How Much Does a Marketing Agency Cost?

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Show me the Money!

Right?

If you've ever wondered how much a Digital Marketing Agency costs. What's the pricing and what's the commitment that it's going to take?

With over 5500 digital marketing agencies in the US alone there are a lot of options.

Within that range, you'll find agencies with different talent pools, sizes, niches, etc.

I want to give you an idea so you can think about this field.

There are a few ways that agencies will price out their services:

  1. Hourly Rate
  2. Project-Based
  3. Results-Based

The rates will vary depending on the service. 

The cheapest services tend to be posting organic content, written content, and email writing.

  • Hourly rates will vary but will tend to be as cheap as $15/Hr up to $80/Hr. This largely depends on the skillset and familiarity with your niche or service type. 
  • If a company is using the project-based model it will likely fall into that same range but you'll be purchasing a block of hours without necessarily knowing how many hours you're getting. You'll likely want to budget at least a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars depending on the scope of the project.
  • Results-based pricing will likely be amongst the cheapest on a base fee and depending on their results may cost you more than the other two, but it depends on their results. Again, budget a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on the size of the project, however, it'll be less than a project-based fee, and then it'll depend on their results.

In the middle tier, you'll find services such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google/Youtube Ads, FB Ads, Videography & Video editing.

  • Hourly rates will tend to be between $30/Hr to $250/Hr. Again, depending on the skillset of the person doing the work as well as the familiarity with your niche will vary the costs. Generally, $30/Hr - $100/Hr is your beginner. $100-$200 is intermediate/expert. $200+ is a rockstar that should crush it for you.
  • Project-based works well for Videography/Video Editing in this tier. Often they'll charge $700-$10,000/Day depending on how many people, what equipment, the scope of the work, the number of days, travel, etc. You'll also see this sometimes for SEO where a company will take on a project to optimize your website or optimize for certain keywords. Pricing can range from $500-$50,000 depending on the number of keywords, pages etc.
  • Results-based pricing will often work for SEO, Google/Youtube Ads and Facebook Ads. Depending on the scope of the project the pricing here will often have a base fee of $200-$10,000 with a charge by lead, scheduled appointment, appointment that showed, or closed prospect. The fee can be as little as 50 cents to hundreds of dollars. This will usually depend on the value of a new client for your business (more value usually results in a higher price), lifetime customer value (again the higher it is the more it costs), how much the budget is (more budget = higher price) and the familiarity of the vendor with your particular niche.

At the top end is Marketing/Sales Strategy. This is often considered as either a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or fractional CMO model.

  • Hourly rates for this fluctuate highly but on the low end you're likely to pay at least $100/Hr all the way up to $10,000/Hr. This depends on the size of your business and the value someone who knows your niche or size of business. Someone who can help you make an extra million dollars with 10 hours of their time is definitely worth the $10,000/Hr.
  • Project Based will depend on the length and scope of the project but assume that you'll want to budget at least $1000 and be willing to budget up to a Million dollars depending on the scope of the project.
  • Results based marketing will usually charge less than project based however the upside may wind up being significant. 

I'm hoping the above gives you an idea of the different services and price points that agencies will charge.

Looking for more information about Marketing Agencies? Check out our guide here.

If we missed something, please feel free to email us at jeremy@b2bbusinessexperts.com, we'd love to hear from you.