The average cost for full outsourced digital marketing services ranges from $1500 to $4500 per month.

To go deeper into pricing, we have to look at each component of traditional digital marketing and look at the cost vs. the return on investment.

The components we will discuss:

Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO)

The cost for local search engine optimization can range from $400 a month to $1500 a month.

Local SEO is a digital marketing strategy used for local businesses (painters, carpet cleaners, HVAC companies) to gain traffic on the searches such as “painter near me” or “best carpet cleaner in [insert your service area]

Local SEO is extremely important because it allows your company to be found online when potential customers are searching for a product or service in their local area.

Local SEO has many components but the two big ones are:

Listing Management – Building out or correcting listings for your business helps build credibility on google. The most important part of this is that your Name, Address, and Phone number are consistent across all platforms. When someone asks Google for the best painter near them, google wants to give them the correct information, if your company has two different phone numbers listed, google may not give them your company because it does not know if it is correct.

Engagement – Interacting with each platform is crucial to having that platform recommend your business. One example of this is on Yelp they want you to respond to Yelp messages, and they actually track and post your response rate and response time for prospects to see.

Why is Local Search Engine Optimization a monthly cost?

Google alone changes their google business profile platform which is one large part of local SEO almost on a monthly basis. Your local SEO provider will know about these changes and make the adjustments for your business to make sure you are always ranking as high as possible.

The other reason is that there are daily tasks your local SEO company should be doing to ensure you are engaging with these platforms and customers. You may pay a lower monthly cost without the engagement piece, but you should not expect the same result.

Three important daily local SEO strategies to boost rankings:

  • Responding to reviews
  • Posting Pictures
  • Posting Content

Return on investment from Local Search Engine Optimization

Here is an example from one of our clients Google Business Profile Account after one month of working with our team.

You can see this business increased their calls by 16, their website visits by 15, and their direction requests by 4.

They also showed up in 300 more searches and had 500 more views on their google business profile account.

In this situation, they received 16 new calls, half of those calls were leads (8), and 50% of those leads closed. So, If they closed 4 out of 8 leads, and their average sale price is $500, then they made $2,000 after 1 month of local SEO efforts through google business profile alone.

Every industry is different based on search volume and opportunity in the local market, and this is why the cost of local SEO ranges. Some companies just provide the service, while others take the next step to look at reporting and discuss ways to use the numbers to make decisions and track return on investment.

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Social Media Posting

How much does social media management cost?

The average cost of social media management is $450-$3250 per month. Some of the factors that go into this cost are frequency in posting per week, type of content being created (video is much more expensive), platforms for content, and if/when the company will review social campaigns.

The most common digital marketing task is posting on social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Most of us know about posting on these accounts and at a minimum, you should be posting once a week.

There are 3 parts that go into a social media strategy for digital marketing:

Content Creation – Creating relevant content to what people are searching for and engaging with that looks nice is a huge part of social media management. Video is very important for your content strategy because social media platforms know viewers engage with this type of content more.

Social Posting –  Posting on multiple (omnichannel) is important because different prospects will interact, engage, and search for your business on different sites.

Analytics – The one piece that many companies miss by doing social media in-house is the analytics part to see what works and what does not. On Facebook alone, there is a huge dashboard to see engagement, views, likes, etc. A good digital marketing company will review the analytics, understand what is working and what is not, then make the appropriate adjustments.

Email Marketing

How much does email marketing cost?

Email marketing can vary based on the size of your database, but the price range for this service is $125-$500+ a month.

If your business has reoccurring services over a year’s time frame, i.e. carpet cleaning every six months, having a monthly email marketing campaign to stay top of mind is very important to reaching your customers.

Email allows you to reach your customer directly without having to go through a social media algorithm, and also allows for a more efficient process than calling each individual person. 

A good digital marketing company will set up, design, and provide reporting on your email marketing initiatives. Numbers you should receive are:

Number of sends: total people in your database

Open rate: 15-20% is good

Click through rate: 2-6% is good

Return on investment

With a click-through rate of 2-6% on your email campaigns, there is an easy way to calculate return on investment from an email blast. The best emails have a call to action or incentive for your customer base to buy. We recommend always having a special call to action of money off or a current promo to entice your audience.

Text Marketing & Automation

How much does text marketing and automation cost?

Text marketing can vary based on the size of your database, but the price range for this service is $300-$1,500 a month.

If your business has reoccurring services over a year’s time frame, i.e. carpet cleaning every six months or spring/fall inspections having the ability to text your customer database with offers to schedule is better than email.

With email, the average open rate is 15-20%, however with a text message the average open rate is 98%. This is why text message marketing and automation can significantly increase lead conversions.

Return on investment

With a click-through rate of 2-6% on your text campaigns, there is an easy way to calculate return on investment from a text blast. Use a special offer in your text message and track how many bookings you get from it. If your average job is $300 and you book 10 jobs after sending 500 texts, you know its successful.

Website Creation, Hosting, and Management

How much does it cost to build a website?

A digital marketing company will charge $750-$10,000+ to build a website for you. Why the large range?

A website is your digital storefront that is a hub for all traffic online to flow to and then hopefully call, email, schedule, or fill out a web form to become a lead.

You can create a simple website online for $100 and then host the website yourself for $100 a year and do it DIY. This is good for when you are just starting out, but you probably will not see the leads or traffic you want from your website when you use this option.

Factors that go into building a website?

How many pages do you want on your website? (A page is a specific url i.e. phlashconsulting.com/help and phlashconsulting.com/contactus)

Theme-based or custom code?

A theme-based website is less expensive because the coding is already done, and you can easily customize the theme to fit your company, without the headache of coding everything custom. Typically, the least expensive website builds will be theme-based sites.

Custom code sites are usually $3,000+ and take a longer time but can also see a better return on investment because everything is custom to your company.

How much does website hosting cost?

Website hosting can cost $10 a month to $100 a month. The cost of hosting ranges because of the involvement of the digital marketing provider. Do you want to maintain your site security and compliance, or do you want someone else to monitor your site’s security, manage site backups, and ensure your site is always functioning properly?

How much does it cost to edit my website?

Maybe you have a website that you like, but you want it to be updated. The average cost for editing a website is $50-$250 per hour of developer time. A website should be updated at least quarterly with content or upgrades to plugins. Most sites slow down or have broken links because there is no ongoing management of the website.

Return on investment of building a company website.

A good website should generate leads or online appointments for your company. For our clients, we use a website visitor to lead rate of 3-6%. If you have 1000 visitors to your website, then you should receive 30-60 leads per month. (Calls or web forms). If you close at 50% then you can figure out an ROI for your company.

How much does it cost Pay-Per-Click Campaign management?

Some companies charge a percentage of the campaign amount, while others charge a flat fee to manage your pay-per-click marketing campaigns.

The percentage model cost – If you have a $1000 budget for pay-per-click marketing, the company will charge 10-20% of the budget as a management fee.

The flat fee cost for pay per click – A flat fee of typically $250-$750 a month to set up, manage, and report on your pay-per-click advertising efforts.

Pay-per-click campaigns are a great way to drive traffic and leads to your website. There are various tools out there to track call recordings and website forms specifically from google ads you are running, this makes it very easy to see an ROI on this channel. We typically see a 3-5x+ return on ad spend with Pay Per Click campagins.

At Phlash Consulting, we work with local service businesses to help them gain exposure online and acquire new customers through digital marketing. We take a consultative approach to marketing and work directly with business owners to ensure we are a revenue-producing part of the business, not another expense.

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