Being a small business owner means wearing a lot of hats. It’s no wonder that you might, at some point, find yourself looking for ways to delegate certain tasks. It may be time constraints, or it may be the recognition that some business functions require specialized expertise. Regardless of the reason, outsourcing can be a strategic solution, and one area that many businesses choose to entrust to professionals is marketing.
Advantages of Hiring a Marketing Agency
Outsourcing your marketing—whether to a full-service agency or a freelance marketer—offers a number of advantages to small businesses. These benefits include:
- Expertise: Marketers specialize in just that—marketing. By hiring a marketing team, you gain access to a deep understanding of strategy, and knowledge of the technical steps required to get those results.
- Time Savings: Instead of spending valuable time trying to figure out how to build a website or navigate Google Ads, you can rely on experts who already know what needs to be done. Your marketing team can hit the ground running, allowing you to focus on the parts of the business you know best.
- Consistency: One of the biggest challenges small businesses face in their marketing is staying consistent. Because business owners are managing so many different responsibilities, it’s easy to fall off schedule with social media posting, forget to update a product listing, or drop off on that blog content you were really hoping to maintain. A marketing agency keeps your efforts on track.
Factors in the Cost of Marketing Services
If you’re interested in hiring out your marketing, one of the first questions you may have is, “How much will this cost?”
The cost of marketing services depends on many factors, including:
- Location: Generally, prices for marketing services tend to be higher in larger cities. This is the case across many industries, as the cost of living is generally higher, and businesses must adjust their prices accordingly.
- Labor: A bigger marketing agency generally has a team of employees whose salaries must be covered. Even a smaller agency that doesn’t have employees will work with subcontractors, all of whom set their individual costs of services.
- Office Expense: For marketing companies with a brick-and-mortar location, there is the cost of rent, utilities, office equipment, and insurance. Even a home-based business often carries liability insurance.
- Professional Insurance: Many service-based businesses opt to carry professional insurance, or errors & omissions insurance, which protects against claims of negligence, mistakes, or inadequate work.
- Experience Level: A well-established agency with years of experience will likely charge higher rates than a freelancer just starting out.
- Scope of Work: Pricing varies depending on the type of service. For example, basic web design typically costs less than web development, which requires more advanced coding expertise.
- Taxes: In Indiana, where we are located, services aren’t subject to sales tax. However, income taxes can impact pricing, particularly for freelancers who must cover both employer and employee portions of self-employment taxes.
As you can see, many factors go into setting pricing! If you are shopping around for a service provider, and you find variability, these are some of the key elements that play a role in those differences.
Cost of Marketing Services in Southern and South-Central Indiana
With all that in mind, what is the average cost of marketing services? Having a clear understanding of pricing can help you decide if you’re ready to make the investment.
Because we are an agency located in Bloomington, Indiana that serves the South-Central and Southern Indiana area, the pricing in this article reflects what’s typical for our area. If you’re in a different locale though, you can do a little research on your own by talking to fellow business owners, consulting with a few agencies, or even just checking out different threads on Reddit or Quora where fellow business owners are asking the same questions.
Our methods for determining these average prices were:
- Local Survey: We conducted a survey asking area marketing professionals and business owners what they charge or pay for various marketing services. In full transparency, our data set was not huge, but some general trends stood out that gave a good idea of where average costs currently land. We looked at both the median of responses and also the weighted average, which factored in the greater frequency of some responses.
- Online Research: We reviewed pricing listed on agency websites in our region. We also combed through Reddit small business marketing discussions to get a sense of pricing in similar small-town, somewhat rural areas. We then cross-checked this data with our survey findings.
Website Design
One-time cost for a standard 5-page website: $2,250 – $2,667
Factors that influence the cost of a web design project, in addition to the general factors noted above, include whether the copy and images are provided by the client and ready to use, the type of website (WordPress? Squarespace? Wix?), the complexity of the website (ecommerce is more time-consuming, for example), SEO optimization, and custom coding needs.
Social Media Management
We defined social media management to be the monthly retainer fee for creation of copy and graphics for up to 3 channels. An average number of posts per month is around 12, or 3 per week. The reported monthly cost: $342 – $450
Paid Advertising Management – Google Ads
Monthly fee for services, not including ad spend: $350 – $510
Paid Advertising Management – Social Media Ads
Monthly fee for services, not including ad spend: $350 – $416
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Monthly retainer fee: $350 – $510
SEO is a very broad category, so the monthly cost can vary widely. Contracts may focus on anything from keyword research and content creation, link building, technical SEO, local SEO, or other factors. And the more components of SEO the contract covers, the cost naturally will be higher.
Content Creation
Cost per blog or newsletter: $187 – $250
A standard blog post is around 800 words or so and would be on the higher end of this range. A newsletter would be on the lower end of cost range.
Email Marketing
Cost for the writing, building, and scheduling of one monthly email: $325 – $440
Graphic Design
Cost for custom logo design: $750 – $1300
There are countless types of graphic design, but for the purpose of this survey, we looked at logo design.
Business Photography
Cost for a small business session, including team photos, a limited number of product shots, and moderate editing: $450 – $780
Video Marketing
Short promotional video under 2 minutes: $680 – $1000
Marketing Strategy and Planning
Hourly rate for marketing strategy and planning consultation: $90 – $125
When Outsourcing is Out of Your Budget
After taking a look at these ranges, it may be that hiring external marketing help isn’t quite in the budget yet. Or, you may be able to hire for some services and not others. This is completely understandable, and that’s how it goes when we are growing a new business. You may have to DIY your marketing in the early stages until you reach a point where outsourcing makes financial sense. A few tips to guide you:
- The Small Business Administration advises allocating 7-8% of revenue to marketing.
- Use resources—like our blog—to guide you on how to do your own marketing.
- Contact your local small business development organization. In Indiana, this is the Indiana Small Business Development Center (ISBDC).
Conclusion
We hope this information sheds some light on marketing services and helps you make a more informed decision. If you get to a point where you’re ready to hand the marketing task off, get in touch with us to see how we can help.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jim Inman, Jr. of Comprehensive Financial Consultants in Bloomington, Indiana, and Mande Miskewycz of Rise Business Elevated in Bloomington, Indiana for the collaboration on this research.
