Success Fee Marketing is an outcome-based marketing model that covers the full campaign: strategy, creative concept, campaign design and production, launch, paid media management and continuous performance optimisation to maximise measurable revenue from media spend. Agency fees are linked directly to that measurable revenue.

So instead of paying for a creative agency’s time, you are paying for their results.

Performance marketing typically focuses on paid media, optimisation and measurable results. Success Fee Marketing goes further by covering the full campaign, from strategy, creative concept, design and production through to launch, paid media management and continuous performance optimisation, with agency fees linked directly to measurable revenue.

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Success Fee Marketing is BREATHE’s outcome-based model, covering the full campaign from strategy and creative concept through to campaign design and production, launch, paid media management and continuous performance optimisation, with fees linked directly to measurable revenue.

Success Fee Marketing is best suited to businesses where marketing performance can be measured clearly and where the company is ready to turn increased demand into revenue. It works particularly well when customers can complete a purchase or booking directly online and revenue can be clearly attributed to paid media activity.

Examples include e-commerce, hospitality with online booking, ticketed events, memberships and other transactional businesses with a clear path from marketing to revenue.

Success Fee Marketing is less effective when the path from marketing to revenue is difficult to track or when too many factors outside the agency’s control determine whether a sale happens.

This can include businesses with long sales cycles, complex offline sales processes, multiple decision-makers or situations where a salesperson, phone enquiry, in-person visit or other step sits between the campaign and the final purchase.

Attribution is essential because Success Fee Marketing links creative agency fees directly to measurable revenue. Both the client and the agency need a clear way to understand which sales or bookings were generated by the campaign.

The clearer the customer journey is from paid media to purchase or booking, the easier it is to measure performance accurately and apply the success fee fairly.

BREATHE’s standard Success Fee Marketing model includes a monthly retainer of AED 20,000 plus a 10% success fee on revenue generated directly through paid media. For selected clients, BREATHE can also operate on a pure Success Fee Marketing model with no monthly retainer, earning a 20% success fee on trackable, measurable revenue generated through paid media.

We only take a success fee on revenue directly attributable to paid media. Any additional sales generated through direct traffic, organic growth or repeat customers remain entirely with the client.

Yes. BREATHE can offer a Pure Success Fee model to selected partners, where there is no monthly agency retainer and agency fees are linked directly to measurable revenue generated from the campaign.

In practice, many partnerships begin with a retainer and success fee structure so both sides can prove the model, establish attribution and build trust before potentially moving to Pure Success Fee.

Not necessarily. Success Fee Marketing can operate as a hybrid performance-based model, combining a monthly retainer with a success fee, or as a pure success-fee model for selected clients. In both cases, part or all of the agency’s remuneration is linked directly to measurable revenue generated through paid media.

No. Revenue share describes a way of calculating compensation, while value-based pricing generally sets fees according to the value created rather than the time spent. Success Fee Marketing is a broader marketing model that combines the full campaign process with performance-based remuneration linked to measurable revenue.

A strong Success Fee Marketing agency should be able to do far more than manage paid media. It should be capable of developing the strategy, creating a world-class campaign idea, and executing the creative to an exceptional standard across design, production and content.

The creative matters because performance does not begin with media buying. It begins with a standout idea and execution that people actually notice and respond to.

The agency should then be able to take that same campaign through launch, paid media management, continuous optimisation and attribution, so the creative and performance sides work as one system.

It should also be commercially selective about the businesses it works with, because the model performs best when both sides are genuinely aligned around measurable growth.

BREATHE Creative developed the Success Fee Marketing model and was publicly using the term by January 11, 2021.

Read more about the origin of Success Fee Marketing →