Most companies and agencies, regardless of margins or other tricks, charge a management fee for search marketing. This fee typically ranges from 15 to 50%, depending on the campaign budget. Agencies usually charge between 15% and 30%. Licensing fees are the second type of technology fees and are related to the marketing technology your company uses. For example, if the agency you work with licenses a CRM or marketing automation system, they may take part of the cost to cover their function of research, organization and administration of the provider. If an agency operates on a percentage pricing model, you can expect to pay between 10 and 15% of your total monthly ad spend for the service.
When it comes to digital marketing, you can base your pricing model on the cost of the specific services you offer. During this time, they'll collect logins, files, talk to you about your goals, audit what you've been doing, developing a marketing strategy, and then uploading and creating all the pieces needed for the launch. It is very common in the digital marketing industry for agencies to sell services that they don't really know how to do or that they don't offer in-house. When a marketing or advertising agency or consultant has to travel, whether for a meeting, trade show or photo shoot, that cost will be budgeted as a separate travel cost or within your hourly rate.
By designing a client-oriented digital agency business plan, you can align your services with high demand. By offering flexible or discounted annual pricing plans for digital marketing agencies, you're in a position to claim a lasting relationship. Another way to determine value is to look at the customer's time-to-live value (LTV) or current marketing acquisition cost (COA). Charging a flat fee for any project is an easy way to manage a digital marketing agency, especially if you have the skills and resources for a particular service. Marketing agencies know that marketing is a long game, so they set the duration of their contracts to maximize the potential for success of their projects.
There are many ways to approach structuring agency fees, but one approach that has worked for many digital marketing agencies is Salted Stone's. If you've worked with marketing agencies in the past, you've probably come across several different pricing models. You may not see all the line items on the invoice, but either way, you're paying similar amounts - they're simply packaged and marketed differently. More importantly, if you want to scale up your business, you can end up raising prices or switch to a different pricing model.
