What does a marketing agency cost?
Marketing is a broad term and marketing agencies charge different amounts. But which range is appropriate?
2 min
Florian Werner
Marketing is a complex field that combines a variety of specialized topics. Many companies struggle to integrate marketing properly, even though marketing is an important building block for the long-term success of any business. For this reason, companies of all sizes seek the help of marketing agencies and advertising companies. As with many other services, this idea makes sense. Hiring in-house staff for the various specialties of an efficient marketing department incurs high fixed costs and requires additional resources from supported departments such as HR. An external marketing agency is often in a better position to allocate specialist staff efficiently to individual projects and thus act in the best possible way.
Marketing is an investment for your company. Whether the investment pays off will be decided once the marketing measures have been completed. Now the results are compared with the costs incurred by the marketing department.
Okay, but what does a marketing agency cost? Marketing agencies can vary greatly in cost. Costs are based on the desired objectives as well as a variety of other factors. Hourly rates from experienced marketing experts within an agency are usually charged at an hourly rate between 90 and 160 EUR.
However, marketing is such a complex concept that a variety of factors can influence the efficiency and costs of your marketing efforts. In this article, we would like to explain in more detail what a good marketing agency can offer and how this can influence the costs of a marketing agency. So please take some time to read this article in full to understand the costs of marketing and the benefits these investments can bring you.
What makes a good marketing agency?
If you want to invest in marketing, you need a strong partner at your side. The better this partner, the more likely it is that your marketing will achieve the desired goals. A good marketing agency must therefore fulfill many criteria.
Broad expertise
Marketing is not just about designing advertising. A good marketing agency combines a wide range of expertise, all of which are responsible for the efficiency of a marketing campaign. This includes areas such as market research, customer research, psychology, strategy development, design, online marketing, direct marketing, PR, media design and many more.
Adaptability
There is no description of perfect marketing. Every company, every target group, every service or product range requires a different marketing strategy to achieve the company's goals. Marketing offers such a variety of possibilities that there is no "one-fits-all" plan for success. A good marketing agency adapts to your company and creates a marketing strategy, marketing plans and advertising measures individually for your company.
Flexibility
Marketing requirements can change at short notice and must be able to be adapted to the company's superior goals. For example, if your company is currently having problems finding enough specialist staff, marketing can help to fill these gaps.
If a certain market segment is growing, marketing must be able to support this growth in order to gain sufficient market share.
An external marketing agency must be flexible enough to adapt to changing corporate goals.
Honest advice
A good marketing agency will advise your company fairly and not try to sell as many of their services as possible if this does not add any relevant value to your company. They will advise you openly and honestly about what marketing and advertising measures could be relevant for your company, how these are identified and how success is measured.
Transparency
A good marketing agency will continue to work closely with your company after the contract has been awarded. This ensures that the marketing measures are relevant to your company and the costs for the marketing agency become a good investment for your company.
Costs of a marketing agency
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there is no one-size-fits-all answer as to how much a marketing agency costs. However, one important factor is the time that a marketing agency has to invest in your company. For example, if you have already drawn up a detailed marketing strategy and marketing plans internally, this will save the marketing agency a lot of time and therefore costs. The hourly rates of marketing agencies vary depending on the size and reputation of the marketing agency as well as the specific expertise required by the client. In general, however, we can share some average marketing agency costs with you:
Costs of a marketing agency based on agency size
The smaller the marketing agency, the lower the costs per hour. Of course, a number of other factors also play a role. Nevertheless, smaller agencies are usually cheaper than larger agencies. This is due to the fact that smaller agencies often have less specialized staff available and larger agencies often enjoy a better reputation and therefore a higher demand.
Hourly rates for freelancers
For freelancers, the hourly rate is between €70 and €120, depending on experience
Hourly rates for small agencies (max. 20 employees)
The hourly rate for carrying out operational tasks such as managing a campaign is around €130. Consulting by a senior consultant, e.g. for creating a marketing strategy, will be around €120 to €150 per hour.
Hourly rates for large agencies (over 20 employees)
At large agencies, consulting by a senior consultant will cost at least €150 per hour. Project support by junior employees will be in the range of €120 to €140
Costs of a marketing agency based on specialization
Marketing is a general umbrella term and encompasses many specialist areas that companies can utilize to attract customers. Marketing agencies charge different fees depending on their specialization. We have summarized some examples for a better understanding:
Lead agencies
Lead agencies are usually large marketing agencies with several hundred employees that take on the complete marketing for large corporations. The hourly rate that companies have to pay for such a large marketing agency usually starts at around €150 per hour. However, such agencies often also offer daily rates or project-based fees.
Marketing agencies
Most marketing agencies are small and have only a few employees. This reduces overhead costs and enables these agencies to offer better prices than lead agencies. To compensate for a lack of expertise, marketing agencies often have a network of partner agencies. This means that parts of a marketing strategy or marketing plans can be handed over to better qualified partner agencies to meet the specific requirements of your company. Marketing agencies usually charge between €70 and €160 per hour.
Local service providers
Many marketing agencies work regionally and specialize in supporting local medium-sized companies. The hourly rate of these local service providers is usually between €60 and €100 per hour. In addition, local service providers often offer marketing packages at fixed prices, which are required by many SMEs. These include, for example, the creation of a basic website or a search engine marketing strategy.
Specialized service providers
Those who have already decided on a specific method of marketing or advertising measures may be able to turn directly to specialized service providers. These include, for example, experts in search engine marketing, search engine advertising, print materials, radio advertising, etc. Here too, the hourly rate is usually between €80 and €150.
Which marketing agency is best for your business depends a lot on your business goals and how marketing can help you achieve them. Although the costs of marketing agencies vary, price should not be the first consideration. The first thing to evaluate is how sound your marketing strategy is. After all, only marketing that is based on well-defined objectives and well-researched data can achieve the desired success. It is therefore not advisable to turn to a specialized service provider for search engine marketing, for example, when a general marketing agency may be needed. After all, misguided advertising activities are not an investment in your company, but just an unnecessary cost that does not add any value.
Costs of a marketing agency by service
In marketing, the costs for specialized professionals are also higher than the costs for general service providers. Many marketing agencies offer different prices for different services. The cost of a marketing agency often depends on which experts are needed to complete a project. Of course, there are a variety of services and specializations in marketing. It is not possible to list these in this article, but we have identified some commonly required services and can give an estimate of the costs.
WordPress service provider
WordPress is a CMS that is used by many small and medium-sized companies. WordPress is often used to create websites and the hourly rate for an experienced WordPress designer is around €100 per hour. However, package prices are usually agreed here. A small website costs around €15,000 and medium-sized companies usually pay up to €40,000 for an integrated WordPress system.
Content writer
Content writers create relevant content for your company, which is used to communicate with your customers. This includes texts for websites or content for newsletters. Content writers are also often hired by marketing agencies for content for an inbound sales strategy. The hourly rate here is usually between €50 and €70 per hour.
TYPO3 Programmer
Programmers who are proficient in TYPO3, for example, are currently in high demand and are hired by medium-sized and large companies to manage content such as texts, images and videos. TYPO3 experts charge around 100 EUR to 150 EUR per hour.
Web designer
Web designers usually create the HTML framework and create graphics. These experts are also familiar with user experience design, user interface design and graphic design. Web designers usually charge between €80 and €110 per hour.
Costs of a marketing agency based on gut feeling
It may come as a surprise, but many small and medium-sized marketing agencies do not have fixed prices for their services. This is because the requirements of the marketing agency can change during an ongoing project. Sometimes the client realizes that something important has been overlooked, additional information needs to be included or the requirements for the project's objectives have changed. Calculating an hourly cost estimate is therefore very time-consuming and often imprecise. This is why some marketing agencies rely on their previous experience to estimate the effort and therefore the costs for a project .
When setting prices in this way, certain limits or frameworks are often included in the project award in order to meet the most common customer requirements. In addition, such framework conditions help to prevent possible differences of opinion between the client's requirements and the expected workload of the marketing agency. When pricing according to gut feeling, a large number of empirical values are included in the calculation. These include, for example
Size of the customer's company
Number of management levels and departments involved in the project
Complexity of the requirements
Number of marketing departments required
Can the marketing agency handle all tasks in-house or does it have to rely on
dependent on outside help?
Number of strategic goals to be achieved?
Number of media to be used for communication with the customer?
Experience from comparable customers in the same industry or sector
Based on this experience, the marketing agency creates a budget and the framework for the project. We have also listed some examples here to illustrate an approach to the costs of a marketing agency that charges according to experience.
Search Engine Marketing Campaign
Including keyword research and setting up the campaign on Google Ads (Google Ads budget separately) = €3,000
Monthly support of the campaign including keyword optimization = € 1,500
Creating a WordPress website
including landing page and 5 additional pages
including a maximum of 10 stock photos
including basic search engine optimization
= 25.000 €
New logo for medium-sized company = €5,000
Creation of a marketing strategy for a medium-sized B2B company including market research, competitor analysis and internal company evaluation = € 25,000
Which marketing agency costs are better?
Many entrepreneurs like to work with fixed budgets. This is understandable, as the costs are already known at the start of the project and the company feels secure. The problem with fixed prices, however, is that if change requests are made or alternative ways of implementation are identified, this can be rejected by the marketing agency. Marketing always requires a certain level of flexibility. During market research, competitor analysis or internal evaluation of the company, marketing opportunities may be identified that neither the client company nor the marketing agency were aware of at the beginning of the project. It is therefore always advisable to choose a flexible pricing model for the costs of a marketing agency. This guarantees the required flexibility and therefore the marketing agency will always present your company with the best options.
Alternatives to a marketing agency
As you will have realized by now, there are a variety of ways in which the costs of a marketing agency can be put together. However, this does not necessarily mean security for your company.
With a fixed price model, there is a risk that the marketing agency will want to finish the project as quickly as possible and withhold possible insights from you in order to avoid additional work. This jeopardizes the overall success of a marketing campaign and, in the worst case, can lead to the marketing measures failing to achieve the desired goals. Let's take the example that you have commissioned a marketing agency to design a brochure with a print run of 50,000 brochures. Part of the marketing agency's package is a customer survey on the best design for advertising brochures. During the survey, the marketing agency discovers that a surprising majority of the target group does not read the brochures at all and that the design is therefore irrelevant.
However, this finding is unimportant for the marketing agency, as it has been commissioned to design 50,000 brochures. The marketing agency successfully completes the job. However, your company completely misses the target of reaching a new customer group.
In this case, it would have been better if the marketing agency had been hired based on an hourly rate. The marketing agency would then have been happy to present the new findings to you in order to possibly terminate the old project early, be compensated for services rendered so far and develop a new strategy together with you.
An hourly rate, on the other hand, requires the client company to trust the marketing agency. There is a risk for the company that the expected hourly rate has been underestimated by the marketing agency. Now the marketing budget has been used up without the project being completed. Whether the marketing project is still a worthwhile investment must be recalculated.
The Munich-based company MORE offers an alternative. MORE is not a traditional advertising agency, but a marketing company that joins your company as an external marketing department on a long-term basis. In this way, MORE can ensure that the marketing costs for your company always achieve the desired goals and remain within budget. Due to the strictly limited number of clients, your company can always be given exactly the attention that your current goals require.
There is also the advantage that the costs for marketing are kept low, as the general costs of a marketing department are divided among all clients. So MORE not only keeps the costs of a marketing agency low, it becomes the best marketing department you've ever had.
Conclusion
The costs of a marketing agency are difficult to estimate across the board. Marketing is such a complex field and the requirements of companies can vary so much that it is almost impossible to predict the costs of a marketing agency. Hourly rates vary depending on the marketing agency and marketing specialization. If you want to be on the safe side in the long term and get the best value for money, you should look for a long-term partner. You can turn to a variety of service providers or, alternatively and even more efficiently, outsource the entire marketing department to an external company such as MORE from Munich. In any case, the cost of a marketing agency should be seen as an investment in the long-term success of your business and, like any investment, should be decided based on the best possible return.
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