What to Charge for Digital Marketing Services

As a digital marketer, you use channels like social media, search engines, and video content to reach consumers directly and promote brand awareness for clients. Your role requires an amalgam of hard skills like data analysis, SEO, and content creation, and soft skills like communication and the ability to create authentic relationships through text and images. 

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You develop campaigns, create marketing and branding strategies, and analyze KPIs to discern what a brand’s next move should be. Here, let’s delve into a big question for freelance digital marketers: how much should you charge for these services?

Hourly Digital Marketing Rates

Charging by the hour as a digital marketer has pros and cons. On the one hand, unbillable time is never a concern. On the other, the marketer has to make job decisions based on the number of hours jobs take to finish rather than the skill and detail required to complete them.

Charging hourly is smart when new freelancers are not yet savvy at pricing jobs and estimating time investment. However, the increasing ability to create more output in less time can be financially disincentivizing.

Average Rates

The average hourly rate for freelance digital marketers across all skill levels, client bases, and geographic markets is $26. On Upwork, which typically represents entry-level freelancers, digital marketers charge between $15 and $45 per hour.

However, some digital marketing skills earn more than others. SEO specialists are paid $50 to $150 an hour, while content creation varies wildly, from $16 to over $100 per hour.

Project-Based Digital Marketing Rates

Project-based rates for digital marketing allow freelancers a greater ability to forecast income than the hourly pricing model does. Clients also aren’t concerned with billable hours, just the quality of work.

However, it’s easier for a freelancer to incorrectly estimate the time it will take to complete a job. Digital marketing agencies tend to charge monthly retainers instead of itemized fees, so freelancers must be diligent about calculating the value of their abilities and standing by it.

Freelancers must articulate precisely the specific deliverables they are charging for and how long it will take to submit them. To establish a per-project rate, consider taking a comparable hourly rate and multiplying it by the estimated time it will take to complete the project. Then add another 10% of the total to account for time underestimations. 

Experience-Based Digital Marketing Rates

Digital marketing rates increase throughout a career as experience, contacts, and portfolios develop. That said, entry-level superstars — as evidenced by key performance indicators (KPIs) and other complex data — can upcharge, but experienced marketers with lagging effectiveness have difficulty commanding a premium rate. 

Beginning Digital Marketer

Beginning digital marketers have to start taking low-paying jobs. Expect to charge between $20 and $40 per hour early in a career while building a portfolio and establishing bona fides. 

Intermediate Digital Marketer

After building skills for a few years, freelance digital marketers can lean into more generous rates, charging up to $100 per hour. 

Experienced Digital Marketer

Digital marketers with a decade or more of experience and the network to show for it can raise rates to $150 an hour.  

Factors That May Affect Your Rate

The most significant factor for pricing digital marketing services is specialization. The digital marketing industry casts a vast shadow, encompassing a range of services including content writing, audiovisual production, social media, email, and search engine marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).

As with all freelance services, the rate will be affected by the digital marketer’s and client’s geographic market. New York, London, and Los Angeles pay significantly more than smaller markets. And, of course, rates are always affected by a marketer’s ability to promote themselves. 

Tips for Setting a Rate

Agencies that bill on monthly retainers dominate the digital marketing industry, so there is significant wiggle room in price-setting as a freelancer. While there is potential for high earnings, there’s as much potential for vague industry standards cutting revenues short. When developing pricing, remember to pay attention to results and pivot accordingly.

How to Know If a Rate is Too Low 

Too much volume of work is a big clue that a rate is too low. Try taking a high-volume/low-value portfolio and gradually shift it to low-volume/high-value accounts. Achieve this by bringing in new clients at a higher price point or convincing some existing clients to increase scope and compensation and eliminate those who don’t want to adjust. 

How to Know If a Rate is Too High 

When a digital marketer doesn’t have enough work, they may be pricing too high. When first starting out, understanding how to price out of a market is essential but confusing. What’s the best way to discern if work is slow because the business is new or because rates are too high?

Outright asking potential and lost clients if rates were too high is the most straightforward way to get this answer. Networking with colleagues and comparing rates is also valuable. Growing trusting peer-to-peer relationships is crucial for freelancers. 

How to Negotiate With a Client

When the time comes to negotiate with a client—new or existing—for more money or better terms, digital marketers must remember they are experts at relationship management and brand storytelling. They just need to use those skills on their own behalf.  

When to Increase Your Rate 

After working with a client for a year, raising rates by 5-10% is reasonable. It’s best practice to be transparent about global rate increases well in advance, most simply by including it in the client contract).

A multi-year relationship combined with improved expertise and skill sets warrants a commensurate rate increase. Request a rate negotiation with plenty of notice so both parties can be well-prepared. Then, negotiate in good faith. If they don’t bend on total spending, offer alternatives like a lighter scope of work or a more extensive package deal.

A High Ceiling for Strong Performers

Freelance digital marketing work is flexible and dynamic, and the ever-changing face of technology means the possibilities are constantly evolving and expanding. If you’re excellent at the work and market yourself wisely, there is good earning potential.

The money you make reflects the actual, measurable results you bring to the table. You can eventually shoot for the stars with your rates if you have a driven, results-oriented personality and the skills to back it up.