Are you considering to hire a marketing agency for your business? Or do you think your in-house marketing team needs some extra support to write content or for SEO? You can also think of adopting an inbound marketing program.

If you are considering to hire a team to help you with your digital needs, it is wise to think the cost to hire an advertising firm first. That said, this post will discuss a few essential points to consider before you hire a marketing agency.

Almost every marketing agency provides a mixture of monthly-based services and project-based services. Project-based services include website design & development while monthly-based services include Search Engine Optimization services and social media management.

When you hire a marketing agency, you will have to pay some project-based fees initially and then the monthly fees will keep on adding. Let us now get to the main part, the main factors to determine the cost to hire a marketing agency.

1) Your current financial situation.

Before you hire a marketing agency, evaluate your current assets. Any marketing agency will ask you some of the given questions before they begin your process-

• Does your website need a redesign?
• What is the monthly count of visitors on your site?
• What is the avg number of leads from your website on a monthly basis?
• Do you maintain a database with all the basic details of your customer?
• Is there any customer relationship management tool you use?
• Do you have the details of media contact in your niche?
• What is the social reach of your brand?
• How is your online reputation?
• What is your sales process?

2) Before you hire a marketing agency, check the capabilities of your in-house team first.

Almost every big company has a marketing director to manage the marketing process. A smaller company will usually have an in-house team of marketing professionals.  

The cost to hire a marketing agency will depend on the current in-house marketing status. You have to decide that whether you want the agency to support your in-house capabilities or vice Versa. If the agency is there just to support, their cost can be comparatively less.

Some companies hire a marketing agency for complete marketing needs with no in-house support provided. In such a case, monthly fees might be high but you can get saved from any in-house expenditures.

3) The goals and objectives of the business

You have to analyze first the objective of marketing for your business. Your budget depends largely on this. You have to decide where do you want to see your business after some particular time. Take into consideration 2 scenarios-

• 30% more sales in 3 months
• 20% more sales in 2 months

If you go with the first goal, your process will have to be very intense and need a considerable budget. You have to maintain a balance between your budget and your objectives.

4) The scope of marketing services.

Your expenditure on marketing and advertising depends on the services you take. When you hire a marketing agency, you will have to pay according to the services they offer you.

For instance, if you get 20 hours of service per month along with 5 blog posts, it will cost you more than a service of 15 hours with 3 blog posts. If you have an in-house team that can write blogs for you, you can have a lot of costs cut.

Marketing agency usually creates packages for their clients depending on their budget and company size. Top Class Agency has 3 packages for its clients with different service scopes-

Entrepreneur package at $499, Essential package at $1699, Growth package at $3199.

5) Other secondary charges.

Apart from the monthly charges you pay, there might be some other extra charges as well. This can be any extra cost for software or training charges. There are many marketing automation tools such as HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo and other applications that have some licensing charges.

Moreover, when you introduce new software to your staff, you have to give them the training for them to use it efficiently. The expense for this extra training is calculated outside your marketing agency fees.