Many of our potential clients ask, “How much will this cost?” It’s an excellent question—who doesn’t want to know and understand the financial investment they will be making. The challenge is answering the question accurately without first specifically understanding the client’s needs and goals for their business.
Many variables can impact pricing, and each one can increase or decrease the cost of marketing services. Trying to answer the pricing question without additional information is similar to asking a real estate agent, “How much does it cost to buy a home?” Home size, location, features, and even ongoing costs such as homeowners association fees, taxes, and utilities can impact the initial and ongoing costs.
I’m going to share the key factors that help Meld determine the prices we charge our clients. This is based on our formula for success and how we approach our marketing services—other agencies may or may not include these efforts.
Strategy First
Meld is a strategy first agency, which means we begin every project with some form of discovery. The discovery process focuses on helping us understand your business, including your products or services, target customers, competitors, differentiators, and business goals. The cost of this process is typically determined based on the size and structure of the company, the number of products or types of services, the marketplace, etc. We utilize this process so we can understand your key company information and serve as extensions of your team when we are fulfilling our marketing services. While Meld prices this effort separately, others may divide this cost across services, or in a worst-case scenario, skip this step altogether, which can negatively impact future alignment and results.
Brand Development (or Redevelopment)
In many cases, our clients have a logo or a set of colors and type font, but they may not have developed a brand. A brand is everything you represent to your internal and external audiences. Whether you’re an established company that’s been around for 50+ years and looking to refresh your brand or a new business building your brand from scratch, we start with the strategy and then use our insights to develop (or redevelop) your brand. Factors that can impact brand pricing include redesigning or creating a logo, updating/identifying brand colors, and the complexity of the brand guide deliverable. Additional cost considerations to keep in mind include the number of items we may be asked to help redesign, including your website, business cards, document templates, interior/exterior signage, and other print and digital assets.
Launch Strategy
Once you have a new or updated brand, you’ll want to ensure you appropriately launch it with your customers and community. We generate a brand relaunch plan, working with your timelines and budget. The level of involvement Meld has in successfully executing the launch and related launch events is a key factor that impacts the cost of this effort. If you have an in-house staff member with the ability to effectively plan events and use digital and print to reach your current and target customers, you may simply need some guidance and consultation from us. If you need more assistance, we can provide support from planning and execution to post-launch measurement reporting.
Many of our clients come to us because they aren’t sure how to plan and execute their marketing. Sometimes they have internal staff members that can support marketing, but they’re missing the strategic and tactical planning element. In these cases, we partner with our clients to design a custom marketing plan for the full year. This includes all strategies, campaigns, events, outreach channels, and the timing and budget for each. Whether Meld helps execute the plan or provides it to your team to execute, we ensure you are set up for the year and understand the plan and how to report on its success.
Ongoing Support
After launch, we can provide a variety of ongoing services—serving as an extension of the company and acting as a marketing department or agency of record. Ongoing support services are typically a monthly flat fee (for a predetermined set of hours) that provide regular marketing services and also address special one-off requests. This can include ongoing social media and community management, social influencer campaigns, digital advertising, special event support, customer surveys, crisis management, video development and custom photography, strategic planning, internal team training, and other business consultation.
On occasion, our clients will also request help restructuring their marketing and sales efforts to reach and engage with potential customers through inbound content marketing. We offer a customizable platform that allows you to track your business leads, reach leads with individualized and automated messages, and identify when each lead is ready to make a purchase. Inbound platform technology pricing is a set base cost per month, in addition to set-up, training, and oversight costs. These additional costs are variable based on the complexity of the inbound plan and how many current and viable content assets currently exist or will need to be developed.
We know marketing is an investment in your business, and you expect a potential return on that investment. Having a trusted and experienced agency that can support your marketing to reach those customers and generate leads to increase sales is a common goal for most companies. Whether you partner with an agency or hire a marketing staff member, we recommend investing in your marketing.
According to the Small Business Administration, businesses making less than eight million dollars in annual revenue should invest seven to eight percent of that revenue in marketing. Larger companies or those looking to increase their standing may want to invest 10-15 percent of annual projected revenue. No matter which services you need or which agency you select, marketing will be an essential factor in your success—increasing awareness, generating interest, and driving consideration of your company.
Want Meld Marketing to design a custom quote for you? Let’s connect so we can learn about your goals and determine where we can help.