire us for one thing.
Plenty of advisors start with a single piece of work — they saw what we built for someone else and they want that one thing. No plan, no retainer: one project, one flat price, driven to done.
And it counts toward your marketing department plan
Buy any project marked ✓, hire your marketing department within 30 days, and what you paid becomes your first month of sprint work. Your $3,000 Branding Package pays for itself.
From
$9,500
Produced by an outside crew, sold separately.
Media Day
A pro video and photo crew at your office for one day — founder story, team interviews, B-roll, headshots, and a year of content.
Learn more →
From
$5,000
Credits toward your plan
Advisor Digital Brain
A private AI-ready operating memory for your practice — meetings, files, notes, client context and SOPs your team and your AI can actually use.
Learn more →
From
$5,000
Credits toward your plan
Advisor Clone
Your own AI video clone. Record once, then produce videos, posts and full courses in your likeness, on demand.
Learn more →
From
$5,000
Credits toward your plan
AI Chief of Staff
Your first AI hire — an always-on Chief of Staff that runs your day and manages a whole crew of specialist agents.
Learn more →
From
$3,000
Credits toward your plan
Branding Package
A complete design system, handed off — so every deck, page and post you make looks unmistakably yours.
Learn more →
Membership
$30/mo · $300/yr
Buy it on its own, or free with any marketing department plan
Advisor Toolkit
AI prompts, Claude skills, courses, templates and guides — everything an advisor needs to put AI to work, in one membership.
Learn more →
Your next step
See what your marketing could actually look like.
Bring us the thing that's been stuck — we'll tell you how we'd move it.