Digital Advertising Costs
I encourage you to look at your digital advertising as an investment – you get a return on your investment when you make informed advertising expenditures.
Estimating digital marketing is done on a client by client basis because it is dependent upon several factors, including what type of advertising – display advertising vs search advertising.
Here are a few factors:
- the micro market of the keywords you are targeting
- the geographic areas you want to reach
- the advertising platform (Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn etc.)
- competitors in your market
The approach to bidding is proactive. I take you through a quick tutorial on what you need to take into account when setting your budget in the pay per click model.
For an example, if a business pays an employee $20 an hour and it takes them one hour to complete a job, and you charge $60 to the client, and you want to make $20 on the job, we aim to spend less than $20 in advertising to get the work from a client.
You pay $20 for the employee, $20 for the advertising, and get $60. So $20 profit.
So, if the cost to acquire the work is $20, and we estimate it takes 5 clicks on average to get a viewer of your ads to buy, this tells us we can’t go over an average click cost of about $4 in order to meet your profit goals.
Advertising is about averaging out your costs to acquire clients/sales.Therefore, even though you don’t know exactly what an individual click costs when setting up your campaign, we evaluate average click costs and make adjustments.
We simply turn off ad phrases that are costing more than you want to spend, and focus on the ones that are within your optimal price range.
As long as some return on investment (ROI) is present, it is worth doing.
You Have Control Over Expenditure Levels
One of the nice features of digital advertising is that you can set a maximum daily expenditure.
You will have these advertising costs:
- Advertising campaign research and setup
- Monthly management
- Monthly click fees when someone clicks your ad
At a minimum, you will probably have $800 in startup costs, which includes keyword research, account setup, and first month management for a small campaign.
More likely your business will have a slightly larger campaign and somewhere between $900 and $2,000 setup fees plus click fees (which are impossible to say until I know what industry you are in, and what your goals are; but remember, we set maximum daily expenditures on that).
What is the Range of Click Costs?
Click fees are competitive bids, so in depends on what industry you are in, what geographic market you are in, and how well you have done with click-throughs in the past.
They can range from about $1 a click to over $100 (most businesses, except for lawyers, don’t pay anywhere near $100). Generally, the higher the profit prospects for the product or service, the higher the click cost due to risk reward theory. But not always.
What Should My Monthly Ad Budget Be?

If you have one key phrase, in a non-competitive environment, you may only need to spend a couple hundred dollars to beat your competition – but that doesn’t mean you will get every client out there if you don’t allocate enough click budget!
Also, the more search phrases you add, the more you will add to your budget. Or you may choose to stay laser focused on a few great terms if you have good return on investment for those phrases. The thing to keep in mind is to allocate enough initially to get a good feel for your market.
Advertising Payment Policies
I set you up with your own ad accounts, and you “invite” me to be your PPC manager for the account. Therefore, the actual click through costs are billed to your credit card via the entity you are advertising with (Google, Microsoft, etc.)
You pay one month in advance for management fees, with ongoing fees invoiced at the end of each month, at either a set amount we agree on, or variable if our agreement is for management as a percentage of ad spend. Generally, my services pay for themselves in saved click fees (not to mention all the new business you will be getting).
Call 720-520-0639 now to get an estimate of your costs for digital advertising.
Bottom Line – Fair Monthly PPC Pricing
I can give you a quote based on the size, or anticipated ultimate size, and the other factors listed above and together we can determine if a monthly management based on hourly or percentage of spend is best for you.
Either way, I will provide you with excellent service at an excellent value with a fixed monthly budget. Then as your leads turn into clients you can invest more when it makes sense, up to your comfort level.
Call Jon at 720-520-0639 to get started.