Charleston's, Australian fine-art B2C, capped-retainer engagement.
Charleston's is an Australian fine-art auction house. They came to us in early 2024 after several agencies, having lost confidence in how the work was billed. Their brief was to quote a fixed monthly cap covering SEO, Google Ads, Meta and email, with anything beyond it quoted separately.
Charleston's: a capped monthly retainer, held for 26 months.
That is the arrangement we run. One capped line covers SEO on the site, Google Ads and Display management, Meta paid social, and the strategy and reporting cadence across all three. Ad-hoc creative and development work sits outside the cap and is optional. Ad spend is passed through at cost.
The storefront is Australian-hosted WordPress and WooCommerce, performance-engineered, hardened and monitored, with theme work and conversion-rate optimisation drawn from the block-hour pool. Meta is the dominant acquisition channel for the brand and carries the creative testing. Google Ads covers brand defence, competitor terms, Performance Max across the product catalogue and remarketing. SEO runs monthly across keyword research, technical audit, content recommendations and link strategy.
Imagen creative variants and Gemini-drafted long-form content run in production on the account, with every output reviewed by the senior strategist before it ships.
Twenty-six months of continuous tenure, 23 consecutive monthly renewals, two ad accounts managed, no scope renegotiation and no surprise charges. Cost per conversion fell 10%, from $65 to $59.
Founder-led, growing, but tired of being upsold.
When Charleston's came to us in early 2024, they had been through several agencies and lost confidence in how media was billed. Each time the scope started clean and crept. Each time they discovered after the fact that media was being marked up. Each time the senior strategist disappeared to junior account staff inside ninety days.
The brief was simple, and unusual: "Quote us a fixed monthly cap that covers SEO, Google Ads, Meta, and email. We'll commit. You don't surprise us. We don't dispute invoices. Everything else, we negotiate as Block Hours."
A capped monthly retainer. Two years later, still capped.
A capped retainer line covering: SEO (1× site, monthly), Google Ads + Display management (monthly), Meta paid social (monthly), and the strategy + reporting cadence around all three. Plus a separate, opt-in pool of Creative / Development Block Hours whenever they want to commission ad-hoc work.
Ad spend is at cost, Google's invoice is Google's invoice, Meta's invoice is Meta's invoice, no markup. The cap is for the work we do, full stop.
Five service lines under one capped retainer.
WooCommerce
Australian-hosted WordPress + WooCommerce, performance-engineered, hardened, monitored. Theme work and conversion-rate optimisation rolled into the Block Hours pool.
Google Ads + Display
Brand defence, competitor terms, Performance Max for product catalogue, GDN remarketing. Monthly management, monthly reporting, ad spend at cost.
Meta paid social
The dominant acquisition channel for the brand. Disciplined creative testing, custom audience iteration, conversion-event optimisation. Monthly management, ad spend at cost.
Search Engine Optimisation
Monthly SEO programme, keyword research, technical audit, content recommendations, link strategy. The unsexy long-game compounding line.
Block-Hour creative pool
Block Hours commissioned as needed. Ad creative variants, social tiles, EDM design, video edits, Imagen + Veo 3 in production.
Capped retainer. Month-to-month.
Cancellable any month. Ad spend pass-through, never marked up. The same senior strategist for two years. No upsell pressure, no scope creep, no surprises.
"A fixed monthly cap, agreed by both parties, covering SEO, Google Ads and Meta management."
The economics of "no surprises" are misunderstood.
Most agencies resist capped retainers because the scope-creep upside is where their margin lives. We've gone the other way deliberately, a 24-month, no-surprise client is worth more to us than a 6-month "try-and-bill-the-extras" client, every time.
The maths, plainly: lifetime value × probability of renewal. Charleston's has renewed every month for two years; the probability of renewal next month, after 23 prior renewals, is functionally 100%. There is no "extras" model that beats that compounding.
The four reasons Charleston's stayed
Fixed cap held without a single scope renegotiation
Surprise charges across the whole engagement
Consecutive monthly renewals and counting
Imagen creative variants and Gemini-drafted long-form content run in production on this account, with every output passing senior-strategist review before it ships. The AI stack is what keeps a fixed cap profitable without thinning the work. How the production stack works →
Charleston's, the Australian fine-art auction house we scaled on a capped retainer.
What did 121 Group do for Charleston's?
121 Group ran SEO, Google Ads and paid social for Charleston's. The site runs on Shopify.
What industry is this consumer ecommerce case study in?
Charleston's operates in consumer ecommerce. 121 Group works across nine verticals, with case studies published for each.
Could 121 Group run a programme like this for us?
Yes. A senior strategist can talk through how we approach consumer ecommerce marketing, what a comparable programme would cover and how it would be measured, on a thirty minute call.
Founder-led. WooCommerce or Shopify. Tired of being upsold.
If you're running a mid-market Australian consumer brand, hate negotiating "extras" mid-quarter, and want one capped line that covers paid media, SEO, email and creative, that's the engagement we'd quote. Capped-retainer terms. Cancel any month.