How Much Does Hiring an SEO/Digital Marketing Agency Cost?

Written by Rachel Richards

Updated: May 14, 2024

Are you looking to attract loyal customers to your business? You may have considered hiring a digital marketing agency to boost connection and conversions with your audience. However, it’s not always clear what the price will be for a project or a monthly service agreement—especially when many agencies hold their rates close to their chest. We’re here to set the record straight, so you know exactly what value you’re getting for the cost of your digital marketing.

Unveiling the True Costs of Digital Marketing Services

As a guideline, most digital marketing strategy projects range from about $8,000 to $30,000, website projects run from approximately $30,000 to $100,000, and digital marketing service agreements range from about $5,000/month to $10,000/month. If you’re looking to find out about the price of online advertising, explore this blog about the costs of Google and social media ads.

Monthly Marketing Services: Tailored Solutions for Your Business

Many agencies work with clients on a month-to-month basis through a digital marketing service agreement, sometimes called a retainer. Typically, there’s a monthly meeting where you prioritize the work and focus on the most high-impact efforts. The goal is to perform key online marketing activities that will drive growth over time while taking away the stress of day-to-day tasks.

At Top Draw, we think we measure our results better than our competitors, and we push for the results you need. Don’t settle for “good enough.” Schedule your free consultation today and let’s discuss how we can deliver the results your business deserves!

Essential Marketing Package: Focused Tactics for $5,000/month

A $5,000/month service agreement focuses on the top tactics needed for you to succeed. Often, this involves website maintenance, technical SEO improvements, and online advertising management. We always provide monthly reporting with key insights on how you’re performing and how we’re improving your accounts.

Comprehensive Marketing Suite: Advanced Strategies for $10,000/month

A $10,000/month service agreement is on the higher end, allowing us to offer more monthly digital marketing activities to bring your strategy to life. Additional tactics often include advanced SEO, social media management, blog writing, content creation, creative digital marketing campaigns, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and website updates.

Crafting Your Digital Marketing Roadmap: Strategy Project Costs

A strategy is an essential tool for setting the direction of your digital marketing. It’s a vital step in defining the problem we’re looking to solve or goal we need to achieve. Providing a beacon of insight and understanding, your strategy gives us the “north star” we need to follow to make your business successful online. For that reason, it’s always customized to your needs and can vary in price.

Foundational Strategy: Targeted Insights Starting at $8,000

At the $8,000 starting price, a digital marketing strategy will involve the necessary research to uncover targeting insights about your audience and identify competitive gaps in your industry. It often includes a website audit to understand how we can improve the user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). At the end of the day, we’ll produce an actionable guide with goals, tactics, targeting, and budgets to give your digital marketing the right focus. 

Comprehensive Strategy: In-Depth Analysis up to $30,000

As we move toward the $30,000 range, our digital marketing strategies become much more in depth. The research and analysis we perform is extremely extensive, delving deep into your Google Analytics to inform our work. Positioning is key here, as it outlines what makes you stand out from competitors and what unique value you bring to your audience. We may also incorporate website strategy and brand strategy to unify all your digital marketing toward one purpose. This work often sets the tone for your brand concept or digital marketing campaign concept, which contains the big or inspirational idea that drives all the creative that we produce.

Building Your Digital Presence: Website Project Investment

From a simple marketing tool to a fully accessible experience, our website designs can vary widely in complexity. Because of this, their prices also range quite broadly. Whichever approach your business requires, your website will be an eye-catching and results-focused experience. Your project will follow these stages: 

  • Discovery meetings with key stakeholders
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) research
  • Information architecture (IA) and site map
  • Content management and writing
  • User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design
  • Web development
  • Digital marketing optimization

This ensures we achieve your goals and win over your users while also setting your website up according to digital marketing best practices.

Entry-Level Website: Core Features for $10,000

A $10,000 website is a great starting point for many businesses. You can expect a strategically planned and attractive user experience with a focus on strong technical SEO performance. These website projects usually focus on key pages, such as about, services, and contact, with a call-to-action to contact your company. Basic integrations, like news and social media feeds, are also common.

Advanced Website: Custom Functionality up to $100,000

A website that hits the higher $100,000 range will involve extensive user research and custom functionality. We invest more time at the beginning to interview more stakeholders and may create user journeys or personas to deeply understand your audience’s needs. A bigger website build often features an accessible design and adheres to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These kinds of sites can also have ecommerce features with search, sorting, browsing, and purchasing capabilities for products.

Transform Your Online Presence with Expert Digital Marketing

Do these online marketing services sound like what you need, or do you need to talk through your options? Book a free consultation with us today so we can start planning your strategic approach and create powerful results for your business.

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