Hiring a marketing agency to handle your digital growth is a smart decision — of course, we may be a little biased.
In all honesty, working with an agency isn’t right for every business; some companies may benefit more from hiring a dedicated marketing employee or in-house team. If you do want to go the agency route, however, it’s crucial to thoroughly evaluate each prospective firm to ensure you maximize your investment.
So, how much does a marketing agency cost? It depends on a few factors. Let’s take a look.
The Real Cost of Hiring a Marketing Agency
How much do marketing agencies cost? At LAIRE, our marketing engagements range anywhere from $5,500 to $20,000 per month. It all depends on your budget, your unique business needs, and the annual revenue growth goals your company has set.
Keep in mind that hiring an agency isn’t about the recurring cost, it’s about the investment. Dedicating more resources to your digital marketing efforts will increase your site’s traffic and bring in more qualified leads to close into customers.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should assign around 9% to 10% percent of their annual earnings to marketing. This means that if you want to grow $1,000,000 this year in new revenue, expect to spend $90,000 to $100,000 to help you get there.
What Factors Influence Marketing Agency Costs?
All marketing agencies are different. Some specialize in one-off projects like logo design or website development. Others take a different approach, preferring ongoing retainers designed to facilitate long-term, exponential website traffic and revenue growth.
The LAIRE team prefers the latter and leverages inbound marketing practices to drive consistent results.
The inbound methodology is the idea that if you attract, engage, and delight your target audience, you will improve your lead generation and, in turn, increase your bottom line. An inbound marketing strategy generally involves strategic planning, content creation, search engine optimization (SEO), the use of marketing software, and more.
No matter what type of firm you may choose to work with, the following things can significantly impact the average marketing agency cost per month:
- Your goals
- Complexity and volume of work
- Expertise and experience
- Agency size and location
- Contract length
- Frequency of reporting
- Support and communication
Finding the right balance between your budget and the level of service you need is key.
Digital Marketing Agency Costs by Service
Marketing Automation Software Costs
If you want to implement inbound marketing practices effectively, we recommend using marketing automation software. Inbound is possible without a software program, but it’ll be much easier with it.
We use HubSpot’s Marketing Hub at LAIRE. It fits our needs and gives us the best chance to produce results for ourselves and our clients. We love HubSpot’s comprehensive tools and reporting capabilities. Within this single software ecosystem, you can manage your website, create landing pages, post to social media channels, and so much more.
HubSpot also offers a Sales Hub and Service Hub that are worth considering. The price range of the HubSpot platform varies depending on the hubs and services you choose.
Content Marketing Agency Costs
Content should always be posted with a plan and a purpose. It’s an area where you execute your overall marketing strategy. Your strategy will determine what, when, and how frequently content should be posted.
The important thing to note here is that you have options for who does the content creation work. Even if you hire an agency to develop a strategic marketing plan for your business, an in-house employee or freelancer can do the writing and editing for you. Of course, an inbound marketing agency can handle the heavy lifting here too.
If you partner with a marketing agency for your content marketing needs, you’re looking at a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per month, depending on your engagement.
Website Design and Development Costs
Content creation will drive more traffic to your website, but you need to have ways to convert those website visitors into leads.
Your site needs to be SEO-, mobile-, and user-friendly, in addition to having conversion points. Most of all, it needs to work. We’ve seen too many websites with dead links or poor images that bring down the user experience.
You can find low-cost website design templates online. If you need help from a web designer to update or redesign your site, costs could be in the thousands, depending on the work needed. The price tag can reach $10,000 and up for more complex website designs.
Social Media Marketing Agency Cost
Think of social media as a promotional tool to send people to your website and content. While there is no cost to post on social media channels, there is a cost to hire someone to carry out the work. Social media management is a full-time job unless you bring on an agency to do it for you.
Paid advertising is also part of this equation. The investment here depends on your commitment to an ad strategy and how quickly you’re looking to achieve results.
How much does a social media marketing agency cost? Pricing is around $500 to $5,000 per month, depending on the agency, your needs, and several other factors.
Email Marketing Agency Cost
The cost of email marketing services depends on the frequency of emails, whether they're sent weekly, monthly, or sporadically, due to the required resources for consistent communication. Campaign complexity plays a role too, as more intricate campaigns involving segmentation, personalization, A/B testing, and automation demand additional effort and expertise.
List management, including tasks like handling opt-outs and managing bounces, can also impact costs due to the attention required for maintaining a healthy subscriber list.
According to Omnisend, small businesses can expect to pay anywhere from $200 to $900 a month for email marketing services.
Looking to Hire a Cost-Effective Digital Marketing Agency?
Weigh the expense of hiring an agency against what it costs to hire one employee in-house to do marketing tasks.
Also, remember that choosing to hire a marketing agency is an investment in your business and it’s revenue growth over time. By partnering with an agency, you’ll be bringing in a team of dedicated experts working toward your goals.
If you’re not achieving the traffic, lead generation, and revenue goals you’ve set for your business, we can help. Get a free consultation where we’ll walk you through the gaps in your marketing and how to make optimizations to drive ROI.
