The ultimate answer is you get what you pay for! Like most things in life, quality and costs go hand in hand. And for good reason – if everybody can do it quickly and cheaply, it wouldn’t be defined as “good” anymore, its becomes “below average” because everybody is doing it.
It’s like saying “What does a car cost?”
And the answer: It depends!
Depends on what you want it for, how fast you want it to go, how successful you want to appear to your neighbours, how much your want it to stroke your ego. Marketing is the same!
I love this quote
“Cheap, quick, good: Choose any 2 (but you can’t have all three)”
- It can be good and quick, but won’t be cheap
- It can be cheap and quick, but it won’t be good
- And it can be cheap and good, but it won’t be quick, if it ever actually gets done
Extraordinary Marketing is hard!
Being brutally honest with you. Getting marketing performing is actually a really hard thing to do and not what many people get right.
- It’s really complex
- Technology is forever changing, and you need to keep up
- Involves lots of moving parts and people
- Its both art and science
- Requires the right system to be invested in
- Requires talented senior people
Extraordinary Marketing is necessary to succeed!
As the business world evolves, it’s becoming more and more important for businesses to do ‘extraordinary’ marketing to ensure survival, let alone prosper. The retail world is still struggling with this concept and hence they’re in the position they are.
There are real costs!
Who would have thought, there are real costs to running a marketing agency, that come with the price tag you need to be prepared to pay. In order to understand the real costs, I need to take you through some background/business model info.
It actually costs you double!
When you hire somebody, the real costs to your business are actually closer to double than what you think.
- You hire somebody @ $60 per hour ($120K for somebody decent) plus bonuses etc
- You have 25% in leave straight away (holiday, sick, public holidays)
- You have 10% in statutory costs (workcover, payroll tax etc)
- You have 20% of revenue on fixed costs boom!
- You have their direct costs of desks, computers, phones, cars, travel, etc
- You have management costs @ 10-20%
- You need to recruit them at $10K (even in time)
- You need to induct them at $20-$30K
- You need to replace them on average every 2 years
- You’re going to stuff up a hire or two and need to let them go after two months blowing $15K in wages
So $60 per hour all of a sudden actually costs you $120 per hour.
And a marketing agency is no different
The added problem with an agency is you lose approx. 20% productivity in internal meetings, tasks etc that you can’t charge out/bill out.
So the starting point is $150 per hour!
The breakeven point for a marketing company is $150 per hour. There is no way around this. Trust me I’ve spent 16 years of my life trying to find a way to do it for cheaper, but there simply isn’t one (and as wages go up, this has to go up – there is no choice).
But I can pay $500 per month for SEO?
No you can’t! Any decent marketing campaign takes a lot of time. @ $500 per hour, at a max, they would be spending 3 hours on your campaign. I’m not sure about you, but I certainly can’t do anything that produces real impact and results in only 3 hours per month.
Good staff aren’t cheap!
If you want extraordinary marketing results, you need senior talented people on your team. And they come with a price tag to match – and as they should! They’ve spent 20 years of their life learning, growing, developing and learning the hard way of what’s required.
$150 – $250 per hour
The realities are this is what you need to pay. More routine tasks are cheaper, the more thinking, smarts, talent you need the more the price goes up. And as it should – where the most value comes from is when smart people go to town on growing your business.
Is it worth it?
My mantra in business, and is shared by nearly every single business owner I’ve ever met, is finding the right people is worth their weight in gold. Pay them what they ask because they are worth it. But proceed with caution – many people will tell you how good they are, and they prove to be sh^t!
Your starting point is $2.5K per month
This gives you 15-18 hours per month which is enough to start doing some good work. Anything less than this and you can spin a few tires without getting any traction.
Every Business is Different
So Different! Require different resources, people, skills, campaigns are different sizes, websites are different. That’s why is so important to build a custom marketing strategy, execute bespoke work and manage your channels to market.
Some examples of costs for to give you a feel
Putting together a Marketing Strategy
- Good, high level, solid @ $5-10K (25-50 hours work)
- Detailed and thorough $10-$20K (50-100 hours)
- The beezz neezz $25k+
Google Ads campaigns
- Very dependent on the size of campaign
- Drives how much work required to build and optimise
- $1500 – $10K per month
- Small campaign
- 15 hours to build it (strategy, keyword research, structure, write ad copy review, adjust and get live)
- 6-10 hours per month to manage, optimise, report
- Daily checks
- Weekly bid and budget management
- Monthly major optimisations
- Quarterly strategy review
Websites – Don’t skimp on your website!
- $10K+ is the minimum. If you want to spend less than $10K on your website, Id suggest rethinking the marketing of your business
- There is a good 50+ hours in building a decent website
- 30K for a good functioning e-commerce website, simple integrations
- $50K for a very good, in-depth design work, more complex integrations
- $100K+ for a great one
SEO Campaigns
- Small campaigns @ 10+ hours per month
- More in-depth @ 20+ hours per month
- Just goes up from there
- Very content dependent so make sure you’re ready to produce great content!
