Marketing Agency Costs

You know you need marketing help, but you have no idea how much it will cost to hire a marketing agency…  Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Obviously, your costs will be determined by what exactly you need. But I’ll try to explain what you should expect from some common needs – pulling from our experience across many different vertical markets.

Some Common Reasons to Hire a Marketing Agency

Here are some common needs and the typical costs associated with them. Before I do this…a disclaimer… The following does not represent a price quote, it is merely to give you an idea of what you may expect to pay for some common marketing needs.

Marketing agencies can provide all kinds of services including:

  • Branding Strategy
  • Website Design
  • Messaging
  • Brand Design (logos, etc)
  • Public Relations (press releases, etc)
  • Development (raising money, petition drives, etc)
  • Social Media Launch/Management
  • Search Engine Optimization/Pay Per Click
  • Much more…

To give you some idea as to what some of these services cost, here are some notes about how they are priced in the marketplace and what you should expect when you go to procure these services.

Marketing Agency Costs

Website Design – Everybody needs a website. You’ll find quotes for website design and development all over the board. For a 12 page website based on WordPress with 2 revisions, plan on somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000. For a larger website with many custom forms, social media integration, and other bells and whistles, plan on between $5,000 and $15,000. If you get into large (think more than 100 pages) and advanced web services like built in scheduling, list building and auto-responders, commerce functionality, member sites and so on, you’ll be solidly into five figures and the sky is the limit depending on what you need.

Branding Strategy – This is an area that is so often overlooked yet so important. Small businesses especially think that they don’t need any coherent branding – they think they are just too small. Not true! Again, you’ll find prices across the board. Conversion Pipeline offers a Branding Blueprint for around $2500. We evaluate your market and provide a blueprint for look, feel, website usability, messaging, call to action and recommended marketing vehicles. We also offer Creative Brief assistance for companies who need to plan and define a new website but don’t have the marketing expertise to handle it. Creative Brief documentation will run between $2000 and $5000 depending on the need. If you go to a well known ad agency you may spend double or triple this amount – even more in some cases.

Search Engine Optimization – The search engine optimization market has been flooded with individual consultants, many of whom have little or no experience. As such, you may find services in the $2-300/month. Similarly, big companies like GoDaddy and Network Solutions have services branded as “SEO” and charge $50-$60 per month. This is NOT SEO. A real SEO program involves both on page and off page optimization. Conversion Pipeline plans start around $650/month and cap out around $2000/month depending on the keyword targets and how aggressive the client needs to be. Most reputable companies will be in the $750-$1250 range all day long. There are some major SEO providers who won’t even talk to you for less than 6 figures per year. Most companies don’t want or need this type of service.

Pay Per Click – Running a PPC campaign should not be done by a novice. You’ll find programs like ReachLocal who charge a flat fee each month from which they extract their service fee and spend the rest on clicks. Or, you’ll find a flat rate – typically between $250 on the low end to $450 per month. For larger campaigns it is typical to negotiate a percentage of click spend, say 10-20%.

Messaging – Writing great content is HARD. Clients often come to us because they don’t know what to say, or how to say it effectively. Messaging has a few components including overall tone, communicating core values, propelling a user to take action and getting the right mix of search optimized content including page copy, blog posts, press releases, even pictures and video. For website content, plan on $100-$150 per page of well-optimized content. Press releases run between $350 and $750 depending on how the release is distributed. Greater distribution to more news outlets will cost more. Blog posts are generally written as part of a larger social media plan, so giving estimates on what to expect is hard. But for just the writing, expect somewhere between $50-$100 per blog post for well developed posts for a professional website.

You really won’t know what it costs you to hire a marketing agency until you engage a firm and get a quote.  The best way to do this is to write out what you think you want or need, call a good marketing agency (like Conversion Pipeline for example) and after a conversation with the right person, get your quote.

Hopefully the notes above will give you an ideas as to what you need…if not, contact us below for a consultation.

Conversion Pipeline
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