Any marketing that uses electronic devices and can be used by marketing specialists to convey promotional messaging and measure its impact through your customer journey. In practice, digital marketing typically refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads and social media posts. Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Oddly, television is usually lumped in with traditional marketing.

No matter the size of your business, it’s important to research how much you should spend on digital marketing. Digital marketing agency pricing varies, but plenty of agencies claim that they offer extremely cheap rates — and that is what your company needs to look out for looking to hire a marketing firm.

In almost all cases, you get what you pay for in terms of digital marketing services. So “cheap” services often don’t drive the results you want.

That is why it’s critical to set a reasonable digital marketing budget. If you try to make your price range as low as possible, you’ll get what you pay for, unfortunately.

What is a reasonable budget, though?

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 $10,000 to $60,000 per year for SMBs. Keep in mind that digital marketing is an ongoing strategy, so your budget may change as you grow.

3 digital marketing pricing models

When it comes to digital marketing, one of the biggest factors influencing your online marketing costs is the pricing model of your service provider. Agencies, consultants, and freelancers typically offer one of the following models:

Monthly

With the monthly digital marketing pricing model, your business pays a monthly fee to retain your service provider. You’ll often see this pricing model when working with an online marketing company (like Cliffex). Typically, a monthly digital marketing plan will cost $2500 to $12,000 per month for an SMB.

Hourly

With the hourly online marketing pricing model, your business pays an hourly fee to your service provider. In most cases, consultants or freelancers will charge an hourly fee, though some agencies will charge an hourly rate for requests outside your service agreement. Typically, hourly digital marketing rates range from $15 to more than $120 per hour.

Project-based

With the project-based pricing model, your business pays a flat rate to complete a project, like developing and launching a marketing campaign for a new product. You can work with both consultants and agencies on project-based initiatives.

Typically, project-based digital marketing costs $1000 to $7500 per project.

Keep in mind that the above numbers are only industry averages. Online marketing costs vary and depend on factors unique to your business, especially when referencing project-based or hourly-based work.

A variety of factors influence digital marketing service pricing, including:

• The company’s experience
• Your company’s size
• The strategy’s complexity
• The company’s services
• Your company’s timeline