Someone popped into my inbox this morning, right as I was sitting down to record this episode, and asked me: “What’s the biggest mistake beginners make when they’re trying to get their first client?”
Y’all. Perfect timing.
Because the answer to that question is the exact reason I planned this episode in the first place. The biggest mistake new ad managers make is working for free or undercharging, and it happens because you have this idea that a low price is going to be the thing that finally gets somebody to say yes.
It’s not. It’s the thing keeping you from getting hired.
So let’s talk about what to charge as a new ad manager. Real numbers. No guessing. No “whatever you think she’ll say yes to.”
The Biggest Mistake New Ad Managers Make When Looking for Their First Client
There are actually two mistakes, and they happen in order.
Mistake number one: you try to learn everything about ads before you go find a single client. You buy the course, you watch the modules, you take the notes, and you tell yourself you’ll start prospecting once you feel ready. That day does not come.
Mistake number two, once you’re actually in client-searching mode: you undercharge or you work for free.
And I have evidence after evidence after evidence of this. I can name two people right off the top of my head who joined us in Conversions for Clients or Strategist Society and told me the exact same story: “Brandi, I’ve been trying to land clients at $500 and $750 for a year, and it’s not working.”
A year. A whole year of pitching low and hearing nothing.
And I told them, “No. We’re not doing that. We’re not going below $1,000, and that’s the bare minimum. I want you at $1,500.”
They landed clients within 45 days.
Same person. Same skills. Same market. Higher price. Make that make sense.
Why Undercharging Actually Costs You the Client
Let me give you the dentist test.
Say you’re calling around to find a dentist for your kid and you don’t have insurance. The first quote comes back at $500. The next one is $525. Then $475. Then another $500.
Then you call one more, and they tell you $100.
What’s the first thing that goes through your head? It is not “what a deal.” It’s “okay, what is wrong with them?”
Your spidey senses go straight up. We had this exact thing happen when we were doing the renovations on our basement. One contractor lowballed us, one came in way high, and two landed right in the middle of what we expected it to cost. The first bid we threw out was not the most expensive one. It was the cheapest one, because it threw up red flags.
You Are Doing This to Yourself With Your Pricing
Now flip it around. Your potential client is interviewing ad managers. She’s getting quotes at $1,500, $1,500, $1,500, $2,000, $1,800, maybe even $1,000.
And then you come in at $500.
You just screamed to the world that you have no idea what you’re doing. Even if you genuinely don’t have any idea what you’re doing yet, that is not the message you want to lead with. You will never land a client that way.
Working for free is the same problem with a different price tag. It never works out. I cannot tell you how many people have come back to me and said, “Brandi, I took on a client for free, it’s been an absolute nightmare, you were right.” I love hearing “you were right.” I hate hearing it in that context, because it means you just gave away months of your life. You should be paid for what you’re doing. Always.
What to Charge as a New Ad Manager: The Actual Numbers
Brand New With Zero Experience: $1,500 a Month
The average new ad manager with zero experience is charging $1,500 a month. That is your starting retainer. Not $500. Not $750. Not whatever you think she’ll say yes to.
I work with over 3,000 students, y’all, so I am not making these numbers up. I have these conversations constantly. I’ve gone digging through what’s posted on Upwork, and even the cheap end has moved. When I was getting started, most ad managers were starting around $1,000. Inflation mostly stinks, but this is the one place it works in our favor, so we need to match it.
Now let’s do some math together, because I know $1,500 feels enormous when you’ve never charged it.
- 5 clients at $1,500 = $7,500 a month
- 7 clients at $1,500 = $10,500 a month
At five to seven clients, you’re working 10 to 20 hours a week. That is a five-figure-a-month business run in under 20 hours a week, while your kids are at school, during co-op, during soccer practice, on your lunch break at your full-time job. It is 100% possible, and I have episode after episode after episode of this podcast full of women doing exactly that.
The $500 Math That Will Absolutely Break You
Now let’s run that same $10,000 month at $500 a client.
You need 20 clients.
Twenty. Sit in that for a second:
- 20 onboarding calls
- 20 ad accounts
- 20 monthly reports
- 20 inboxes
- 20 sets of ad graphics to get up
- 20 balls to drop
It is very hard to manage 20 clients by yourself. It is hard to manage 20 clients with an EA. You are going to be exhausted, you are going to be working your booty off, you are going to drop balls, people are going to be upset, and you’re doing all of it for $500 a month when seven clients could have gotten you to the same number.
That is the power of pricing.
And low pricing doesn’t just wreck your capacity. It lowers the bar on who you attract. You get bargain bin clients instead of champagne clients. I have a whole episode on champagne clients, bargain-bin clients, golden-handcuff clients, and miracle-worker clients. Go find it after this one.
You will quit this business faster than you started it, and you will think it’s a you problem. It’s not a you problem. It’s a client problem and a pricing problem. Good news: we can fix both of those.
The Risk Reversal: The Only Time You Go Below $1,500
There is exactly one time we go under $1,500, and it’s the risk reversal method I teach inside the Confident Ad Manager Bootcamp.
That number is $1,000 to $1,200 a month, for one month only. After those first 30 days, you go right back up to $1,500.
What it does is get your first client in the door at an entry-level price, make the offer feel like a no-brainer to her, and give her 30 days to fall in love with working with you. Then the price goes up.
We never, ever, ever go below $1,000. And if someone tries to talk you under that, you have my full permission to walk away.
I know that’s hard when you need the money. I’ve been there. I’ve been bankrupt, y’all. I know exactly what it feels like to just need to cover the diapers and the formula. But I promise you, that $500 client does not get you further. It burns you out, and the whole experience turns miserable.
Already Have Experience? Start at $2,000
If you’re coming out of corporate marketing, out of an agency, or out of white labeling, and you just haven’t gone out on your own yet, that’s a different story. Your number is $2,000.
We’ve had Samantha Fine on the podcast and other women coming out of corporate who started well above $1,500. Samantha started at $3,000. So depending on your experience, $2,000 to $3,000 is absolutely on the table.
Your risk reversal scales right along with you. If you’re starting at $2,000, your first-month number lands somewhere around $1,600 to $1,800. Same method, higher floor.
Race to Three Clients, Then Go to $2,000
Here’s the part people miss. $1,500 is a starting price. It is not where you stay.
Even with zero experience, the moment you land three clients, I want you at $2,000 a month. That’s why I say race to three clients. The faster you get there, the faster your confidence catches up, and the faster you get genuinely good at this.
Do not stop when you land your first one. Keep going.
“But How Do I Charge $1,500 With Zero Experience?”
I know this is the question sitting in your head right now, so let’s kill it.
Nobody Wakes Up Wanting an Ad Manager
Your clients are not buying years of experience. They don’t care about your degrees. They don’t care about any of that.
They care about outcomes.
Not one person on this planet wakes up in the morning and thinks, “You know what I really want today? An ad manager.” Not one. What they actually want is:
- More sales than they had last month
- More leads than they had last month
- A launch that doesn’t flop
- To stop being the bottleneck in their own business
- More hours back in their week
You are the thing standing between their ad spend and their revenue. That is the entire job.
So your only job in that conversation is to show her how ads can increase her leads or her sales. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. If you can show that, you can get hired with zero experience.
That’s exactly what the one-sheeter is for. I teach it live in video two of the bootcamp, and on day four I walk you through building one in about 20 minutes using AI. Go save your seat at confidentadmanager.com.
The Script for When She Asks About Your Experience
If she asks you directly, you don’t dodge it. You say:
“That’s why you’re getting my discounted rate of $1,200 per month, and we’re only doing that for 30 days. After that, once you see the results coming in, we can talk about what it looks like to work together moving forward.”
That’s it. You don’t need case studies. You don’t need experience. You need a plan that shows her how running ads gets her more leads or more revenue. That’s what a business is actually shopping for.
Real Proof From Women Who Had Never Run a Single Ad
We survey our students, so this is not a guess. Over 90% of the people who come into Conversions for Clients have never run an ad in their entire life. Holy bananas, right?
And then look at what happens:
- Kendra, a teacher who got laid off, more than doubled her teaching income within seven months.
- Samantha, who did come in with experience, hit over $100,000 in her first year running ads.
- Brittney, a homeschooling mom, went from $18,000 doing VA work to running ads and is now over six figures.
- LaShall, an OBM and empty nester in her second go-around, a woman over 50, is now at $40,000 a month. And at some point, she had never run an ad either.
Every one of us started at zero ads run. The best way to learn is to get clients and get paid while you learn it, not to work for free until you finally feel ready.
If you’re early and you want the system for landing those first clients, conversionsforclients.com is where that lives.
Stop Charging by the Hour: Value Pricing vs Hourly Pricing
Before we wrap this up, I have to address one more thing, because it quietly ruins businesses.
Stop pricing your services based on how long you’re working. It will cap you out fast, and here’s the kicker: it gets worse the better you get.
Hourly Pricing Has Built-In Punishment for Being Good at Your Job
Think about it. Right now, a campaign build might take you four hours start to finish, because it’s your first one and you’re going back and forth with the training. And that’s exaggerated, but let’s say you’re extra slow at pressing buttons.
In a year, that exact same build takes you 30 minutes.
If you’re charging by the hour and you get four times better at your craft, you just cut your own pay down to a quarter. The better you get, the less hourly pays you. That should tell you everything you need to know about hourly pricing right there.
It Also Wrecks the Client Relationship
And it isn’t just the money. Hourly turns every single conversation into a negotiation about effort instead of results.
She’s not asking, “Did this work?” She’s asking, “Did that really take you five hours?”
That is a horrible relationship, and it never, ever gets better. We want the question to be, “Are our ads working,” not “How long did it take you to set them up?” Price against the results.
So stop asking yourself, “How long will this take me?” Onboarding takes longer. Your first few months take longer. That’s normal, and it’s exactly why we race to three clients. And when you get so good that a client only needs 30 minutes of your week? That is not a reason to drop your price. That’s proof you got really good at your job.
If the time question is what’s actually nagging you, I have a whole episode breaking down how many hours you should be working as an ad manager and what it takes per client. Go listen to that one next.
The Full Pricing Recap
- $1,500 a month is your starting retainer as a brand new ad manager
- $1,000 to $1,200 is the risk reversal price, for the first 30 days only, and never lower
- $2,000 to $3,000 if you’re coming in with corporate, agency, or white label experience
- $2,000 as soon as you land three clients, no matter where you started
- Use the risk reversal plus a one-sheeter so she sees what ads can do for her and stops questioning your price
- Never, ever charge by the hour. You charge for the value you bring, not how long it takes you
You Are Not Too New to Be Paid Well
Low pricing is not going to land you more clients. It is going to land you more headaches.
$1,500 is your base, and it will serve you so much better than working for free or scraping by at $500 to $750 a month. I have a whole podcast feed full of women who prove that.
So charge the number. Walk away from the ones who won’t meet it. Race to three clients, then raise it again.
If you’re ready to learn the risk reversal, the one-sheeter, and how to land your first client without a single case study, go save your seat for the Confident Ad Manager Bootcamp at confidentadmanager.com. It kicks off in October, it’s four days of free content, and there are already two bonus trainings sitting on the watch page for you the second you opt in. This is our last bootcamp of the year, and we have students who land clients during those four days.
If you already have a business, you’re doing around $4,000 a month, and you are totally capped out, that’s a different conversation. Head to thestrategistsociety.com and apply for a spot. Let’s get on a call and look at where your hours are actually going. If I can help you, we’ll talk about it. If I can’t, that’s totally okay too, and you’ll still walk away with a game plan and clear next steps.
Now go out, serve your clients, scale your business, and soar into the success you deserve.
This post came straight from an episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast, where Brandi Mowles helps one-on-one service providers build profitable, scalable businesses without the hustle. We’re almost 300 episodes in, so hit follow and start binging from the newest one down.
** This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you use one of the links to purchase. This helps keep the podcast going and I only share products I have used, tested, and love.”
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Brandi Mowles is the host of the Serve Scale Soar® podcast which is a podcast dedicated to helping service-based entrepreneurs scale their online business to five-figure months so they can soar into six-figure years. Brandi is a wife, mom and in less than one year, created a six-figure business. Now she is spilling all her secrets so you can too.
