A “No Bullshit” Look at Various Social Media Marketing Services, Packages, and Pricing
Every agency has a different pricing model…
And too many companies are afraid to put their prices on their site.
I get it… “It depends.” And so do our services…
But we do have relatively standard prices, that are very similar from client to client. And we’d like to share our pricing with you in order to help you understand what services from us you might be interested in.
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While we aren’t a retainer-based company, we do kind of operate like one, in that we are paid a set amount, and we work internally to allocate that budget to give our clients the best result possible based on their goals/KPIs.
This means that when a client gives us more money, they can rest assured we are putting in more hours, expanding to new channels, upping our energy and efforts. And when they give us less money… We do less and they need to expect results to decline.
We also start every service, no matter how big or small, with a brand audit and strategy guide. This allows us to understand the client’s voice, our “do’s and don’ts,” our KPIs, and everything we need to ensure our success. It also helps eliminate communication mishaps down the road.
Also, as the client account size grows smaller, you get less and less consultation time from us. Less and less meeting and reviewing time. And reports are simplified (to only focus on the KPIs we are being paid to focus on).
So, what services do we actually do and sell in our company? Here’s the answer:
Note: Prices can vary from client to client and situation to situation, so please use these numbers as “ballpark” figures.
Our “Sweet Spot” Social Media Services Package
Our most ideal client is coming to us with about $3,000/month to spend on our services, and ~$3,000-$10,000 in advertising budget.
When Would You Want This
Typically, you would only want to spend this much on social media marketing services when:
What You Get
This budget allows us to really get a grasp on your brand, service all the necessary channels to the appropriate degree, and begin to really chug away at getting you growth, website traffic, branded engagements, and results. While we do take on larger accounts than this, $3,000 is a very firm and stable starting point with most of the companies we encounter. Actual focus can vary from client to client wildly… Let me give you an example:
One client wanted our traditional social media marketing agency services (which I will outline in just a second), but when we took a deep dive into their channels we found a better way to allocate our first months budget. We decided we would spend the entire budget on only two things: preparing to launch a viral video campaign, and setting up a very solid retargeting funnel. We also helped with basic optimization of their accounts, which is mandatory of course, but that was all we did for month one.
That’s a little unusual for a first month… Typically, what we are doing for a client is:
The “Start a Little Slower” Social Media Services Package
$2,000/month and ~$500-$1,000 in advertising budget.
When Would You Want This
Now if you don’t think you need to hit social as hard, but know that you need someone there to grow and maintain at least 3 channels, then you can start us on a slightly lower budget. Typically, you would only want to spend this much on social media marketing services when:
What You Get
We typically cut these things off the plate from the “Sweet Spot” services:
One-off Services
Now, if you aren’t ready for the “full service” social media marketing services that we provide, we’ve also branched off some smaller product offerings that should help get you started and might be just what you’re looking for:
When Would You Want This
You’ve decided that a strong Twitter following is important to you and want to get started growing a following right now. You are not fully ready to go “all out” on Twitter marketing, but starting now will build some social proof on your account, and make a little bit of noise to get your content some attention.
What You Get
This is what happens every time we start this strategy on a client account.
We hook you up to our partner’s over at Social Bee with a growth and curation package, and setup and manage the strategy for both.
We will create and go over a very basic hashtag strategy with you for the account.
We create a series of auto-mentions that you will Tweet out to each new follower. We’ve proven time and time again that well-structured questions help to grow and engage users on Twitter and lead to overall great things for your account.
We build out a content curation library for you, which we add to and manage bi-weekly.
We connect to your RSS feed (and any others that you recommend) to automatically publish and recycle blog content to your Twitter feed. This is done in a completely automated way. For an additional cost, we will review, edit, and improve the posts before they go to Twitter. Cost depends on posting frequency and levels of complexity.
We will create and go over a very basic hashtag strategy with you for the account.
We report on your growth, website traffic, and any other KPIs deemed necessary (conversions, sales, etc.).
For an extra $200/month we will add link retargeting to the account so that every time someone clicks on a link from Twitter, going to a piece of curated content, you can add them to your retargeting pixel and begin serving ads to them.
Instagram Growth and Engagement
When Would You Need This
Typically, an Instagram only strategy means that you have a very visual-oriented brand and you just know Instagram is the right channel for you. You’ve got a backlog of content – mostly image/photo, short video, or quotes – that you need to start cataloging publicly to spark conversation and engagement, and drive brand awareness.
Maybe you also tested Instagram, as a client of ours recently did, and found that a quick test generated some revenue. So it makes sense to hit it stronger.
What You Get
Now, we always, always, always start our clients with retargeting if they aren’t already doing it. But with this service, retargeting is not really included, so it’s kind of assumed you’ve got it set up. Also, if you aren’t really looking to drive website traffic, it can be forgone. Here’s what is typically included:
We’ve seen some great results with other clients in terms of increasing impressions and website traffic driven from Instagram with these tactics.
B2B LinkedIn Lead Generation
There’s a fine line between targeted outreach and spam. And typically spam is when you really are just trying to shove a message down someone’s throat, and you haven’t really taken the time to make sure that they are really even the right fit for that message. This is targeted outreach at its finest.
When Would You Need This
This service is perfect for a company that has an exact understanding of their target job role, seniority level, industry, and/or job title of their most ideal customer. For example, “Financial Advisor” is very easy to find and hunt down using this service.
What You Get
We start by creating a targeted lead list of prospective customers based off your criteria. We then scrub/clean that list against existing customer databases and check it for quality. From there we create, using your input and our strategies, a series of custom messages that we want to send to these prospects.
We then begin sending connection requests and messages to them. If a prospect responds, we do our best to answer their responses, so as not to bother you with your time. However, especially in the beginning, we get a lot of questions that we are unable to answer. At that point, we bring in you, the client, to answer as you see fit, and then we take your answers and create a database of questions and answers so that you never have to answer that question again.
From here the goal is to book sales qualification calls, demos, or appointments. Whatever it is that you need more of.
We absolutely keep a close eye on responses to ensure we are hitting the right people, that the message is well received, and that we are being decent human beings.
Facebook Retargeting
If you aren’t running retargeting, you are leaving money on the table…
Note: This service may require some on-site fixes and Google Analytics or CRM optimizations that will incur additional costs.
$500+ setup and first month + ad spend (depends on how many website visitors/month you get, but typically $100-$1,000), $250/month thereafter.
Free Website Retargeting for Qualified Companies
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you grow your business with website retargeting for free,
Click here
When Would You Need This
Odds are this is not all you need, but as I’ve said many times… If you aren’t running retargeting ads, you should start immediately. Getting people to your site is the hardest thing to do, Getting people that have already been to your site back… And to purchase… Is a lot easier. That’s what retargeting is all about. Here’s some more information on how to slice and dice your Facebook custom audiences.
This is for you when you are getting website traffic, have a very small budget, and want to maximize the efforts of that traffic. It’s a good first step to see if you can’t get some quick wins and scale your marketing budget.
What You Get
We will setup and execute a couple basic retargeting campaigns, with minimal segmentation, and optimize the campaign based on ad/content in order to drive some sort of on-site conversion, typically email sign-up, lead generation, or purchase. This involves copywriting and possibly some creative skills, but does not include any blog content, lead magnet, or video creation. We require our clients have that ready to go, but can also advise on strategy or partners to help set that up.
As one of the smallest services we offer, this gets you very little face time / consulting time / meeting time. And honestly, not much is needed after an initial onboarding meeting.
Cold Traffic Facebook Advertising
This service is often paired with the retargeting services above for a very simple starting advertising campaign. Things can get more expensive based on the complexity of the campaign, or the advertising budget.
Note: This service may require some on-site fixes and Google Analytics or CRM optimizations that will incur additional costs.
$900+ setup and first month + ad budget (typically $1,500-$5,000/month), $500/month thereafter.
When Would You Need This
This is typically for “turning on the faucet” for many of our startup or new business clients. We design one or two campaigns specifically around getting a very targeted cold traffic (they don’t know who you are) audience to learn more about your product/service/business and we start sending them down the rest of the marketing funnel.
The best fit for a client that needs this service would be someone that has existing website traffic, leads, and sales coming in from their website, has a clearly identifiable target audience on Facebook, and has a great video or two or three that they believe that audience will resonate with.
What You Get
An ad campaign, possibly two depending on complexity and so forth, that can be ran towards cold traffic and expect to get a decent cost per view, or cost per click, that then drives traffic to your website. Weekly (or more) optimization. Copywriting. Monthly reporting. We’re going to test various target audiences, messages, creatives, and overall strategies in order to find the best opportunities for Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Lead (CPL), or Cost Per customer Acquisition (CPA).
Social Media Contest / Giveaway
Example from our partner contest platform Queue
We aren’t talking a “comment on my photo” contest, we’re talking about something that can generate thousands of leads and a noticeable bump in revenue.
$5,000 is our typical starting point, it can go down if we operate more in a consulting role, or up if we have to get hands on in the other aspects of the campaign (development, email, etc.). You also need a budget for paid ads between $1,500 and $10,000 depending on size of the campaign, size of your email list, size of your social channels, and expectations and goals. You also need to have product(s) to donate.
When Would You Need This
Typically any company could consider a social contest/giveaway for their product or service, but typically it works better for more viral consumer-facing products (that being said, there are some big B2B opportunities here as well, it’s just trickier, a little more cost per acquisition, and less viral). You obviously need the right budget, not just in cost for our services and for advertising, but also for the product you are likely to be giving away.
Overall, this is an opportunity to get a ton of leads for cheap, establish key partnerships with industry influencers, and get viral brand advocacy for your product/service/brand.
What You Get
We will create and manage the campaign and overall strategy. Our social contest platform of choice is Queue (included in our cost) as its the best-structured platform we’ve ever seen for virality.
Real-Time Social Media Marketing for an Event
$5,000 for everything, can go up or down depending. If you run a marketing related event to our target audience – exciting brands – then we may be interested in a service for sponsorship swap, but this must be evaluated on a case by case basis.
When Would You Need This
Most events are missing a huge opportunity to use social media before, during, and after their events.
This is especially true when you’ve organized influencers to speak at your event, or have sponsors or partners with large social followings. If you’re running an event with over 100 attendees and you aren’t thinking about your social media strategy, you may need our help. You would typically call on us when you want:
What You Get
For the full list of everything, please check out this checklist.
Pre-event:
During event:
Post event:
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot of things we can do as a creative marketing agency focused in social media. And we are creating new standalone services all the time. Hopefully, this gives you a firm understanding of our offering and costs in order to best prepare you choosing the right agency to do business with.
Free Agency Vetting Spreadsheet
In the process of vetting multiple agencies? This spreadsheet will help you rank your options and show you how they stack up against each other in terms of price, core compenticies, and other factors.
