How much will it cost?

This is a question I get quite often, and my response is always the same; it depends. It depends on your unique situation. But before I explain some of the factors that go into determining your situation, let me begin by pointing out some things which make my business model different from what you might have found when speaking with other agencies that offer search engine marketing services. 

The term search engine marketing (SEM) encompasses both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC). See the article entitled SEO versus PPC for a detailed comparison of the two methods. Each method has its pros and cons, but the point I want to make here is how most agencies charge for these services and the perceptions most people have about them.  

Most agencies price their services as a monthly fee. This has two distinct advantages for them. First, it sets your sites on the longer term, meaning when you can expect meaningful results and second, it commits you to paying that fixed monthly fee even when the campaign matures and the agency's actual costs are much lower.  

My business model is different. I charge by the hour ($100/hr). If you need to keep your monthly expense to a lower fixed cost, that’s fine, it will just take longer to get the job done. On the other hand, if you want to reach your goals and begin reaping the benefits as quickly as possible, we can proceed full speed ahead. Whether the work is done over the course of a week or several months is largely up to you. Then, when the campaign matures, your costs are reduced because my workload is reduced.  

So when you ask the question, “how much will it cost?” I won’t be answering with a fixed monthly amount unless you need to stick to a budget. My response is more likely to be about how much work will be required and how quickly you can expect to see results.  

Here are some of the factors that determine how much work will be required and therefore what the cost will be: 

• How many products do you want to promote or how many ways are prospects likely to search for your product? The implication being, the number of keywords needing to be created and managed.

• Do you already have an established PPC account with Google or Yahoo? If we need to go through the account creation process it will take additional time.

• What condition is your account in? Should I try to fix what you have or start from scratch? It’s often difficult for me to determine this until I have had a chance to make a thorough analysis of your account. Obviously, the bigger the account, the more time it will take.
   

• How many separate geographic markets do you serve? If you serve a local market, chances are there will need to be at least two campaigns, a local and a national. The local campaign has keywords like “widgets” and the national campaign has keywords like “dallas widgets”.
   

• How many networks do you want to appear on? For example, the way you create and manage a search campaign is different from how you create and manage a content campaign. Then there is the question as to how many search engines do you want to appear on; Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
   

• How involved do you want to be in the process? If you are the kind of person who wants to know what’s going on and why or you want me to coach you so you can eventually manage the account yourself, it will take longer and cost more.

It's rare that I can get a client's account created (or fixed) and to a mature state in less than ten hours of my time ($1,000). So if that figure concerns you, we are probably not a good fit. Perhaps you would like to see what I consider to be My ideal client.