How Much Should I Spend On Organic Marketing?


Organic digital marketing is the most effective form of marketing you can invest in. “Organic” means, “naturally showing up when people are online specifically looking for the service or products that you provide.” By definition, “organic digital marketing” has the highest conversion rate compared to all other marketing options. This is because effective organic digital marketing causes your business to show up to the very audience that wants, (is actively seeking out) what you offer, right at the moment they are ready to buy. Continuously being highly visible to buyers like this will also generate the most long-term value to your business.

How much is a good or sensible amount to spend on organic marketing to get a result? This is a tough question to answer, as there are many factors to consider. For example, are you in manufacturing or retail, services, or e-commerce? Are you a micro or a small business, do you have dedicated marketing staff, are you a local business specific to a city or completely national? Are you in a high competition / big-ticket business or is your average sale less than $100? All of these factors make a difference.

In certain circumstances, Holistic Web Presence also has a website rental model. Learn more about it here MagSites – Client Rented.

Here is a Comparative Guideline to Help You Decide What Might Be Appropriate For Your Business

Micro Business Plans

Annual revenue less than $1m
Less than 5 employees, no dedicated marketing staff

Entry

$2,250 monthly

This is entry-level, usually appropriate for a local micro-business that competes in a niche with a relatively low level of competition.

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Entry+

$2,957 monthly

This is our most cost-effective level, usually appropriate for a local micro-business in a niche that sees a medium level of competition. One that really wants to drive growth and where the client is actively engaged and willing to participate.

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Broad

$3,755 monthly

This builds on Entry+ adding more resources to reflect the effort needed to win in a market with a higher level of competition. Still appropriate for a micro-business, this rate will drive faster growth curves.

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Small Business Plans

Annual revenue $1- $20m
At least one dedicated marketing person on staff

Broad +

$5,277 monthly

This plan is designed to provide sufficient resources, time, and expertise to help a small business grow their business at a steady rate. It allows us to put in the effort needed to win in a market with a higher level of competition.

Appropriate for a small business with some internal marketing skills and staff. Typically we work hand in hand with a marketing professional in the small business. We help them get more done and also provide one-on-one training to help them improve their digital marketing skills over time.

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Focused

$7,325 monthly

Appropriate for a small business that has a national focus. Often it will be at least part e-commerce and have some level of internal marketing staff that we can work with.

At this level, we assign our best people. The ability to leverage our most creative talent is a big factor with these accounts. Usually, a small change in organic ranking will impact tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.

*An assigned account manager tends to be very focused on these accounts only managing 2-3 accounts (in other words the client is seeing about 33%-50% of that person’s time)

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Strategic

$12,000 monthly

These accounts are strategic and have our most talented people dedicated to working with them (they are receiving 100% of at least one person’s time along with ‘as needed time’ from other people in the company.)

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About Hourly Rates – Get Our Services by the Hour

With visibility driving digital marketing, a continuously ongoing effort needs to take place to get a significant result. If a prospective client asks for a ‘bit’ of digital marketing or a ‘bit’ of SEO, that request in and of itself usually tells us that they simply do not understand digital marketing. They probably need to be more marketing educated before it would be viable for us to work with them.

Our staff is paid based on incoming client revenue. We pay our staff this way so that they have a vested interest in doing a good job for our clients.

Only by working on an ongoing monthly retainer basis can we map our staff’s salaries to the clients that they look after. If one of our staff were to do a poor job and lose a client, they would immediately feel it in their pocket – ouch!

As a result, our staff will often put in extra time and effort to look after a client. They regularly do this because they want to get paid next month and the month after. As a result, everyone wins!

In most cases, we work with clients based on an ongoing recurring monthly fee. This will always be the most effective and cost-effective way of utilizing our services. We almost always end up doing way more work for a client during a monthly cycle than they would see if they paid us by the hour. If this is true, why do we put in extra time? The ongoing relationship and the reliable revenue stream are worth more to us than trying to maximize our hourly rate.

Having said that, occasionally we may charge hourly; for instance, there may be the need to work on a discrete, one-off project. We have done this when a client had a broken website and just needed it fixed. Also, for some clients that wanted some initial analysis and guidance as to how they could improve their e-commerce store’s conversion rate.

To That End Below are our Hourly Rates

Standard hourly rate $145

10 hour block $1,233 (15% discount)
40 hour block $4,060 (30% discount)

Consultancy hourly rate $175

10 hour block $1,488 (15% discount)
40 hour block $4,900 (30% discount)

Notes & FAQ

All work is customized to a client’s current and strategic needs

Holistic Web Presence When You Want The Best Talent Working For Your Business

  • We do not describe ourselves as providing SEO services
    • Rather we enable our clients to grow their businesses through greater online visibility and more effective use of their presence on the web
    • The foundation of these services tends to orientate around content marketing
    • Content has to be optimized for the search engines (SEO), however, that is just one part of the process of generating content

In short, SEO is part of what we do, but it does not define the whole of what we do

    • What are the differences between these plans? What do I do in one that I do not get in another?
      • Depending on what our clients need at the time, we provide similar services within each plan level, the difference is more to do with:
        • TIME – How much time we spend doing those things each month
        • TALENT – We put our most talented people on the accounts with the higher budgets
        • PEOPLE – Often multiple people on our team are involved in driving results
        • BUSINESS REVIEW – The regularity with which we conduct progress review and brainstorming meetings
      • What we do typically changes a lot over time, so the services are not fixed
        • For example, we might start by building a website, move into local listing, then content development, gradually getting more advanced over time
        • Typically we do not charge separately for building a website, rather, building a website is just the specific task needed at the time
      • How all these work tend to change over time in proportion to a client’s gradual understanding of the nature of what needs to be done
        • A critical component of execution tends to be the gradual education of our clients
        • This is one of the more important aspects of the services we provide and a major influencing factor in the likelihood of getting results
        • It usually takes about nine months before a client starts to really understand the nature of digital marketing
          • Most clients are skeptical of this when they first start working with us

To understand what services we provide see https://www.holisticwebpresence.com/services/what-services-exactly/

Plan Authorization – Terms & Conditions