From Hours to Outcomes? Is it time to move to Value-Based Pricing in an AI-Enabled World?
For years, consultants in marketing and market research have priced their work by the hour or the day. The maths was simple: X hours at £Y per hour = project fee. But the rise of AI has disrupted that equation. Suddenly, tasks that once took days can be done in minutes. Does that mean we should all slash our fees? Or is it time to shift to a model that recognises the true impact of our work — not the time it takes to produce it?
The Case for Moving to Value-Based Pricing
At its core, value-based pricing reflects the outcomes you deliver, not the minutes you log. If you’re helping a client de-risk a £500k product launch, the insight you provide could be worth tens of thousands, regardless of whether AI helped you deliver it in three days or three weeks.
Clients aren’t buying your hours; they’re buying confidence, clarity, and reduced risk. That’s why value-based pricing allows you to:
- Highlight impact: “This project will help you understand your customers and reduce the risk of a misaligned launch. The investment is £6,000.”
- Acknowledge your expertise: AI can accelerate analysis, but it can’t replace years of judgment, industry knowledge, and the ability to ask the right questions.
- Stay relevant: By pricing on outcomes, you emphasise that clients pay for strategic insight — not just documents or data.
A key point here is speed. If the work is quicker, shouldn’t the client benefit? They do — by getting it quicker. This is the value of going to an expert. Faster delivery means quicker decision-making and reduced delays for the client, not a discount that undervalues the consultant’s expertise.
Value-based pricing also helps avoid a common pitfall in project work: spiralling costs. With time-based pricing, there’s always a risk of the dreaded “scope creep.” We’ve all heard the line in software implementations: “It will take one week to do… oh, but we found X, Y, and Z, which means it will take twice as long and cost twice as much.” This rarely ends well for client trust. Outcome-based pricing avoids this trap — the client has cost certainty, and while it sometimes puts more risk on the agency, it creates far greater clarity and trust for the client.
In this framing, AI strengthens the case for value-based pricing: it frees consultants to focus on interpretation and strategy while still charging appropriately for the impact created.
The Counterpoint: Why Time-Based Pricing Still Matters
For some, the comfort of time-based pricing is hard to shake. It provides transparency and predictability, especially for clients who are used to comparing day rates. There’s also a sense of fairness: if the work is quicker, shouldn’t the client benefit? From a buyer’s perspective, time-based pricing can:
- Provide comparability: Easier to benchmark one consultant’s “day rate” against another’s.
- Reduce perceived risk: A clear link between effort and cost feels tangible, even if it doesn’t fully capture value.
- Suit smaller projects: Not every engagement carries strategic weight. Sometimes a few hours of desk research really is just that.
The argument here is that time-based pricing isn’t necessarily outdated — it just needs to adapt. Faster tools may reduce effort, but consultants can balance this by offering more scope within the same time budget or layering on advisory support.
Finding the Balance
The reality for many will be a hybrid approach. Internally, you may still calculate effort in hours or days to keep projects profitable. Externally, you position your pricing around outcomes and impact. Fee tiers based on project type — tactical, strategic, or high-stakes partnership — can help you align price with value, while still sense-checking against your underlying time costs.
AI doesn’t devalue what we do; it reshapes how we communicate and charge for it. The critical move is to ensure that pricing reflects the client’s risk avoided, opportunities unlocked, and decisions made with confidence — not just the hours spent.
Over to You
As marketing and research professionals, how should we adapt our pricing models in an AI-enabled world?
Should consultants fully embrace value-based pricing and leave hourly rates behind?
Or does time-based charging still have a role in maintaining fairness and transparency?
We’d love to hear your views — share your thoughts in the comments section of the post in our LinkedIn Group.
Di Tunney is the founder of Di Tunney Marketing and has been a consultant and practitioner in marketing and market research for over 25 years. Di’s experience has involved working across a wide range of business sectors and types of organisations and she is a strong advocate of continuing to apply traditional marketing principles within a fast-moving digital world! She is a Fellow of the CIM and Vice Chair, Communications for the Midlands Region