How Much Do Digital Marketers Charge In Calgary?

This is a common question because so many entrepreneurs have heard of marketing agencies charging exorbitant fees that they simply cannot afford. Most small to medium sized businesses have tight budgets to adhere to so they want to know upfront before ever contacting an agency what the costs will look like.

So, how much do marketing companies charge in Calgary?

Unfortunately, it really isn’t a simple answer. There are varying degrees of what needs to be done for each client depending on your current marketing assets, the level of expertise on your team to support the digital marketing company’s efforts, your goals, how competitive your market is, who your target audience is and much more. Some businesses need a website with 5-6 pages, some just need a strategic plan, but they can execute a lot of it themselves and some only need support with more technical tasks like SEO, PPC and social media advertising. Other companies need a full overhaul of their brand, website and content with support in executing each stage of the plan. Costs vary significantly depending on all of these factors.

Clarify Where Your Digital Marketing Is At Now

One thing we can tell you is that before you reach out to marketing companies in Calgary, you should spend some time assessing your current market and marketing, and ensure you are crystal clear on what your business goals are. At the end of the day, you may think you need a full overhaul but based on your goals, your brand and marketing content simply need a refresh and some advice on best practices. It can also go the other way that if you want to reach certain goals, you think you need help with Facebook ads when the agency recommends a complete adjustment to your strategy to achieve them.

In order to ensure you are talking with a digital marketing company about the right services to get price quotes on, we suggest doing the following:

• Consider what your business goals are and how you think marketing can help you achieve them. What opportunities are available?

• Assess your current marketing pieces such as your website, branding materials (logo, taglines), digital/social media presence, search engine positioning, content and tactics being used.

• What type of clients do you have now? What type do you want to attract going forward?

• Who are the people on your team that can help with marketing?

• How much time do you/your team have to invest in marketing activities? How much budget?

• What are your competitors up to?

• What have you tried in the past? What works? What doesn’t?

Get clear on where you are at, where you want to go and how you envision moving forward. Once you know what you really want, it’s easier to determine what kind of services you need and approximately how much you need to spend to get them.

Affording Marketing Services

Hiring experienced PPC marketing professionals is not cheap. It will cost you money to have someone do the job well for you, regardless of which services you need. You may have to decide which tasks are the most important to hire professionals and have your internal team (or yourself) handle the rest. We recommend crafting a strategic plan with your agency and then deciding which are the highest priority tasks for them to handle until you’ve run out of budget. Then figure out how the rest will get done with your current resources.

Here are a few tips:

• Automation can help. Sometimes your marketing agency can suggest automation tools that will lighten the workload so your team can focus on other areas of your strategy. These tools can be free, but often have a cost associated with them, though it will typically still be a lower cost than the labour of having it done manually.

• Grants may be available. Small businesses can utilize various grant programs to help cover costs. Chat with the marketing agencies you are considering finding out if they know of any programs that can help you find the budget for marketing, or to free up budget from other areas that can then be diverted to marketing investments.

• Consider the cost of freeing up your time. If hiring an agency frees you and members of your team up to do other tasks that move your business forward or generate more revenue, provide better customer support or various other things that add up to more dollars in your bottom line, you should take that into account when assessing how much you can invest in marketing. If hiring a marketing agency means you can bring in more sales or streamline your processes, what is that value worth to you? And can you then justify investing those dollars into marketing support?

While we wish we could provide you with actual pricing, the honest truth is that it genuinely depends on what you need, and every business is different. We can tell you that your small business can afford to hire a marketing agency – click here to read our blog on the topic for more information.