The Beauty of a Graphic Design Retainer

Marketing teams want champagne-quality design assets on a fizzy beer budget – and they need it delivered on time. In-house marketing departments struggling to meet constantly evolving internal demands and goals need a hand. It’s smart to outsource the most specialized skillset first – and that’s why you need a graphic design retainer.

The 5 Benefits of a Graphic Design Retainer Agreement (with Oneupweb)

You wear a lot of hats, but there’s a time for every growing organization to start passing work off to others – especially tasks like graphic design. Oneupweb’s graphic design retainers allow clients to choose a set number of monthly hours for design-heavy needs.

How your organization uses those hours is up to you: It could be creating sales-enablement materials one month, drafting direct mail designs the next, or touching up your annual sales report before it’s distributed to shareholders to kick off the new year.

There are many reasons to outsource your recurring design work – here are the five best.

1. You get what you pay for – and that’s perfect.

If your team only needs 8-10 hours of design work per month, hiring an experienced designer full- or part-time doesn’t make financial sense.

2. You get a real pro – and the entire department.

Retained graphic design packages give you a dedicated design professional who learns your brand inside out, but they aren’t on their own. We leverage our entire graphic design department to ideate, review and improve every deliverable before it lands in your inbox. That’s our commitment to constantly raising the bar on your behalf.

3. You get to skip the line.

Project-based graphic design work is great, but when your favorite design vendor (hey, what’s up) brings in other work, you might have to wait a few days, weeks, or months. With a graphic design retainer agreement, we carve out your dedicated time on the calendar, which means your work gets done before we do anything else.

4. It makes budgeting easier.

For marketing departments looking to budget efficiently, having a set monthly expense is much easier than relying solely on up-and-down project-based estimates. Consistent graphic design retainer rates fit neatly in your budget and balance sheet.

P.S. Retainers make our budgeting estimates easier, too. That’s why retainer hours are billed at discounted rates compared to projects. Everyone wins!

5. You have access to other services, too!

Working with a full-service digital marketing agency has its benefits. What starts with a graphic design retainer proposal often results in a more comprehensive range of marketing support. For example, hiring us to create scroll-stopping social media content might turn into outsourcing all of your social media marketing. Designing your paid media ads could lead to entrusting your paid media campaigns to our world-class paid experts. At Oneupweb, our services are solutions; we’re here to solve your marketing and business challenges, whatever they may be – or become.

How Do Graphic Design Retainers Work?

Like other types of retainers, graphic design agreements start with a conversion. We’ll meet with your team to learn more about your recurring content needs or what kinds of designs you need on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.

We’ll also ask about upcoming needs that will benefit from design work, such as:

• Specific campaigns.
• New sales initiatives.
• Branding updates.
• New sales enablement materials.
• Tradeshow assets.
• Print ads, billboards or direct mail.

After the chat, we’ll bring our team together to choose the Oneupweb designer with the most industry and medium experience to support your efforts. We’ll put together two or three graphic design retainer packages that meet your immediate and anticipated needs. When you say go, we get started.

Get in touch to learn more about the graphic design retainer process.

What Are Your Graphic Design Retainer Rates?

At Oneupweb, we base our retainer rates on a range of variables, including:

• The number of hours per month (usually 10-14).
• Other client agreements (if we’re helping you with SEO or development, we’ll hook you up).
• Length of the agreement (usually 6, 12 or 24 months).

We take pride in offering competitive rates and exceptional customer service. Learn more about our pricing structure or reach out for customized graphic design retainer agreement options.

Graphic Design Retainer Services That Bring the Heat

For over two decades, we’ve helped growing organizations make the leap from scrappy to scalable. Make your marketing stand above the competition with the experienced designers at Oneupweb. Let’s draw up something stunning; contact our team or call (231) 922-9977 today to learn more.