Leaders in the financial services industry understand the importance of achieving long-term goals while still focusing on day-to-day work. But finding the right balance is an art. At GK3 Capital, we recognize that an unyielding partnership with an agency does not allow for the subtle nuances necessary to achieve long-term goals.

That's why we use the Agile methodology to work alongside our clients who choose retainers. With this approach, we can help our clients focus on the most valuable aspects of their business to create 90-day goals broken down into 30-day “sprints” of deliverables that support them.

But why do retainers work well? Let’s look at the benefits.

GK3 Retainers: Big Payoffs at Your Pace

Overall, working on a retainer-basis can provide clients with a highly personalized, but simultaneously streamlined, efficient, and cost-effective approach to working with an agency.

1. Flexibility

Retainers aren’t meant to lock people in. Rather, they offer more flexibility in the areas of project scope and duration. Paired with the Agile approach, a retainer lets clients adjust priorities and resources as required to achieve their long-term goals.

2. Predictable costs

Because retainers involve a fixed monthly fee, they make budgeting predictable, and allow clients to avoid unexpected costs. Should something pop up that’s outside the scope of the retainer, it can still be accomplished thanks to GK3 working on a points-allocation basis (more on this later!). Pricing simply scales up as needed to accomplish these new goals. Flexibility first. 

3. Historical Partnership = Quality

Retainers are excellent at facilitating partnerships. By focusing on long-term business goals through a retainer, your agency resources become deeply familiar with the nuances of your business. These dedicated resources act as an extension of your team and can offer consistent support and guidance. Working on a retainer basis involves more regular communication between the client and agency, which can lead to a stronger working relationship and better outcomes.

4. Emergence

When using the Agile methodology, retainers often result in “emergence strategies,” i.e., strategies that emerge because of repeated actions, eventually revealing patterns. Such patterns, when analyzed over time, can provide substantive learnings which naturally result in opportunities for optimization.

What’s the Payoff?

You reach ‘digital distribution’ when you’re running full-funnel campaigns, netting new contacts from your website, and moving them through the pipeline. Retainer services can help you reach this point at the speed that makes the most sense for you, and at a lower cost than working across individually priced projects.

Scoping Your Retainer

Of course, retainers are just one aspect of your long-term strategy, but it can be more effective than you might think. To ensure you get the most value, we start by examining your desired results. What do you want to achieve? How quickly do you want to achieve it? Based on the outcomes you share, we work with our strategists during the sales process to fully understand the strategic approach that will move the needle.

Some examples:

You need to develop a comprehensive content strategy for the year. We focus our immediate attention on content strategy and creation, and allocate resources for editing, and optimization as well. We’d need to create a monthly content calendar, optimize existing content, and create new content as necessary, so we include that in the points that make up your retainer. 

You need to manage your social media accounts. We scope a retainer that includes content creation, scheduling, and community management strategy within the first sprint, so you know the priority and can make adjustments and optimizations as the retainer runs. 

As you can see, retainers are more about reaching a desired state or function than about just getting materials out the door — though both can happen at once! During scoping, we follow your lead around your long-term and immediate goals, and work together to design a solution that makes sense for today.

Then, with a plan in hand, we kick off the retainer in earnest.

Distributing Agile Points Across Goals and Deliverables

Once the retainer scope is defined, we meet and discuss your 90-day goals and the first 30-day sprint to realize those goals. Points are distributed to each deliverable in the sprint and allows the team to prioritize the most valuable tasks and complete them in the right order to reach your goals at your desired pace.

As an example, here is an actual set of 90-day goals for a client:

And here is an example of the 30-day sprint required to work toward those goals:

30-Day Sprint

Getting here isn’t too difficult, but it does take good communication.

Client Meetings with GK3

To ensure we’re always communicating and evolving toward balancing proactive efforts with immediate needs, our clients have bi-weekly meetings with their account manager to discuss progress. We focus on short-term deliverables in these conversations, and on long-term goals during our quarterly planning sessions. Together, we progress toward streamlined marketing and sales.

Bottom line: Working with GK3 on a retainer means we have a chance to create a partnership that benefits both our agency and your business. By staying flexible but committed, we forge a digital distribution process to achieve long-term goals while getting today’s work done.