The goal of digital marketing is grow your business through online marketing and advertising strategies. These strategies revolve around digital technologies, from search engine optimization to social media marketing and more. And, with the industry continually growing to make space for the latest offerings, it’s your budget which lays the groundwork on what you can do in this space and how you can incorporate these strategies.
A Reasonable Budget
As you begin to identify your budget, it’s important to research how much you should spend on digital marketing. While several factors influence digital marketing budgets, like the size of your company and the scope of your project, the average digital marketing budget ranges from $30,000 to $145,000 per year for small-to-midsized businesses (SMB). Keep in mind that digital marketing is an ongoing strategy, so your budget may change as you grow.
Pricing Factors
A variety of factors influence prices for digital marketing services, including: agency experience, company size, agency benefits, company deadlines, agency services, strategy complexity and more.
A significant influence on your digital marketing pricing is the size of your company. If you’re a SMB, your digital marketing costs won’t touch the budget of an international corporation. The size of your business often influences the type of digital marketing agency you partner with too. The scale of their services and their prices often reflect their target audience, which means it’s unlikely you’d partner with a digital marketing agency that serves the world’s biggest brands.
For your business, it’s beneficial to partner with a digital marketing agency that focuses on your specific company size. Bad Penny Factory, for example, offers tons of expertise when it comes to building strategies for mid-sized businesses.
In most cases, your digital marketing budget influences how complex your strategies become. If you’re investing a significant amount in an aggressive PPC campaign, you can expect to have higher digital marketing costs. An aggressive strategy requires more work from a digital marketing team – a PPC campaign also requires a bigger spend as it’s a form of paid advertising. In short, you’re paying more because you’re buying more.
The same concept would apply if you invested in an integrated set of digital marketing strategies. For example, if you invested in SEO and PPC, as well as content marketing and email marketing, you could expect higher digital marketing prices due to the quantity of services.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the core digital marketing service for businesses today. SEO implements an umbrella of strategies for improving your online visibility in search results — in other words, it helps you rank higher in search results.
If you’re a company that manufactures and sells freeze dried dog food, for example, you’d want to rank on the first page of search results for keywords relevant to your business. A few sample keyword phrases would be, “best freeze dried dog food 2019,” “freeze dried dog food reviews,” and “buy freeze dried dog food.”
With 80 percent of consumers relying on search to find products and services, SEO is essential. It’s also extremely beneficial, as search engines have an average close rate of 14.6 percent — meaning almost 15 of the leads you earn from search will convert. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s eight times more than traditional marketing’s close rate.
If you’d like to use SEO in your strategy, current digital marketing service costs between $350 to $2000 a month, if partnered with a digital marketing agency. For consultants, their hourly rates range from $80 to $200 an hour. Bad Penny Factory offers SEO Services starting at $399/month.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC advertising is another popular digital marketing service. Like SEO, PPC also focuses on your online visibility. Unlike SEO, however, PPC improves your visibility in search results through paid advertisements.
These advertisements appear above organic search results and feature a green-outlined box that says, “Ad.” Unlike traditional advertising, the only time you pay for your ad is when a user clicks on it. This makes PPC a cost-effective option for many businesses. On average, businesses make $2 for every $1 they invest in PPC — if you use Google Ads for your PPC campaign.
If your SMB would like to invest in PPC, you can expect to pay $9000 to $10,000 per month. Bad Penny Factory offers PPC Management Services starting at $399/month with budgets for monthly ad spend amounts determined and adjusted regularly so you can compete in your market.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a digital marketing service that continues to grow in popularity. This service focuses on increasing your online presence, brand awareness and brand loyalty. For businesses today, social media offers a massive opportunity. Surprisingly, only 26 percent of companies use social media in their business strategy, providing your company with an easy opening for touting your USPs.
If you invest in a competitive social media strategy, your business can offer more value to users. You can respond to questions and comments and even help users access their account or make a purchase through a chatbot, which is a feature available on Facebook.
Even if you’re a business-to-business (B2B) operation, social media marketing is valuable. Just through Facebook, more than 40 percent of B2B marketers have earned clients. Overall, 80 percent of B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn.
If you’re considering social media marketing, know that market pricing for this digital marketing service is between $900 to $20,000 per month. The most influential factors on social media marketing costs are the number of social networks, which can range from one to five, and the preferred ad spend.
Voice Search Optimization
A digital marketing service that’s growing in demand is voice search optimization. This service focuses on earning the featured snippet for keywords relevant to your company and audience. While featured snippets appear in regular search results, they’re critical to voice search. Voice assistants, like Siri and Amazon Echo, use the featured snippet to answer a voice search. If someone asks, “how often should you clean your gutters,” for example, voice assistants would respond with the featured snippet shown below. With almost 50 percent of adults using voice search each day, this service is becoming more valuable to companies. Like social media marketing, investing in voice search optimization can set your business apart from your competitors and allow you to connect with new consumers in your target audience.
If you’re interested in optimizing your content for voice search, market pricing for this digital marketing service ranges from $600 to $2000 a month.
Start the Conversation
Want to see what digital marketing can do to your company’s bottom line? With Bad Penny Factory, you can start seeing real results from your digital marketing strategy. Our dedicated and hands-on account managers will develop a competitive and personalized strategy for your business, leading to more calls, purchases, and revenue for your business.
Get started today with a free quote. Check your calendar and then check ours to get synced up for a free call.
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