Content marketing is one of the best marketing channels to drive traffic, generate leads and sales, and grow your business. It is used by 91% of B2B and 85% of B2C marketers primarily because it is effective. So, content marketing is in demand. And if you are a freelance content marketer or a content marketing agency, you can easily make a lot of money. But how much to charge for content marketing?
What’s the right pricing model that you should use?
Right pricing strategy is crucial when you are offering content marketing services because the competition is fierce. If you are charging too high or low, it will always raise eyebrows.
This article covers details on content marketing pricing models and how much you must charge for content marketing as a freelancer or an agency.
How Much to Charge for Content Marketing?
Content marketing cost isn’t fixed. It is a service and services don’t have the exact cost. It all comes down to what you are offering to your clients. There are different ways to charge for content marketing including:
- Fixed-price
- Hourly
- Monthly retainer
- Mixed pricing.
These pricing models are discussed in detail here. But how do you identify the right pricing for content marketing services?
You need to start by identifying a few things to create a pricing model:
- Your main offer
- Cost
- Your profit margin.
1. Main Offer
Content marketing is huge. It involves a lot of things ranging from content writing to content promotion to design and more:
You must identify the content marketing service you’ll offer. You shouldn’t offer everything especially if you are a freelancer. Content marketing agencies that have mid to large size teams can offer full-fledged content marketing packages inclusive of everything to their clients.
New agencies should stick with specific services. It will help you stay focused, grow quickly, and master your main offer.
Your main offer could be blogging or guest blogging or on-page optimization or video content creation or anything that you have expertise in. Content creation even has several forms such as text, graphics, video, audio, PPTs, and more.
Alternatively, you can create different content marketing packages based on what you are best at. Here is an example:
You can offer all the services by creating monthly or fixed price packages but this requires a lot of work.
In any case, you need to create your main offer to decide on the pricing. Even if you plan to charge an hourly rate, you still need to create a content marketing package for your clients. What you’ll do when logging time is what you should be clear about.
2. Cost
Once you have decided on your main offer and/or content marketing packages, calculate the cost.
There are different types of costs that you have to consider:
- Tools
- Outsourcing cost
- Miscellaneous costs.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a freelancer or an agency, you’ll need a lot of tools and marketing apps. For example, you’ll need a keyword research tool, SEO audit tool, content marketing tool, design apps, etc.
Here is a list of the must-have content marketing tools that you might need:
These tools and apps just cover the basics and you might need to use many more depending on the scope of content marketing services you are offering.
Prepare your marketing stack and estimate the cost for your main offer or all the packages you have created.
You’ll also need to outsource several tasks whether you are a freelancer or an agency. For example, if you aren’t a good writer, you’ll need to hire a professional freelance writer. Or you might need to consult an SEO specialist for in-depth analysis and auditing.
Decide what services you’ll outsource and the cost of outsourcing. Add this cost to your content marketing packages too.
Finally, there are several miscellaneous costs such as tax, salaries, admin cost, and others. These are mostly associated with content marketing agencies. These costs need to be accounted for.
3. Profit Margin
Once you have decided on the packages and their costs, it is time to set your profit margin. Yes, this is the main yet tricky part.
The ideal way is to set a clear goal based on your marketing strategy and then set profit margins accordingly.
For example, if your strategy is to offer cost-effective content marketing services, you’ll need to keep profit margins low in this case so that your price is less than your competitor’s.
Similarly, if your strategy is to acquire initial clients quickly to break even and then retain them with monthly retainers, you’ll need to use the penetration pricing strategy that focuses on lower prices initially. Once you acquire the desired number of clients, you can increase your profit margins gradually.
You must understand different pricing strategies and match them to your business strategy and see what works best for you:
Here are a few pricing tips to help you in setting profit margin:
- Keep profit margins realistic
- Always look at your top competitors and see what they’re offering and at what price
- Reducing profit margins and offering cheap content marketing services isn’t always the best approach. Premium pricing with high profit margins and quality services works equally well
- Keep your profit margins flexible. Keep room for negotiation.
As a rule of thumb, look for existing freelancers and agencies (your competitors) and see their prices. It will give you a nice idea of how much to charge for content marketing. It will also help you offer different services than your competitors. You can easily stand out from the crowd.
Content Marketing Pricing is Variable
Content marketing is changing rapidly. Changes in consumer behavior, SEO updates, new content formats, and technological advancements make it an ever-evolving sector. Setting a fixed price for content marketing packages is challenging and nearly impossible.
You have to keep updating content marketing packages and keep adding more services and features. And this means you have to keep changing the pricing structure as your business grows.
A flexible pricing structure for content marketing works best.
Featured Image: Pexels
