Cost of content marketing: the ultimate guide to content marketing prices

Glassdoor US finds that a content marketing manager’s mean annual wage is $56,779.

But aimlessly hiring professionals or investing in content will not help you win. Similar to all other aspects of running a company, you must weigh out the alternatives first. Only then can you choose the resources best suited for you.

In addition, the huge amount of solutions and attached fees can present a real challenge in budgeting the cost of content marketing. 

And you may find yourself asking, “How do I calculate and optimize content marketing charges?” Fret not! This guide will help you find the answers.

What is involved in content marketing?

Content marketing professionals aim to build strong connections with the market segment their customers cater to. They must fulfill certain objectives like attracting leads and boosting brand recognition. 

They’re also expected to utilize the best marketing channels at all stages to maximize revenue. There’s a lot that goes into content marketing, such as:

Web content creation

Over 1600 B2B and B2C marketers participated in HubSpot’s ‘State of inbound marketing trends‘ report for 2022. It clearly indicates that the vast majority of respondents got average to high ROIs from all types of content.

Image Source: HubSpot

Web content creation relates to the production of varied digital content. This includes

• Matter for a website’s homepage
• Articles for blog posts
• Email newsletters
• Charts, graphs, and data visualizations
• Audio-visual content such as live or recorded streams, podcasts etc.

Content strategy

Content Marketing Institute surveyed 810 content marketers from all over the world for their 2022 “B2B Content Marketing” report. It shows that 73% of B2B enterprises have a content marketing strategy.

Image Source: Content Marketing Institute

The nature of required content varies with organizations, market segments, and target objectives. A young organization may need instructional matter from its content team to spread brand awareness. 

But a renowned company may be more concerned about how many leads are converted to customers. Consequently, a marketer may choose to promote merchandise or focus primarily on selected customer groups.  

Idea generation

Databox released their SEO statistics for 2022. They found that ‘keyword analysis’ was vital for idea generation for close to 100% of all companies surveyed.

Image Source: Databox

You must provide your target consumer base with content that resonates with them. To do this, you should be aware of their most commonly searched queries. 

Analyzing search queries can help you fine-tune your content game plan. It can also help you understand how your buyers are reaching your site. This will help increase your ROI.

Competitive Analysis

Keep your friends close and your competitors closer. A proficient marketer will always watch rival businesses carefully. As a result, you’ll realize how your peers build relations with their market through content.

How frequently do they publish blog posts? How strong is their presence on social platforms? What subjects do they write about? What’s their tone of writing?

Distribution and promotion

Based on your content production process, the team in charge will undertake various efforts. They’ll review how the content is organized, publish your content, and post frequent social media updates. They will also regularly distribute newsletters and help with content management.

Monitoring and improvement

The outcome of content marketing must be monitored through certain metrics. Ascend2’s 2021 report, “Measuring Content Marketing Performance” surveyed B2B and B2C professionals. Results showed that 44% find ‘conversion rate’ and ‘website traffic’ to be the best metrics for measuring success.

Good marketing involves repeated and consistent actions. Your content marketers should put forward regular reviews describing what your content has achieved. They must participate in discussions to understand how to refine content planning.

Often, they will join forces with other divisions under your company to provide further assistance. They may publicize the latest launches or answer the sales department’s consumer queries.

Content marketing models

Planning, groundwork, and the creation of good content are all important parts of content marketing. They’re also important factors that decide the cost of content marketing. 

There are many ways to delegate content marketing. You can divide these solutions into separate categories.

Content marketing contractors

Vendors may just deliver some specific pieces (like homepage content). They may, alternately, follow a schedule with fixed requirements too (like writing three blog articles a week). This is not a bad option if you have a robust in-house team and you only require some additional content.

But not all writers may be good ones. They need added supervision and may have availability issues. The devil is in the details. So ensure you’ve read and understood every single thing on the project contract.

Managed content writing services 

Managed content writing services simply pass on the orders they receive from organizations to the numerous writers under them. In this way, you get a large amount of content for a very affordable fee. But the quality may be questionable. 

In most cases, you will have no direct interaction with the people creating your content. There will be issues regarding unreliable writing standards and tone too.

In-house staff

Having a full team handling your content needs can definitely reap benefits. But it’ll require too much time and effort for something you can get done way more easily. It will also drastically increase the cost of content marketing for your business.

If this option puts stress on your finances, it’s probably not the most prudent one.

Full-service content marketing agencies

Professional businesses covering the A-Z of content marketing services can be perfect for many organizations. They can thoroughly study your content needs and solutions, work on SEO and generate steady content. Everything is arranged and up and running. You’ll just need to pay attention to your main strengths. 

It also works if you already have access to some marketing resources but need just a few more. For instance, you may have employees handling SEO and planning but you need a content creator for your website or a team for social media marketing.

Through customizable solutions, such content marketing enterprises can offer exactly what you’re missing. They will act as a supplement to your existing setup.

Content marketing pricing is kept need-based and fluid. You also get the freedom that comes with outsourcing. Contractual or full-time staff may not offer these benefits.

How much does content marketing cost?

Content marketing rates fluctuate on the basis of many factors. These include the kind of content you need, your hiring plans and expenses, etc. Take a look at a few of the key determinants below:

Cost of content audit and strategy

Auditing is more than just a preliminary requirement for efficient content planning. It is a chance for the marketing company you hired to make a good first impression. Through this, you can tell if they are a meticulous agency and understand what path your content plan needs to follow.

The good news is that, for the initial evaluation, the content marketing charges will probably be nil! The marketing company must enquire about numerous things. This includes your content plan, targets, major rival organizations, aesthetic choices, etc.

Once that’s done, costs can start to escalate fast. Both the cost of content marketing and the range of included solutions are variable. You may find one agency asking for $25,000 or even more. But others may conduct website and content analyses for a couple of hundred bucks. 

Certain agencies club content planning and a variety of other solutions into a single package deal. Others may let you opt for some amount of elementary groundwork before proceeding further. Clarity and adaptability are important values at Smemark.

Our content marketing pricing depends on what kind of services you require. For example, for examining the best keywords and inspecting your competitors’ market performance, we charge $2500. 

These services will provide helpful observations- entirely supported by solid data-  about your content plan. You’ll understand how your website content, blog posts, and social media content need to be crafted.

Cost of bottom-funnel website copywriting

Agencies that design websites make it hard to understand the value of pure content. This is because they usually charge for the end-to-end construction of your website’s main page(s). Content is just one part of that.

Even for agencies that just create content for websites, predicting the cost of content marketing isn’t easy. We know some content creators who may charge $25,000 for one page but that’s clearly at the upper extreme of the spectrum. 

Mostly, you’ll find your costs placed at $3000-$4000 per page. But this could mean expenses of up to $20,000 for your entire site. That’s not practical or feasible for most small or emerging companies.  

Getting content for your landing page will cost you $1 a word at Smemark, with editing included. We just require a base order value of $1000. For a standard site having 5-7 pages, our total estimate may equal $2000-$4000.

This means that companies of all sizes can afford our content marketing rates and achieve the highest ROIs too.

Cost of top to middle of the funnel content writing/blogging

Variability in the cost of content marketing is one thing that can be expected across all its facets. That remains true here as well. We know you can get a blog post, 2000 words long, written for $100. Maybe some writers will do it for even lesser! Let’s ponder over that for a bit.

A blog that big usually requires 6-7 hours to be completed. SEO and other web optimization practices take additional time.

There’s just one way the person writing your blog is going to be able to provide for themselves. They’ll do their work quite hastily. Content that shows off the best parts of your company can only come from compensating the creators justly. $2000+ for a similar blog article is a quote from the higher end of the range.

$700 is the standard price for a blog of 2000+ words at Smemark, and this covers editing too. So here, it’s approximately $0.35/word. Our content marketing pricing is based on the amount of content. 

We may charge $150 if you need a small piece of 300-400 words. A lengthier post of 3000 words may cost around $1050. You may even have specific needs based on your content plan, such as bite-sized posts or digital books of 5000+ words. That’s no issue as we can provide exactly what you ask for.

Cost of social media content marketing

Generally speaking, the monthly cost of content marketing on social media lies between $1000 and $20,000. The price is mainly decided by what services you receive. Here are some things you need to keep an eye out for:-

Content creation and channels: Which social media platforms can your marketing partner work with? What’s the expected volume of content per week? It isn’t necessary to be present on every platform. But managing your costs to be consistent on one of them, if not more, is advisable.

Audience involvement: Does your marketing partner organize promotional events and reach out to influencers? Do they interact with your buyers and respond to their queries regarding your business? Or do they just post a couple of daily tweets and await their payment? Their efforts must completely justify their content marketing charges.

Performance surveillance: Is your team constantly tracking relevant search queries and posts where your business/merch is referenced? Do you receive feedback on how widespread your posts are getting? Will you be informed when there’s a buzz around a new launch?

Publicity: Social media is the ideal venue for your blog posts, official press statements, news of social events, etc. to reach more people. You’ll want an agency that helps you achieve the other goals in your content marketing plan, through social media.

The starting price of our social media bundles is $3000 a month. You can get a two-in-one social and PR package for $6500 a month.

Cost of updating old content

A skilled digital content creator will aim to provide you with content that stays relevant to people for a long time. But you still mustn’t let your old content stay exactly the same.

You could change parts of an existing article to give it a better chance of showing up in Google’s featured snippet box. You could also include new information to attract more visitors.

There may be a need to review and update your homepage content so that you’re in tune with the latest SEO tactics.

Else, you may even have to completely revamp your design or retell your vision.  

It’s easy to predict the cost of content marketing if you just want some old content to be modified to appear higher on the search page. For this, Smemark charges the same as creating fresh content for sites.

But for new and improved SEO practices or in-depth content analysis, we need to know what’s involved in the project to determine a content marketing pricing plan. 

Summing up: cost of content marketing

The objective cost of content marketing is not what’s important. The amount you want to invest in it, is.

In content marketing, what you receive depends on your expenditure. With a lot of money, you’ll get loads of content and people to distribute it.

If you operate on a smaller scale, you will have to understand how to stretch your pennies to get the most out of them.

Money is a significant issue. But you must see that there’s more included in the cost of content marketing than just some written material. You’re also spending to attract attention to your brand and website and increase sales.

A good agency will go beyond creating usable content. They’ll develop a content plan that includes viewer engagement and optimization for Google. This way, your company gets maximum exposure.

For 360-degree content marketing solutions, we at Smemark are available at a starting monthly price of $10,000. Under this, we cover content creation, content planning, public relations, and social media marketing. 

Reach out to us to learn more about our content marketing pricing and see how we can get you to your marketing targets.

Did we miss anything? Do you have a better idea about the cost of content marketing? Do you have any questions or comments? Share your thoughts below in the comments section.