What Does a Marketing Consultant Cost in Stuart, FL?

If you run a service business in Stuart, Jensen Beach, Port St. Lucie, or Jupiter and you've asked this question, you've probably gotten three different answers and none of them were numbers. Here are the numbers — the ranges local businesses actually pay, what moves them, and the honest cases where the right answer is "don't hire one yet."

I run Nelson Business Solutions from Stuart. The figures below are what I charge and what I see other local consultants and agencies charge. They're starting points, not quotes; every service page on this site lists its own floor and what changes it.

The short answer

On the Treasure Coast, marketing help for a small service business runs roughly $100–$250 per hour for hourly work, $1,500–$5,000 for a single defined project like a website or a 12-month plan, and $600–$3,000 per month for ongoing work like social media management or fractional marketing leadership. A full "done for you" system — website plus lead capture plus follow-up automation — typically starts around $7,000 in setup with a monthly software and management fee after that.

The three ways consultants charge

Hourly

For audits, one-off fixes, and advice. Expect $100–$250 an hour locally. It's the right model when you need a specific problem solved — a Google Business Profile that won't verify, a website that stopped showing up, a decision about an ad agency proposal — and the wrong model for anything ongoing, because the meter never encourages the consultant to finish.

Project

A fixed scope, a fixed price, a delivery window in writing. Websites, 12-month marketing plans, brand systems, automation installs. On this site: a landing page starts at $1,500, a standard service-business website starts at $3,000, the 8-step business-structure framework at $1,500, and individual AI lead-capture systems at $750 setup. Multi-location, bilingual, or migration-heavy projects run higher.

Monthly retainer

Ongoing execution or leadership. Social media management on the Treasure Coast starts around $600 a month with a three-month minimum. A fractional CMO — someone who owns your marketing plan and manages your vendors a few hours a week — starts around $2,500 a month on a 90-day term. Retainers make sense once there's a plan to execute; buying one before there's a plan is how you end up paying for activity instead of results.

What moves the number

• How many pages or systems you need — a 5-page site and a 15-page site with a Spanish toggle are different jobs
• Whether existing content, photos, and reviews can be reused or have to be created
• Migration — moving off WordPress, Wix, or GoDaddy Website Builder without losing what Google already knows about you
• Software costs — scheduling, phone answering, and CRM tools are billed by the vendor, usually $150–$600 a month for a full stack; a good consultant passes these through at cost
• Multi-location or multi-service structure
• Whether you want the plan written, or written and executed

When you don't need a marketing consultant

If you're already booked out, can't add crew, and can't take a week off, more leads will make your business worse, not better. Your constraint is structure — roles, procedures, and the systems underneath them — and a marketing consultant is the wrong purchase this quarter. The 60-second diagnostic on this site sorts this out for free.

You also don't need one if the fix is small and obvious: claim your Google Business Profile, add your license number and service area to the homepage, and set up missed-call text-back on your phone. Those three things cost almost nothing and outperform most $2,000 ad campaigns for a one-truck operation.

What you should get for the money

• Scope and price in writing before work starts, with a delivery window
• A baseline — what your calls, forms, and reviews look like today, so "it worked" can be checked
• Ownership — domain, website, content, and accounts in your name, not the consultant's
• Reporting you can read in two minutes without a dashboard login
• An honest "you don't need this" when you don't

Local considerations

Treasure Coast businesses have a seasonal swing that national pricing guides ignore. A landscaper in Jupiter Farms, a pressure-washing company in Port St. Lucie, and a painter in Stuart all see demand spike after storm season and drop in the summer heat — so a plan built in April and reviewed in October is worth more than a flat retainer. Local also means HOA rules, salt-air maintenance cycles, and a customer base that checks Facebook and Nextdoor before Google. A consultant who doesn't know this will build you a national template.

FAQs

Why do consultants refuse to give a price on the phone? — Because the number depends on scope, and a price without scope is a guess that becomes a fight later. A consultant who quotes without asking what you have and what you've tried is quoting a template. Expect a short consult first; expect a written number after.

Is a $500 website ever worth it? — For a campaign, a single event, or a business testing an idea, yes. For a service business that depends on being found, usually not — it costs more later to fix what it doesn't do (service pages, schema, tracking, ownership).

Should I hire an agency or a consultant? — An agency sells you its process. A consultant diagnoses first. For a business under about $2 million in revenue, a consultant who can also build is usually cheaper and faster, because you skip the account manager layer.

What's the free consult actually for? — Thirty minutes to figure out whether your constraint is demand or structure, and what to do first. You leave with a 12-month roadmap outline either way. It's free because it's the cheapest way for both of us to find out if we should work together.

Do you mark up software? — No. Phone answering, CRM, and scheduling tools are billed by the vendor or passed through at cost, on a separate line, so you can always see what's software and what's service.

Summary

Hourly for a problem, project for a build, retainer for ongoing execution — and none of them until you know whether you need leads or structure. Starting points on the Treasure Coast: $1,500 for a landing page, $3,000 for a service-business website, $750 for a single lead-capture system, $600 a month for social, $2,500 a month for fractional leadership. Every service page on this site lists its floor and what moves it, and the consult is free.