by David Lawrence on September 4, 2018 | Digital Marketing Resources
by David Lawrence on September 4, 2018 | Digital Marketing Resources
Last Updated on
‘What will it cost?’ is one of the most popular questions we get asked when talking about a new SEO, PPC, Paid Social, EDM or general digital marketing campaign. There’s a short and a long answer and I am going to give you both. Read right till the end though, this will not be one of those articles that promise much and delivers little!
It depends.
Surely, you knew this was going to be part of the answer! Any agency looking to price an effective, mutually beneficial and long-term engagement will carefully consider the following before coming to a price:
Here’s exactly how we reach a $ value
The agency/client relationship only works if there’s real value generated for both parties. For this reason, most good agencies will take the pricing stage very seriously. Be very wary of any agency willing to give you a price before they truly know the answer to the first three points above. A cookie cutter price will almost certainly result in a cookie cutter solution. This might result in a lot of campaign activity but will not always lead to the desired outcomes.
To flesh out the desired outcomes, requirements, current situation and existing marketing assets, we typically go through the following process:
This is a lot of work for us. However, more than a decade of running effective marketing campaigns has taught us that these steps are critical to long-term success. Bottom line, doing this is a lot less work than trying to save a poorly thought out campaign 6-months later.
We enthusiastically do all the above before a dollar has changed hands or a contract has been signed.
The best pricing model for you and your agency is the one which best incentivises the right people to focus on the outcomes you value. We see agencies charging by the hour, working for a percentage of media spend, paid on specific performance outcomes, paid by channel or working for a set monthly fee. Depending on the agency and what you want to achieve there is a place for one or more of these approaches. None of them is inherently flawed.
Never forget though that each model might incentivise specific unwanted behaviour.
The overall pricing model is a critical thing to consider! Price is important. But it needs to be secondary to achieving the outcomes you need. Don’t ‘win’ on the price negotiation only to ‘lose’ on the whole purpose of needing an agency in the first place.
You’ll find a lot of people cheaper than Rocket and you’ll also find agencies charging a lot more. We believe we’re above the average but not massively so. That said, our ongoing clients don’t tend to focus much on how much we charge. We like to think it’s because they see value in what we do.
There are two ways we work with clients and both are priced in slightly different ways. Here’s how it works.
Channel Specific Campaigns
We’re often approached by in-house marketing teams to provide scale or execute on a single tactic or channel. This is often the case with our larger clients who look at us as their SEO Agency, Paid Media Agency or Paid Social Agency (or a combination of more than one of these). We also work this way for several smaller clients with specific requirements who want excellent results.
Typically, this sort of engagement is for an agreed monthly fee (plus potentially a % of media if applicable). Pricing depends on the complexity and the required outcome.
We have current clients paying us between $2,000 to $15,000 per channel per month depending on complexity, competition and scope. Such campaigns are for an initial period of 6 or 12 months with an intention from both parties of a much longer relationship. We have clients using us for single or multiple channels.
Agile Marketing Campaigns
We also have clients who are more focused on the outcomes themselves and do not care about specific channels. Where this is the case our strategists develop 6-month roadmaps outlining what we believe to be the activities required to achieve key outcomes in the coming six-month period.
If something significant changes, or when we reach the end of the six-month roadmap, we create a new roadmap. From roadmap to roadmap the channels we use for a client will change as required. As an example, a typical roadmap (if such a thing exists) could include discovery work to assist in setting up the strategy, several channels (such as Google Ads, retargeting, paid social, EDMs, display advertising, SEO or CRO) as well as analytics, education and sales enablement services.
We have current clients paying us from $5,000 per month for agile marketing campaigns. We also have clients paying up to double or triple this amount, and more, for significantly more complex blended campaigns. Again, initial campaigns are for a 6 or 12-month period and we’ve worked with some of our clients on this basis for many years.
This can be an extremely effective way to work for companies who want us to look after overall digital strategy as well as digital execution.
You now know what we charge our current clients and roughly the way we approach things.
If you are interested in our approach and feel we’re somewhere in the ballpark for your budget, then get in touch! We’d love to find out more about what you do and what you’re trying to achieve in digital.
If we think we can do an amazing job for you, then we’d love nothing more than to put time into coming up with a strategy and giving you an exact price for the engagement. No obligation, but experience tells us you’ll be impressed.
Call us on 1300 059 620 or leave us your details and let’s get the conversation started!
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