Is your company’s marketing strategy bringing no outcomes and no revenue? Is your business on a low budget and cannot afford a marketing department This is a sign that you should look for a marketing agency that enhances brand awareness, achieves potential leads, and gets more revenue.
While many think that a marketing agency is expensive to hire, the average cost of a marketing agency actually depends on the provided services. Agencies offer complete service packages, act as an actual marketing department, and cover every task, which is highly costly. Besides, more affordable packages rely on individual packages. Let’s analyze the average cost of hiring a marketing agency in 2023.
What is a Marketing Agency?
A marketing agency is a team of qualified professionals or marketers. These experts cooperate to assist a business in increasing user experience, drawing potential leads, enhancing branding awareness and customer satisfaction. If your marketing tactics are having difficulty bringing you revenue, it may be time to call out for a marketing agency.
ROI Digitally offers skills and expertise to your team whether you want to market new products and services, or connect yourself more closely with your target audience. Our long-term goal is to dedicate ourselves to future-proof your business with ROI success through innovative marketing solutions & customized strategies. ROI Digitally services include:
- SEO outsourcing
- Website management
- Marketing consultation
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Online advertising
- Digital branding development/Rebranding
- eCommerce marketing
Read more: What is SEO?
How Much Do Marketing Agencies Cost?
The average range of a company’s spending for marketing agency rates often depends on the size of the firm and its general revenue. These are the typical revenue percentages that businesses will allocate to marketing.
- Small Business: 7–8%
- Mid-Sized Business: 10%
- Enterprise Business: 15%
A business must determine how much it will spend on advertising agency fees. With that budget in mind, you can analyze the available marketing agency prices and choose the best suits your needs. Understanding your alternatives is crucial for a more significant return on investment in marketing.
7 Signs You Need To Outsource A Marketing Agency
Even though the marketing department is sufficient, some missing points may affect the quality of your strategy. Here are seven signs you need to outsource a marketing agency:
- Insufficient marketing knowledge
- Your employees are overloaded
- Your leads and sales need to be higher.
- You need help to identify what is effective and what is not.
- You’re having trouble planning a marketing strategy
- Marketing Is A Secondary Concern
- You do not monitor marketing activities or guide strategy using data.
Understanding how to choose the right SEO agency is the most economical choice if you want to make the most of your marketing strategy. Here are the benefits that a proper marketing agency can provide:
- High marketing expertise: A marketing agency offers new viewpoints, innovative concepts, and artistic skill sets. Moreover, create messaging and graphics representing your brand while drawing in other people by objectively looking at your business, its goods, and services.
- Save your time: An agency has the expertise and experience to create an effective marketing strategy for your business. Also, as part of its responsibilities, an agency must understand the current performance of the partner’s business to provide a suitable approach.
- Modern Technology: The most cutting-edge marketing techniques are available from a marketing firm, which is advantageous to your business. Agency team members give the latest trends, strategies, and technologies.
- Provide professional human resources: Another benefit of working with an agency is that you’ll not only have strategists to construct your marketing strategy but also a team of designers, writers, and other professionals, all without having to pay marketing firm cost.
Understanding Marketing Agency Fees
Unfortunately, marketing agency rates might look like buying a low-cost airline. Open an email offering tickets for $49. You can discover that the offer is only suitable for some days and excludes round-trip costs, booking fees, and luggage fees. If you want the experience worthwhile, you must spend more than $300.
When outsourcing an agency, nothing is free. Even though many stated that there is no cost for consulting, they still charge the average marketing cost. The most typical cost of a marketing agency includes the following:
- Discovery/On-boarding
- Technology Fees
- Media Fees
- Service Markup
- Travel costs
- Project Cost and Pricing
- Change Orders
Discovery/On-boarding
The first advertising agency fees of onboarding, also known as discovery, usually range from $10k to $20k per project. This process is when the marketing consultancy or agency becomes acquainted with your company.
Because manufacturing companies do not necessarily need to comprehend how your company operates to do the task, their marketing firm cost will typically be significantly lower. For example, if businesses only acquire to design business cards, they only need to pay for part of the onboarding process. However, whether you engage with a strategy firm or consultant, discovery plays a significant role in ensuring that the collaboration starts to a good start.
Overall, the average cost of marketing onboarding typically ranges from $10k to $20k or more, depending on whether you are a local or global enterprise. Most agencies charge a flat rate for the onboarding process, the time spent researching your company’s operations. However, if they are not, they will make up the cost of the marketing agency in their hourly rate or through another sort of additional fee.
Technology Fees
Similar to onboarding, technology is another marketing agency rate or an additional hourly rate. There are two categories of technology fees:
- Price of using technology to complete the task
- License expenses
To start the process, the agency would request payment for the technology involved to accomplish their jobs. A typical example is paying for Adobe Photoshop for the designer to create a digital advertisement. Another example would be paying for reporting dashboard software like Tableau or Domo.
The second cost of a marketing agency for technology relates to your company’s operation: licensing expenses. These licenses are usually for marketing automation or CRM software. The agency you are outsourcing with may receive a commission if they license the software and manage its servicing on your behalf.
Technological costs range from $200 per year to more than $20,000.
Media Fees
Most advertising agency fees range between 3% to 15% if an agency runs the system and has its credit card on file with the media platform. As a result, they may take up to $150k of your marketing agency prices for media expenditure with every $1 million spent.
Moreover, businesses must be in charge of platform fees from media platforms.
Service Markup
Several agencies will have a tiered product structure. These packages do not charge based on an hourly rate, but agencies may require a monthly marketing firm cost. With these services, you can adjust your marketing strategy and budget depending on company performance.
These are the general cost for specific services, including in the marketing strategy:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): $1,500 – $5,000 / month
- Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: $9,000 – $10,000 / month or 5-20% of monthly ad spend
- Email Marketing: $300 – $5,000 / month or $0.1 – $0.5 / email
- Social Media Marketing: $900 – $20,000 / month
- Content Marketing: $2,000 – $10,000 / month
Typically, the service markup fee for the agency to cover their role in selecting, coordinating, and maintaining the vendor is between 10% and 20%.
Travel Costs
This additional marketing firm cost is not mandatory but includes when the project requires traveling. Whether for a meeting, a trade fair, or a photo shoot, travel expenses are the primary marketing agency rates, considered either as a separate travel expense or as part of the marketing or advertising firm or consultancy’s hourly rate.
All actual marketing agency prices, such as meals, travel expenses, or lodging, are part of the budget plan but without any form of markup by consultancies and advertising agencies.
Project Cost and Pricing
The project is a high cost for a marketing agency. There are many ways to charge advertising agency fees in a variety of ways, which are:
- Fixed Fee: A project’s estimated cost. (Ex: This $150k brand initiative)
- Time and Materials: When you attempt to accomplish a project within the specified time and resources, often with a financial ceiling in mind. (Ex: We will design a campaign for you that might cost up to $100,000 and charge you as we complete the job.)
- Retainers: A monthly allocation of time that you receive from an agency. (Ex: We have 20 hours of agency time that we may use for various tasks.)
- Hourly Rate: A method of estimating the cost of a project based on how long it will take the consulting firm or agency to accomplish the task. (Ex: At a $150 hourly rate, this will take 40 hours).
- Value pricing: This refers to a method of setting a project’s price based on the worth of the provided service. (Ex: Based on our research and experience, we estimate that a new website will cost your business $125,000)
Change Orders
A change order is required when there is a change in deliverables, deadlines, or budget. These orders could be better, but they do have an impact on your average cost of marketing.
While these fees may cause your business worries about the high budget required for a marketing agency to achieve a successful marketing strategy, ROI Digitally is here for you.
Our experienced team provides marketing services at an affordable price but still commits to effective outcomes for our clients without worrying too much about hidden expenses. If you are struggling to establish an efficient marketing strategy, do not hesitate to have ROI Digitally assist you via: https://roidigitally.com/contact-us/
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Do Costs Vary When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency?
The cost of a marketing agency might vary to surprising extremes. It relies on various aspects, including the size of the business, its awareness, the workflow, and even its location.
Agencies frequently charge hourly rates for services like project management, graphic design, illustration, programming, creative direction, content generation, or strategy development. It’s common for the average cost of marketing changes depending on the market rates and the expertise or experience of the individual doing the work when hiring a marketing firm.
How Do Marketing Agencies Charge Their Clients?
There are many marketing firm costs. A monthly retainer is the most typical strategy. The average monthly starting rate for small to midsize businesses is around $2,500 for 17 to 20 hours of professional work. On the upper end, 100–120 hours of professional time could be $15,000 monthly.
Is It Worth Hiring A Marketing Agency?
Hiring a professional digital marketing agency is worthwhile to enhance brand awareness, reach out to potential customers, and bring more revenue, Also, working with an agency equals having the opportunity to learn more marketing tactics from industrial experts. This helps to customize performance and cost efficiency.
Conclusion
In short, the marketing agency prices depend on the business’s objectives and needs in improving their marketing performance. The average cost of marketing can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.
An agency delivers its professionalism and expertise to create exceptional outcomes for business in exchange for worthy marketing agency rates. If you are still questioning if hiring a marketing agency is necessary, you can ask for their consultant and negotiate the budget plan. It is more negotiable once the agency understands your situation.
Co-Founder & General Manager @ ROI Digitally
