How Much Does Hiring an SEO/Digital Marketing Agency Cost?

How Much Does Hiring an SEO/Digital Marketing Agency Cost?

Written by Rachel Richards

Updated: Jan 14, 2025

Are you looking to attract loyal customers to your business? You may have considered hiring a digital marketing agency to boost connection and conversions with your audience. However, it’s not always clear what the price will be for a project or a monthly service agreement—especially when many agencies hold their rates close to their chest. We’re here to set the record straight, so you know exactly what value you’re getting for the cost of your digital marketing investment.

Key Takeaways about Digital Marketing Service Costs and Investments

  • Digital marketing strategy projects range from $8,000 to $30,000, while website projects cost between $30,000 to $100,000, giving businesses clear price expectations for their marketing investments.
  • Monthly digital marketing service agreements typically cost between $5,000 to $10,000 per month and include strategic meetings to prioritize high-impact marketing efforts that drive measurable business growth.
  • Top Draw delivers measurable results that align with specific business objectives, pushing beyond the “good enough” standard that many competitors settle for in the digital marketing industry.
  • The Essential Marketing Package costs $5,000 monthly and focuses on website maintenance, technical SEO improvements, and professional advertising management with detailed performance reporting against industry benchmarks.
  • Businesses investing in the $10,000 monthly Comprehensive Marketing Suite receive additional services including advanced SEO, social media management, and engaging content creation to implement their complete marketing strategy.
  • A foundational digital marketing strategy starting at $8,000 includes comprehensive audience research and website audits that identify competitive gaps and improve user experience.
  • Comprehensive strategies priced up to $30,000 offer in-depth data analysis, detailed market positioning, and cohesive brand strategies to unify all digital marketing efforts toward clear business goals.
  • Professional website projects follow a structured development process including stakeholder discovery, SEO research, and digital marketing optimization to ensure maximum conversion potential.
  • Entry-level websites at $10,000 provide strategically planned user experiences with strong technical SEO performance, focusing on essential pages with clear calls-to-action for business inquiries.
  • Advanced websites costing up to $100,000 incorporate extensive user research, sophisticated custom functionality, and may include accessible design features that adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Understanding the True Costs of Digital Marketing Services for Your Business

As a guideline, most digital marketing strategy projects range from about $8,000 to $30,000, website projects run from approximately $30,000 to $100,000, and digital marketing service agreements range from about $5,000/month to $10,000/month. If you’re looking to find out about the price of online advertising campaigns, explore this blog about the costs of Google and social media ads.

Monthly Marketing Services: Tailored Solutions to Drive Business Growth

Many agencies work with clients on a month-to-month basis through a digital marketing service agreement, sometimes called a retainer. Typically, there’s a monthly strategy meeting where you prioritize the work and focus on the most high-impact marketing efforts. The goal is to perform key online marketing activities that will drive measurable growth over time while taking away the stress of day-to-day marketing tasks.

At Top Draw, we think we measure our results better than our competitors, and we push for the specific results you need to achieve your business objectives. Don’t settle for “good enough.” Schedule your free consultation today and let’s discuss how we can deliver the results your business deserves!

Essential Marketing Package: Focused Tactics for Business Success at $5,000/month

A $5,000/month service agreement focuses on the top priority tactics needed for you to succeed in your digital presence. Often, this involves comprehensive website maintenance, technical SEO improvements, and professional online advertising management. We always provide detailed monthly reporting with key performance insights on how you’re performing against industry benchmarks and how we’re systematically improving your digital marketing accounts.

Comprehensive Marketing Suite: Advanced Digital Strategies for $10,000/month

A $10,000/month service agreement is on the higher end of our service spectrum, allowing us to offer more monthly digital marketing activities to bring your comprehensive strategy to life. Additional tactics often include advanced SEO techniques, strategic social media management, professional blog writing, engaging content creation, creative digital marketing campaigns, systematic conversion rate optimization (CRO), and regular website updates to maintain optimal performance.

Crafting Your Digital Marketing Roadmap: Understanding Strategy Project Costs

A comprehensive strategy is an essential foundational tool for setting the direction of your digital marketing efforts. It’s a vital step in defining the specific problem we’re looking to solve or the measurable goal we need to achieve. Providing a beacon of insight and understanding, your strategy gives us the “north star” we need to follow to make your business successful online. For that reason, it’s always customized to your unique business needs and can vary in price according to complexity.

Foundational Strategy: Targeted Marketing Insights Starting at $8,000

At the $8,000 starting price, a digital marketing strategy will involve the necessary comprehensive research to uncover targeting insights about your specific audience segments and identify exploitable competitive gaps in your industry landscape. It often includes a thorough website audit to understand how we can improve the user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). At the end of the process, we’ll produce an actionable strategic guide with specific goals, prioritized tactics, precise audience targeting, and allocated budgets to give your digital marketing the right strategic focus. 

Comprehensive Strategy: In-Depth Market Analysis up to $30,000

As we move toward the $30,000 range, our digital marketing strategies become much more in depth and data-driven. The research and analysis we perform is extremely extensive, delving deep into your Google Analytics data to inform our strategic work. Market positioning is key at this level, as it clearly outlines what makes you stand out from competitors and what unique value proposition you bring to your target audience. We may also incorporate detailed website strategy and cohesive brand strategy to unify all your digital marketing efforts toward one clear business purpose. This comprehensive work often sets the tone for your brand concept or digital marketing campaign concept, which contains the big or inspirational idea that drives all the creative content that we produce for your campaigns.

Building Your Digital Presence: Website Project Investment Options

From a simple marketing tool to a fully accessible user experience, our professional website designs can vary widely in complexity and functionality. Because of this range of options, their prices also vary quite broadly to match your specific needs. Whichever approach your business requires, your website will be an eye-catching and results-focused digital experience. Your website project will systematically follow these development stages: 

  • Discovery meetings with key stakeholders to understand business requirements
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) research to identify ranking opportunities
  • Information architecture (IA) and site map development for optimal navigation
  • Content management and professional writing for engagement
  • User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design for visitor satisfaction
  • Web development using industry best practices
  • Digital marketing optimization for conversion maximization

This structured approach ensures we achieve your specific business goals and win over your target users while also setting your website up according to digital marketing best practices for optimal performance.

Entry-Level Website: Core Business Features for $10,000

A $10,000 website is a great starting point for many small to medium businesses. You can expect a strategically planned and visually attractive user experience with a focus on strong technical SEO performance for search visibility. These website projects usually focus on key essential pages, such as about, services, and contact pages, with a clear call-to-action to contact your company for more information. Basic digital integrations, like news feeds and social media connectivity, are also common features at this investment level.

Advanced Website: Custom Business Functionality up to $100,000

A website that reaches the higher $100,000 price range will involve extensive user research and sophisticated custom functionality. We invest significantly more time at the beginning of the project to interview multiple stakeholders and may create detailed user journeys or buyer personas to deeply understand your audience’s specific needs and behaviors. A larger website build often features an accessible design and carefully adheres to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for maximum user inclusivity. These comprehensive sites can also incorporate advanced ecommerce features with robust search functionality, product sorting capabilities, intuitive browsing experiences, and secure purchasing options for your product catalog.

Transform Your Online Business Presence with Expert Digital Marketing Services

Do these comprehensive online marketing services sound like what your business needs, or do you need to talk through your specific options? Book a free consultation with our digital marketing experts today so we can start planning your strategic approach and create powerful measurable results for your business growth objectives.

Know What’s Next
from Top Draw