For my agency, we would be in the market of charging $1.5K-3K for managing adspend of that size - depending on the quantity of campaigns and the specific products you’re selling. Basically, if the ads are relatively set and forget but need a pro to manage, it would be on the lower end. But more intensive campaigns that require constant monitoring, updating, & reporting, etc... would be on the higher end. Hope that helps. Answer from ben_lowe99 on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/marketing › marketing agency fees - how much are we looking at?
r/marketing on Reddit: Marketing Agency Fees - How much are we looking at?
October 16, 2019 -

So I've been beating myself mentally over this and can't come to a conclusion, would love to have your insight.

I run a well established web design & marketing agency (and no - I'm not a 13 year old who is making millions weekly with social media marketing ), and I'm looking for serious advice for those of you that work for an agency, own one or are currently using one for your business.

I'm looking to optimize our internal operations and part of this strategy is to establish a fixed bracket agency fee system to speed up the proposal process.

For example:

  • Campaigns between $0 - $3000/mo in ad spend is a $1,000 management fee

  • Campaigns between $3000/mo - $5000/mo in ad spend is a $2,000 management fee

  • Etc etc

I hope the example clarifies the idea. The setup fee & landing page cost will be separate for the example listed above. I believe we would have a complexity modifier (i.e an additional 15% of management fee if the project is complex) but this is a bit more advanced.

Currently we are wasting too much time trying to price a project when it should be a bit simpler.

What processes/systems do you have in place for the quoting process on paid search & paid social campaigns?

Any insight appreciated!

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/smallbusiness › to those with a successful marketing agency, how do you price your services?
r/smallbusiness on Reddit: To those with a successful marketing agency, how do you price your services?
November 7, 2022 -

I have a number of questions to my fellow agency owners.

To preface - I am a the COO of a medium sized agency on the East Coast. We do good business, but with things tightening up economy wise, I think we need to make some adjustments to our pricing strategy.

Our model right now is a retainer, which works okay. We have a few levels of retainer. The problem is that sometimes clients are going above what is covered by the retainer, and then kicking up a fuss when we bill them additionally.

So I'd really like to hear from other agency pro's - what's the best pricing model for your agency? Hourly based pricing seems to common.

Thanks!

Top answer
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I use hourly now as a consultant, and for most of my 23 years with a large staff, we generally used hourly. It's a horrible system to extract value and should be avoided if at all possible, which it nearly never is. You can only be successful with retainers if you stay on top of them and inform your client when they are in danger of going over and either kick some work down the road or agree on additional billing. Retainer billing does not liberate you from tracking your hours, which I feel like is the reason many people do that. Most agencies are in a distinct danger of getting caught in a squeeze right now with pressure to reduce or carefully manage costs from clients at the same time your costs are increasing and you are dealing with the same inflation and increase in costs for employees. Value pricing is the best ... Drew McClellan has a lot about it on his podcast but I found it hard to break into. You will do better in a specialty niche than you will if you are a generalist. I have the luxury of being small and having a fairly defined target in terms of what I want to make. I found letting go a lot of clients that were going over budget did not have any impact on my bottom line. There was a small hit on top-line, but I really wasn't making any money on them. Now I mostly take Tuesdays off and don't work on the weekends and I make the same amount of money. Like magic.
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Hey, There’s a variety of standard pricing models you can employ in your business, but in my experience, the best pricing model for agencies is a value-based one.There are many reasons this is your best approach. Consider these two quick stats: According to Hubspot, taking a value-based approach to pricing can boost profits as much as 50% over a traditional market-based approach. Small changes to your pricing models can have a big impact – studies by pricing experts out of McKinsey & Company found that a 1% bump in prices can result in an 11.1% increase in profits – a 10x return! (HBR) Value pricing allows you to get paid based on the value you create for clients (and not just on the resources you expend in creating deliverables for them). Consider a web design agency. If they employ a time-based pricing model in quoting a project to a prospect, they might find it hard to justify more than $5,000 based on the hours it will take.This might feel frustrating for the agency owner, but that’s because we’re still trapped in a limited paradigm (i.e. time-based or “Cost Plus” pricing). By shifting to a value pricing approach, we can begin to charge more than $5,000. Let’s say that you’ve worked with similar clients in the past, and were able to increase their on-site conversion rates to the point where they were earning an average of $200,000 more per year directly from their websites.That’s $200,000 in profit directly attributable to your interventions. In this case, it would be very reasonable to charge say 10% of that as the project fee (i.e. $20,000). Hope this helps. Cheers!
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/marketing › agency owners: how much should i charge for a multi-million ad account?
r/marketing on Reddit: Agency owners: How much should I charge for a multi-million ad account?
November 12, 2021 -

Hello,

I have been working in digital advertising for 5 years as an agency owner with a small team of 3 campaign managers.

Today I have the opportunity to land our first huge account with 3-5 millions USD for media buying on Google, Facebook, YouTube & Display.

This is another league and I have actually no idea how much I should charge for the campaign management (account setting, media buying, optimization, but no creation).

Should I charge my usual commission on ad spend (around 10%), especially given the fact that I will probably need to hire 2 additional team members? Any advice is welcome!

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/digitalmarketing › how much to expect to pay a good digital marketing agency?
How much to expect to pay a good Digital Marketing Agency? : r/DigitalMarketing
January 14, 2025 - What kind of service business is it? Nearly every agency should be worth $1000 a month, this is roughly 10 or less hours of administrative work. It covers reporting, some meetings, and some emails. Keep in mind the rate for your contractors and the rate of the marketer are likely similar.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/smallbusiness › marketing agency?
r/smallbusiness on Reddit: Marketing Agency?
December 2, 2025 -

How much should I be paying for a marketing agency? Ideally I'd like someone that can do my SEO and generate content for me

Top answer
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I pay my niece, she's half my age ( so knows way more about all the newest tech, trends, etc ) and also gets graduation credits for the portfolio work she does for my business.. Win win.. Before that, I paid one of my warehouse workers "by the project" to setup funnels, update organic, etc - that turned out so well they were promoted to sales manager and eventually hired their own local seo company to take over advertising because they were too busy selling!! Ymmv
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Pricing depends on scope, but the range most businesses land in is tied to how much real work goes into SEO. When you bundle technical SEO, ongoing optimization, and content production, the monthly fees typically fall between mid-four figures and low-five figures because ranking movement requires a consistent volume of high-quality pages, link acquisition, and technical fixes. If someone offers it for a few hundred dollars, the usual pattern is thin content, outsourced articles, and no real technical improvements. In my experience reviewing dozens of SEO retainers, the common pattern is that meaningful progress happens when a business gets 6 to 12 well-researched pieces of content per month plus technical changes based on an audit. That workload normally costs 3k to 8k per month depending on industry competitiveness. Agencies charging 1k to 2k often deliver keyword-stuffed posts or repurposed AI content, which rarely moves rankings in competitive sectors. A helpful next step is to define exactly what you want: monthly content volume, technical audit frequency, link-building expectations, and reporting cadence. Once you have that list, compare proposals side by side, gaps become very obvious, and it prevents you from overpaying for vague retainers.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/ppc › what should a marketing agency charge it's clients in % to their marketing budget?
r/PPC on Reddit: What Should a Marketing Agency Charge It's Clients in % to their Marketing Budget?
September 3, 2024 -

I was doing some research and I heard from multiple sources that a marketing agency should charge its clients no more than 20% of its total marketing budget.

My question is how accurate is that? and also does the 20% come out of the total budget? or is that extra over the budget? So like for example If a company's marketing budget is $30,000/mo in META ads, does my retainer come from the $30,000 or would that be an $6,000 over the marketing budget?

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/ppc › how do digital marketing agencies set their prices?
r/PPC on Reddit: How do digital marketing agencies set their prices?
March 31, 2021 -

Im looking into opening my own digital marketing agency (in Europe, not other continents)

I will be offering

  • Complete Google Ads

  • Facebook Ads + Instagram (posts are extra)

  • E-mail marketing

  • copywriting / descriptions

  • in-house graphic designer (extra)

*by extra I mean it is outside the “main fee”

I was thinking somewhere along the lines of €199/ month for basic (monthly meeting with customer)

€399/ month for small business (bi-monthly meetings with customer)

€599/ month for big businesses (weekly meetings with customer)

  • customer has to deposit their budget for each.

I have little to no expenses. E-mail marketing and copywriting are my connection that will do it at first “freelancing” with a possibility of joining after a few months of growth.

I have already customers lined up, waiting for me to open my doors.

Is my pricing logical? Too much? How do i price myself in a manner that would respect the industry and myself and my organization?

Edit: so many helpful comments! Thank you everyone!

Find elsewhere
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/emailmarketing › how much does an agency cost to run email marketing for me monthly?
r/Emailmarketing on Reddit: How much does an agency cost to run email marketing for me monthly?
September 14, 2022 - I’m not trying to sell but I’m asking because I’m genuinely curious, is my pricing and offer horrible? I charger $1,500-$2,000 a month depending on work load and then 10% of profit after 200% of our monthly cost.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/marketing › digital marketing agency pricing
r/marketing on Reddit: Digital Marketing Agency Pricing
September 5, 2022 -

I was thinking of starting my own digital marketing agency. I have about two years experience generating leads for financial service niches.

My objective would be lead generation, helping local businesses generate phone calls, contact forms, and/or appointments through Facebook ads, Google ads, and SEO. I would be using High Level to help with the call forwarding, sending SMS, email, and automation. Clients would have access to subaccount.

My price would be $2,500 monthly retainer + 10% ad spend.

Service includes reporting, creating landing pages, campaign set up, ad copy, ad creative, retargeting, implementing SEO strategies such as GMB management, listings, link building, content writing, keyword research, updating meta descriptions, and titles.

Do you think there is a market for this type of service and is the price reasonable to the services provided?

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/agency › what is your pricing for performance marketing?
What is your pricing for performance marketing? : r/agency
April 14, 2024 - Do you also get paid on the performance of the campaigns? When you say performance marketing I'm thinking the payment you receive based on the tangible value you've delivered such as CPC, cost per view, cost per lead, sales, or number of sign-ups to newsletter.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r › PPC › comments › rgtt7p › how_much_should_i_expect_to_pay_an_agency_with
Reddit - The heart of the internet
April 11, 2021 - I am self taught PPC specialist but I feel like I now need a proper agency to help me maintain a decent ROAS but before I go out looking, I need to know how much will it cost me?
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/advertising › how do agencies charge their clients?
r/advertising on Reddit: How do agencies charge their clients?
August 29, 2018 -

I’ve got 15 years experience as a writer and creative director in New York, and would one day like to open my own shop. The biggest problem I can think of though is I’ve never once seen the financial side of things. I have ZERO idea what an hour of someone’s time should cost. I can ballpark how much a project would cost, but only if I’ve worked on something similar in the past.

Anyone have any suggestions or resources for learning that side of the business?

Top answer
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Lots of great stuff here, but I’ll add this. When you’re coming up with hourly costs, rule of thumb: take your employee’s hourly gross salary, and multiply by 3. So if you have a junior employee making $25 and hour, cost to client is $75 an hour to cover overhead and margin. Not a hard and fast rule, but a good back-of-the-envelope shortcut to ballpark projects.
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You need to get in business with a suit or a project manager/producer (or at least have a chat with one!) At a high level, it cost out the same as any business - labour + overhead = cost... here's an example using really round and fake numbers... let's say I want to buy a simple ad campaign from you - a single OOH execution. You determine that it will take 20 hours of you ($270/hr), and 20 hours of your partner ($270/hr) to concept the execution, including a round of amends for the client. It will then take 40 hours of a graphic designer ($190/hr) to churn out the production ready files for the client's media partner. Throughout all of this, there are 10 hours of your suit ($250/hr), and 10 hours of your producer ($230/hr) to make it all happen. That's 100 hours total, or $23,200. Now, everyone has a different hourly rate - this is because that hourly rate has to cover a few things... your salary (actually the average salary of someone in your job title), a percentage of the salary of Alice in accounts payable, a percentage of the rent and utilities for your fancy office, a percentage of the cost of those snacks in the kitchen and the beer in the beer fridge... you get the idea. Then we get to margin - margin is essentially your profit once you've covered all of your costs. Some agencies bake their margin in to their hourly rates (using our example above, let's say it only took $180 to cover your salary and overhead, and the rest was profit margin) and create special discounted rate cards for clients as necessary. Some agencies apply their margin to the total at the end (so for example the grand total would come out to $15,466 and we would apply the margin to the end) There are benefits to both. Baking the margin in to the rate gives you greater "transparency" with the client to show them your hourly breakdown, and gives you the discretion to give discounts to the bottom line or freebies knowing how much margin you have to play with within your budget. Adding your margin on to the total at the end gives you greater flexibility to play with the total budget number and allows you to make on the fly decisions about cost, but lesser transparency to client about 'discounts' you may be giving them (i.e. you may choose to only make 40% margin on a project to meet their budget, but they don't know you're giving them a discount... on the flip side, you may be able to make 55% margin on another project in the future). Say for example your client only had a $23K budget. With the margin baked in to the rates, you could either try to cut an hour of someone's time to reduce your budget, which would take you below the 23k (losing out on money!) or you could discount the project by $200 to come to an even $23k - fine to do when you're small, but becomes a bit of an administrative nightmare once you're larger and have systems that don't necessarily play nice with weird discounts like that. If you're adding your margin on at the end, you can just bill the client an even $23k and retrofit your margin to make up the difference, maximising profit for the work being done. Hope that helped. The real fundamentals is really in estimating how many hours a piece of work will take to do, and working out what your base rate for each role is - taking in to account salaries AND overhead costs!
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/digital_marketing › looking for a reddit marketing agency
r/digital_marketing on Reddit: Looking for a reddit marketing agency
3 weeks ago -

So I keep seeing these twitter posts about indie hackers doing $10k months, $20k months from posting on reddit and i am honestly getting frustrated. I KNOW it works, i see the success stories almost every week but i cant crack the code.

We are at $4k MRR now, solid product market fit, good retention. but we've maxed out our current channels. Twitter and SEO have been good to us, but growth is plateauing.

Me and my co-founder spent 2 solid weeks trying to figure reddit out. posting in relevant subs, testing different approaches, timing our posts but nothing worked our posts got removed or we got banned.

What I need: A legit reddit marketing agency that actually understands the platform and can help us scale.

What my product is: An AI financial tracker that helps you understand and control your spending intelligently. We are past the MVP stage

Budget: Willing to pay for good results that wont cost us a hefty amount

Really want to crack this nut because I believe it can convert crazy if executed well

Edit: Appreciate all the suggestions and DMs. I tried vetting a bunch of them, but most don't even do reddit marketing just general marketers trying to close a deal. However, I’ve got discovery calls booked this week with M81 and two other consultants from the thread and DMs. I'll update you guys in a few weeks if we get some traction.

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/ppc › ppc agency costs - how much are we looking at?
r/PPC on Reddit: PPC agency costs - How much are we looking at?
September 21, 2019 -

So I've been beating myself mentally over this and can't come to a conclusion, would love to have your insight.

I run a well established web design & marketing agency (and no - I'm not a 13 year old who is making millions weekly with social media marketing ), and I'm looking for serious advice for those of you that work for an agency, own one or are currently using one for your business.

I'm looking to optimize our internal operations and part of this strategy is to establish a fixed bracket agency fee system to speed up the proposal process.

For example:

  • Campaigns between $0 - $3000/mo in ad spend is a $1,000 management fee

  • Campaigns between $3000/mo - $5000/mo in ad spend is a $2,000 management fee

  • Etc etc

I hope the example clarifies the idea. The setup fee & landing page cost will be separate for the example listed above. I believe we would have a complexity modifier (i.e an additional 15% of management fee if the project is complex) but this is a bit more advanced.

Currently we are wasting too much time trying to price a project when it should be a bit simpler.

What processes/systems do you have in place for the quoting process on paid search & paid social campaigns?

Any insight appreciated!

Top answer
1 of 8
5

The best pricing is one that is simple to understand and clients know what they are getting charged. Pricing is a strategic endeavour as it can signal what type of agency you are and who you want as clients. There is no right way to price as an agency.

A lot of our clients are USA, UK or EU based and thus they think our pricing is fair. It's usually fellow Canadian clients who don't get what it costs to manage or run an agency. Or they hired some smooth talking big agency with cheap rates and saw no results.... but now don't want to pay even more.

Our agency charges a monthly fee + 10% of ad spend and it works well for us. We also turn down or have potential clients say no because they think we are expensive. You get what you pay for in the end and we don't want cheap clients who will want daily calls and give us no time to work on accounts.

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It mainly depends on what makes sense for you and/or client (company /business size, etc.).

You could do something or a combination of the below:

  1. Minimum fee for up to certain budget thresholds (like the ones you mentioned)

  2. % of the client's ad spend (the higher the budget the smaller the percentage you'd charge)

  3. Hourly rate (depends on the size of the client mostly) this is pretty straight forward.

  4. Value-based rate or success fee (for clients focusing more on the performance side) while these can be tricky, if you are able to deliver results then the more they make, the more you make.

Unfortunately, the concrete pricing structure (i.e. amounts you should ask for) are dependent on your size and successes as an agency and it might take a lot of tweaking especially at the beginning.