Understanding Inbound Marketing Services Pricing
If you are a business owner in Canada or in the US, Digital Marketing is now the most effective medium to reach out to potential customers. To be more precise, inbound marketing techniques are the only hope for businesses struggling with a lean budget. Now, if you are worried about the inbound marketing services pricing, then there’s no need to fret.
Since inbound marketing is not a “marketing technique” but a subset of digital marketing activities, people tend to get confused about the pricing. Inbound Marketing basically refers to a diverse set of activities that aim at reaching out to audiences through subtle techniques.
It involves posting regular blogs, native advertising, social media posts, and many others, which are not very aggressive. In the later stages, audiences are filtered and retargeted, which is something that adds up to the overall costs of inbound marketing services and their pricing.
Since most business decision-makers feel overwhelmed about it, we decided to dive deep into the costs involved in inbound marketing services. Pricing patterns may vary but here’s a gist of everything you need to know in order to make an informed decision.
How much does inbound marketing cost?
Generally, most small businesses dedicate 6 to 8% of their total revenues toward digital marketing. Out of this, at least 70% must be set aside for inbound marketing services. The pricing of these services largely depends on the strategy deployed.
Also, the pricing varies depending on the current sales volume of your business, the type of product or service offered, and the size of your target audience. So, once you have these figures, it becomes easier to plan an effective digital marketing strategy.
The price is also influenced by your long-term and short-term business goals; current and desired cost of acquisition; overall digital marketing strategy, etc. Based on these factors, you would have to spend somewhere between $2000 and $15000 per month on inbound marketing services.
What’s included in inbound marketing services? | The Pricing Pattern
Inbound marketing starts with persona research and then makes use of multiple advanced techniques like SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Campaigns, and more. Basically, it refers to an approach that does not “interrupt” a random target but rather makes use of a strategic approach.
This approach involves grabbing the targets’ attention with eye-catching content and then retargeting them based on their behavior. With numerous tools to track user behavior, our experts have no problems filtering visitors based on their behavior.
For instance, a campaign designed to promote a start-up chocolate brand would begin with content that speaks of the health benefits of chocolate such as its ability to lower cortisol levels. In the next phase, the target would be provided with scientific evidence to purport those initial claims.
Finally, when the target is hooked to the content and makes a purchase, we would then tell the users about the various ways in which it can be used. For example, it can be used in smoothies, or in baking. While this provides value to your existing customers, it also helps boost sales.
Now, this sort of step-by-step approach requires research, comprehensive planning, the use of digital marketing tools, and skilled professionals to put all of this to the most effective use.
This is precisely what’s included in the inbound marketing services. So, the pricing would vary depending on the kind of product or service you wish to promote.
The Cost of Writing Great Content
The heart of inbound marketing is content creation. The quality of the content you create determines how well your marketing campaigns will perform, while also determining your return on investment.
The content you create needs to be customized basis the platform, channel, device, audience, and marketing objectives as well. For example, the content you create for your website won’t necessarily work for a social post as well.
Case studies, white papers, social media posts, brochures, emails, eBooks, and blogs are just some of the content pieces that you’ll need to create as part of your inbound marketing strategy.
Keeping this in mind, content creation is the most important inbound marketing service that you should endeavor to demand high quality.
The cost of hiring a writer can vary greatly depending upon if you choose to hire in-house, through an agency, or a freelancer.
While an in-house writer can cost your business $30k – $50k annually. Outsourced content production can run close to $5k a month. You can obviously find someone at a lower price point, but you might be risking the quality of content.
Running Highly Effective Paid Advertising
Your inbound marketing plans will be missing a key element if you’re not looking at paid advertising.
Google and Facebook are important channels to consider when evaluating paid media options and costs. Especially so if you are using dedicated landing pages to drive conversion and generate leads.
Also, unless you’re very sure of what you’re doing with PPC (pay per click) ads and have the time and resources to keep up with its ever-evolving nature, it might just be more cost-effective to get outside help.
A $500 ad budget is a good start. Add to that an in-house PPC expert with an average salary of $55K. You can even work with an agency with costs ranging from $10K to $100K.
With that money, you are paying someone to manage your ad budgets and campaigns, provide optimizations and recommendations on how to improve your campaign, and also offer best practices that feed into your overall inbound marketing strategy.
Regardless of the cost, having a PPC expert is important. Besides, paid advertising and PPC also work great with search engine optimization.
Do Not Skimp on SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization’s primary focus is to increase your website traffic through organic search results. Search engines are smart enough to read the code and understand the content on web pages to assign a rank to each webpage.
Ultimately, SEO aims to convert all those website visitors into paying customers. Classic SEO strategies work on optimizing metadata, website architecture, descriptions and titles, keywords, and link building.
Moreover, SEO is so intrinsically connected to the inbound strategy that you cannot separate the two. You cannot ignore the technical elements of SEO while expecting your inbound campaigns to keep getting conversions.
Similarly, on and off-page SEO work towards improving the content on your website and making sure it has the widest reach on the internet.
Every search related to your product or service is a chance for your SEO to prove its worth and surface your brand on the first page of SERP. So do not skimp on SEO costs as it can have far-reaching negative effects on your campaigns.
In terms of price – if you’re looking for high-quality SEO, you could be looking at an expense of around $800 – $1000 per month.
Is Inbound Marketing Truly Effective?
Yes! Inbound marketing is extremely effective because you are reaching out to an audience that is aware of your offering. So, the chances of conversion are much higher than it is when you reach out to a random set of audiences.
In fact, the chances of converting such an audience are five times more than converting one that has no clue about your business. This is where the magic of informational blogs and active social media pages can do wonders.
Conclusion
We are living in times when customers are socially distancing, users are spending more time online and businesses are struggling to remain afloat. So, survival depends on generating higher conversions on a lean budget to lower the cost of acquisition and maximize profits.
Now that you know everything about inbound marketing services and their pricing, it’s time to talk. At Asset Digital Communications, we offer both inbound and outbound digital marketing services in Toronto which make budget planning a whole lot easier. You can simply set a monthly budget for all your digital marketing efforts and leave the rest to us.
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