Digital Marketing Services Firm is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. The revenue for the digital marketing industry in India for the year 2021 is expected to be 223 billion rupees. This is because thousands of startups are emerging and they all cannot thrive without digital marketing services. Even big companies need the services to maintain their level in the market.
If you are a freelance digital marketer, then you must be wondering how to charge for your digital marketing services. Charging for digital marketing may not always be simple. It depends on what kind of services the client is looking for, the amount of time you put into work, your profit percentage, additional costs, resources costs, and more.
This blog will guide you through it and give you all the right answers.
What is digital marketing?
Digital Marketing is a method of marketing using online resources and tools to promote a brand, their website, products, social media and connect them with prospective customers online. It beats traditional marketing as it costs way less, and is much more effective in reaching the company’s business goals.
Ever since the beginning of search engines, digital marketing has evolved rapidly and exponentially as new technologies came into existence, like social media for example. And every time a new thing was discovered, it changed how we do digital marketing and how it impacted the business growth.
Also read: How Does Digital Marketing Works?
Today, there are numerous strategies in digital marketing, and confining to one strategy won’t work out well for your website or any online presence of your organization. That makes pricing a bit complicated.
How to charge for digital marketing services in India?
Whether you are an agency or a freelancer, you should consider all the factors and costs before you calculate the total price. Are you going to charge for the entire digital marketing package? Or just for one service like SEO or PPC? How much should I charge for marketing services? How do I go about freelance digital marketing proposal? How much should I charge for social media marketing services?
We are going to provide detailed answers to all these questions in this blog.
Digital marketing package pricing
This package includes all the digital marketing services that help your clients enhance their overall online presence. This package is usually offered for a start-up company or a small business owner. The package includes multiple choices the clients can choose if they want more than one service.
How to package digital marketing services?
There are many ways to price a digital marketing package.
Before you charge, you will need to take a look at the client’s website. Analyze it and check what needs to be improved. Your charges will depend on how many leads they want, how many hours it’ll take to optimize the page for SEO, how much the client is willing to invest in PPC, and more.
Must read: Digital Marketing Strategies
You can set a flat price keeping additional costs aside. This will benefit both the client and you, as you are not quoting on an hourly basis and there is transparency between you too.
Or, the client can quote a budget and you can provide the services suitable for that budget. You can include some additional costs as well.
If you’re not sure about either of these, here’s what you can do. Make a template for a digital marketing pricing package. Here’s an example.
Digital marketing pricing template
So, based on what kind of services the client wants, you can prepare a template like the one above and present it to them.
If you’re still not having clarity about the pricing for the template, work out a figure for one hour of work and calculate how many hours it’ll take to get the entire work done. And set the round-up figure in the template.
What should digital marketing package services include?
First, talk to the client and understand their needs. You need to know.
What problems are they facing?
Where are they facing the problems?
What are their business goals, both short-term and long-term?
You need to analyze their website and other online channels to know what to include in the digital marketing package. Because they might be doing just fine with social media but have trouble in generating high-quality leads. In that case, you can exclude social media marketing from the package and include inbound lead generation along with SEO and content marketing.
Ideally, SEO should be included in the digital marketing package. Some other services you could include are:
- Email marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Lead generation
- Content creation and marketing
- Social media marketing
- SMS marketing
- Mobile marketing
Suppose the client has problems in just one or two areas. In that case, the digital marketing package may not be necessary and they can just go for individual services. You can price them flat or by monthly charges.
Digital marketing packages for small businesses must include SEO, lead generation, SMM, and content marketing.
Social media marketing packages
Social media marketing includes creating and managing social media profiles, running ad campaigns, hashtag research, increasing follower count, analyzing insights, creating engaging content, and networking.
Before you hand out the social media marketing packages cost, you need to analyze the client’s business niche, their target audience, where to find them, and what kind of content works best.
Also read: 7 Digital Marketing Topics to Build Career
The choice for social media depends on the client’s target audience. If they have a business related to food, then Facebook and Instagram work best. If it’s a small healthcare organization, then Facebook is the best choice. For local cafes/restaurants, Instagram is the best platform.
LinkedIn works best for service provider agencies and for B2B marketing.
After analyzing the client’s business niche and their audience, create a social media marketing plan and propose it to the client. Based on their business objectives which could be –
- Brand awareness
- Customer engagement
- E-commerce sales
- To increase follower count
- Networking with potential business partners
Determine the time it takes to reach the client’s business objectives. Keep a budget for ad campaigns and promotions. Calculate your hourly/monthly charges + costs of the resources (your laptop, software) + budget for ads + profit margin = price.
Most basic SMM packages will start at INR 15,000 a month.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation services are required by almost all companies that have a website. The cost for SEO services depends on – a number of keywords to target, local SEO, website design upgrades, competitor analysis, content marketing. And more.
Depending on the size of the client’s business and website, you can create a couple of SEO package templates. – Basic, advanced, exclusive. Basic SEO packages are suitable for small-scale businesses. Advanced SEO packages are suitable for small and mid-sized businesses. Large companies or e-commerce sites can go for exclusive packages where most of the SEO services are included.
Here too, you can make an SEO package template with time and price. Mention what all SEO services will include in the package, like the number of keywords, website analysis, keyword research, content optimization, canonicalization, local SEO setup, etc. You can also mention what’s not included in the package.
Most starting prices of basic SEO packages in Bangalore, India, will start from 15,000 INR – 25,000 INR a month.
Lead generation
Lead generation service includes many. When it comes to online lead generation, it involves a website, social media, especially LinkedIn, inbound lead generation, B2B lead generation, and outbound lead generation.
Pricing lead generation services will depend on what platforms work best for the client, how many leads they want, and for how long they need the services. You have to analyze the client’s overall website and social media performance, target audience, and a possible source of leads.
Any lead generation services will start from INR 30,000 a month. You can calculate on a daily basis and work with the client’s daily budget. Here too, you can give the option of providing only inbound lead generation or outbound lead generation or both along with B2B lead generation. Pricing has to be set according to the number of services included under the lead generation package.
PPC
Pay Per Click services are all about creating and managing ad campaigns and promotion. PPC services depend on the client’s budget, types of ads they want, and business goals. If the goal is to drive more traffic to their website, then you will need to price differently. Likewise for the sales and e-commerce sites.
The starting price is 30,000 INR but again, the client wants a lower-budget PPC service, you need to price according to their needs and provide the services according to the budget. Do not compromise on the quality, though.
How do you budget for digital marketing?
For clients
Budgeting for digital marketing depends on your business goals & objectives and time frame. If you are a small business or a startup, then you need to keep at least 50,000 INR for a basic digital marketing package.
You could also keep a daily limit for all the ad spend, promotion spend, and charges for the marketers. Calculate based on how much traffic you want your site to site, how many leads, how small or big your business is, how much you can invest in digital marketing, your audience size, etc.
For marketers
Here are some things to keep in mind for marketers while budgeting for digital marketing
- Identify your marketing objectives
- Evaluate the options
- Audit the results
- Include marketing software
- Client’s goals and objectives
You have to take into account your software and resources while calculating the price for your services.
How much does a digital marketing agency cost?
There are thousands of digital marketing agencies in India and even more are emerging as startups. Some are a decade old. The competition in the digital marketing industry in India is fierce, in terms of pricing their services and ranking on the SERPs.
A digital agency fee structure is made based on their skills, team, years of experience, locality, cost of software, and many more. On average, a digital marketing agency in India will cost around 25,000 INR, which is a starting price or a standard price. Average monthly digital marketing pricing packages will cost around 30,000-50,000. The more reputed or recognized an agency is, the higher its price. It can even go up to 1 lakhs a month for all the digital marketing services.
Must read: Digital Marketing Metrics
Most agencies will work with small business owners and startups, especially if the company itself is a startup.
Conclusion
You don’t want to charge too little and face loss for yourself or charge too high for the client and incur unnecessary costs. It could dent your reputation. Come up with ways to formulate your digital marketing pricing based on your daily or monthly charge. Test different ways, templates, packages and see what works best for both you and the client.
Digital marketing agency helps businesses grow, and it is a long-term investment. It is not to be taken lightly, because if something goes wrong, you could be stunting the business growth and hold responsibility for that. Which is something every digital marketer fears at some point in their life. Whether you are a freelancer or a professional, or an agency, knowing how to charge for digital marketing services is crucial.
