Digital marketing is using digital technologies such as SEO, web design, content marketing, social media marketing and more to grow your business and presence online. This could translate to increasing visitors to your website, gaining more foot traffic to your local business or gain more subscribers for your newsletter or increasing sales for your business.

If you run a business or have a website the answer is yes.

You see, having a business or website is not enough. You still need it to be found by your customers.

You may have hundreds of competitors in your industry, how do you differentiate yourself from them and how do you stand out? Digital marketing is the answer.

It’s important to research digital marketing pricing for your business no matter how big or small your business is. Digital marketing pricing and packages will depend on a number of factors and can vary. You generally get what you paid for. What businesses should be aware of are cheap, too good to be true prices often solicited through email via a gmail address or overseas company. These are often scams or worse.

Remember this, a good digital marketing company doesn’t need to send unsolicited emails or phone calls to gain your business. You would have found them yourself.

Now, how much should a company budget for digital marketing? Considering all factors such as size of a company and the scope of your project, the average digital marketing budget we found to range from $30,000 to $150,000 per year for small to medium sized businesses or SMBs.

This will generally get you good results from your campaigns. 

We covered this extensively on our How to find the best digital marketing agency article but to recap it includes:

Your company size and budget

Obviously your company size and budget will affect how much you can spend on digital marketing. If you’re a SMB, you probably won’t have the same budget as international corporations.

The size of your company will also influence which digital marketing agency you partner with as well. For instance, a local company will not partner with an agency that serves the world’s biggest brands.

And lastly, the size of your company will determine your digital marketing objectives. It’s good to aim for the sky but realistically, there’s slim chance you can be a market leader of an established or competitive industry within a year. 

Complexity of campaigns

How complex your campaign strategies are directly correlates to how much you have to budget for it. Why?

The more complex and aggressive your campaign strategies and goals are, the more work and effort it requires from your digital marketing partner.

The concept also applies if you want to invest in an integrated set of digital marketing strategies. For instance, if you want SEO and PPC campaigns to run concurrently, it will accelerate your results but will also require more effort.

Competitiveness of your industry

Digital marketing in theory is competing with businesses selling the same products or services or within the same industry as you because Google can only fit so many listings on its page one search results page.

This means, if you want to use SEO or search engine optimisation for your website and you operate in a very crowded industry or have big reputable competitors , it will take more work and effort in order to outrank or outcompete them. Does this mean big corporations will always have an upper hand when performing digital marketing? Not always, you just need to be smart about it. 

However, if a digital marketing agency promises to rank your relatively new website higher than an existing company that took many years to get there, take your money and run! 

Agency experience

In this industry, it is beneficial to partner with an experienced digital marketing company. ShoutItOut, for instance, has more than 10 years of experience.

An agency’s experience demonstrates their ability to achieve client goals and their wealth of digital marketing knowledge.

Due to their expertise, reputable agencies can generally charge more. Which makes sense because that experience is a valuable asset and has a direct impact on the results of your digital marketing campaigns.

For example, ShoutItOut is the #1 digital marketing agency in Parramatta and western Sydney for a number of years now and this is because of our capability to demonstrate added value for our customers.

Type of Agency

A digital marketing agency that offers end to end solutions will offer perks to your business than one that just specialise in one or two service.

For example, a web developer will generally just design or build a website for you, a digital marketing agency such as ShoutItOut will not only help you build a website but understand

the added benefits of SEO to implement features on your website to allow it to rank higher on search engines like Google.

By partnering with a full-service, end to end digital marekting agency, you can have all your digital marketing needs be taken care of in one place, saving your business the time and hassle of working with multiple agencies.

Timeline of Campaigns

Marketing Campaigns or business objectives that needs to be expedited or completed rapidly will generally take more effort. This effort correlates to the increased pricing of a project which can be charged as a flat or hourly rate or the desired turnaround time.

Project Deliverables

It’s vital you know what you’re getting when paying for digital marketing services, that could be measured in hours, pages, number of posts etc…

Needless to say, don’t choose an agency that’s vague about what they’ll provide and don’t take their word for it, always get it in writing!

Price

Digital marketing services can vary greatly from depending on a company’s requirements and that is the reason why many agencies don’t publish pricing online. If they do provide a pricing range online, make sure it’s aligned to their custom quote.

If an offer seemed too good to be true (i.e. pay for results or ridiculously cheap) then it probably is or it’s got hidden fees or a huge ‘setup’ fee that you need to be aware of. 

Always ask if there is other fees involved!

Custom strategy vs one size fits all

A custom digital marketing strategy will always trump one that’s part of a package but that doesn’t a digital marketing package won’t achieve the results you desire. You have to decide if the additional cost in a tailored strategy is worth it for your business.

If you are researching the cost of digital marketing services, you’d want to know what they include. Digital marketing is a broad term and can be used to classify services on a huge number of channels available to online marketers today.

Some of the most popular services due to their results and ROI potential include:

Web Design:

A website is the basis of most of your digital marketing strategies. Having a well designed and speedy website that’s secure will go a long way in establishing the foundations of digital marketing.

SEO:

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO in short helps rank your website higher in search engines such as Google or Bing for your business ‘keywords’. If you’re a company that sells and installs air conditioners for example, you’d want to rank on the first page of search results for keywords such as ‘buy air conditioners online’, ‘air conditioning installation’ ‘split system air conditioners ‘etc…

 Over 80% of consumers rely on search to find products and services and SEO is essential for them to be able to find you. Without SEO, your website will get lost among the millions of pages of the Internet.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is another popular digital marketing service as it allow you to be seen almost immediately by paying for ads. These ads could be through Google, Facebook or another medium. The advantage of PPC is it’s wide reach and that you only pay when people click on your ad not when it’s shown.

On average, businesses make $2 for every $1 invested in PPC. For Google Ads, average ROI is $8 for every $1 invested.

Content Marketing

Content marketing forms the basis of inbound marketing whereby you attract potential customers to your business by giving them the content and information they actively search for. Content marketing improves your brand awareness, conversions and revenue. It sets your business up as an expert and authority figure. 

The content you put out can be anything from guides to blogs and infographics that can provide value to your users.

This article for instance is a form of content marketing because it provides a guide on digital marketing packages and pricing.

For small to medium sized businesses, content marketing pricing often vary between $1000 to $20,000 per month depending on the type of content you wish to promote and it’s content-depth.

Social Media Marketing

If you want your customers to sing your praise and tell their friends about you, social media can help to spread your brand and message.

Social media marketing improves your brand awareness, online presence and brand loyalty which can all indirectly lead to increased sales conversions and company revenue.

Social media offers massive opportunity but it’s not easy and can be time consuming for most small businesses. It is particularly useful if you sell a consumer product but B2B type companies can also take advantage of it as well.

If you need assistance with your social media marketing, we offer social media marketing packages from $599 to $20,000 per month for SMBs.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective digital marketing services available. This service focuses on building brand awareness, brand loyalty and nurturing leads to increased sales conversion and revenue for your company.

Email marketing provides one of the highest ROI for your business because of it’s often the number one communication platform for people and has a very high open rate. If you’re working with a email marketing agency, make sure they comply with anti spam laws in your state because it is an offence to send unsolicited emails to people who hasn’t expressed their interest to receive communication from your company. That’s why it’s very important to build your own contact list.

Email marketing works best if you integrate it with other digital marketing services such as content and video marketing.

If you require assistance, our email marketing package ranges from $499 to $2,000 per month depending on your company requirements.

Voice Search Optimisation

As more and more people adopt mobile phones for Internet use, voice search optimisation is fast becoming the preferred way of searching for information and products online. In fact, as much as 50% of adults use voice search every day.

With voice search optimisation, it is important to focus on earning the featured snippet for keywords relevant to your company and what your ideal customers search for. This is because featured snippets are what voice assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant uses to pull their data from.