Inbound Marketing Pricing: How Much Should You Pay in 2024?

What determines inbound marketing’s cost?

A few factors influence how much inbound marketing costs, including:

• Who manages your inbound marketing
• Who you hire to manage your inbound marketing
• How many inbound marketing strategies you use
• How aggressive you make your inbound marketing strategy

Let’s take a closer look at these factors

Who manages your inbound marketing

The most influential factor on inbound marketing’s pricing is whether you manage your strategy in-house or with the help of an inbound marketing company. An internal marketing team is almost always more expensive than an inbound marketing agency because of employee compensation and benefits.

How your business approaches this cost factor will depend on your company.

Some organizations, for example, have at least one in-house team member that focuses solely on marketing initiatives. Others don’t. Instead, the business owner works directly with the inbound marketing agency to follow their company’s campaign.

Who you hire to manage your inbound marketing

Skills and experience matter when it comes to the performance of your inbound marketing strategy. Hiring an in-house team member with only a few years of experience won’t bring the same results as working with someone at an agency with five or more years of experience.

If you decide to manage your inbound marketing in-house and focus on hiring people with five or more years of experience, you can expect significant increases in your inbound marketing costs. Generally, you won’t see the same price increase when working with an inbound marketing agency’s top talent.

Either way, experience is essential when it comes to getting the best results from inbound marketing.

How many inbound marketing strategies you use

Host your family’s next holiday dinner, and you’ll see your work increase for every dish you add to the menu. The same policy applies to inbound marketing strategies. The more strategies you use, the more time you’ll need to set aside.

Whether you manage your inbound marketing internally or externally, you will see a price increase.

Your inbound marketing costs will increase faster if you manage your inbound marketing in-house. Remember, internal management costs more than outsourced management — almost $100,000 more annually.

How aggressive you make your inbound marketing strategy

Ramp up your inbound marketing efforts, and you will need to invest more in inbound marketing.

For example, if your business takes an aggressive approach to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising by launching more campaigns, you will need to set a larger ad spend. If you don’t, your campaigns won’t have realistic budgets or bids, which will result in them underperforming.

While your company doesn’t have control over other inbound marketing pricing factors, like in-house management costs or inbound marketing agency prices, you can influence the aggressiveness of your approach.

In-house inbound marketing vs. inbound marketing agency pricing

Unfortunately, you can’t walk into the office one day and start an inbound marketing campaign. You must answer some critical questions first, like who will even build and manage the campaign? This question generally leads to another: Should I use an agency or stay in-house?

A variety of factors will influence your decision.

That’s why this guide includes a 360-degree comparison. Besides looking at the difference between an inbound marketing agency’s pricing and the cost of maintaining a full-size in-house team, the following table also considers the pros and cons of internal vs. external management.

Check it out!

Learn more about the unique advantages and disadvantages of each option:

In-house inbound marketing

Keep reading for a breakdown to the pros and cons of managing your inbound marketing in-house:

Advantages

The benefits of managing (and paying to manage) your inbound marketing internally include:

• Brand familiarity: When you build an in-house team of marketers, they are familiar with your brand. They understand your company’s overall goals, as well as brand tone, which can make getting started with your online marketing strategy easier.

• Accessibility: Internal marketing teams are also easy to access. Since they work entirely on your marketing strategy, you can connect with your in-house marketing department at any time, whether to share an update, request a change, or another task.

• Control: For some businesses, it’s vital to have complete control over a strategy like marketing. If your company prefers to have maximum control, then building and maintaining an internal marketing team will help you achieve that goal.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of managing your inbound marketing strategy entirely in-house include:

• Talent recruitment: Finding the right people to join your business takes time. The average time to hire, for perspective, is around 50 days. Depending on your company’s location, industry, and compensation, this process could take even longer.

• Employee costs: The average salary for an inbound marketer is around $52,000. Companies with 25-49 employees typically have a three-person marketing team, which translates to about $155,000 annually in salaries. This price point doesn’t include other employer costs, like taxes.

• Employee turnover: Turnover is another downside to internal inbound marketing management. You’ll likely experience the loss of some marketing staff, which restarts the cycle of finding, hiring, and onboarding new team members.

• Software expenses: Leading your inbound marketing efforts in-house makes your business responsible for any software costs. If you use an inbound marketing strategy like search engine optimization (SEO), for instance, you may invest in tools like Ahrefs to help your team.

• Capabilities: Having a three-person marketing team limits your company’s capabilities when it comes to marketing yourself online and offline. Your marketing department can only do so much, which can hold back your marketing strategy and its results.

• Scalability: Expanding your marketing efforts, like by launching more social media ad campaigns, lets you capitalize on strategies that work well for you, like social media advertising. With a smaller marketing team, however, it’s difficult to scale because of limited time and resources.

For many SMBs, it’s difficult to justify the cost and requirements of a full-size marketing team. That’s why many businesses opt to have a single marketing team member and support that team member with an inbound marketing agency.

Agency inbound marketing

Keep reading for a breakdown to the pros and cons of partnering with an inbound marketing agency:

Advantages

The advantages of managing your inbound marketing strategy with the help of an agency include:

• Cost: Partnering with an inbound marketing company is almost always more cost-effective than maintaining a complete in-house marketing team. You also don’t have to worry about the time and expense of finding, hiring, and onboarding the right candidates.

• Expertise: Top agencies can offer your business access to seasoned marketers. Since inbound marketing agencies revolve around marketing, they focus on hiring the best of the best so they can deliver clients (AKA, your business) with great results.

• Capabilities: Since inbound marketing companies focus only on inbound marketing, they’re generally more capable than an in-house team. For example, many agencies can access beta features on platforms like Google Ads, which can give your business a competitive advantage.

• Software and tools: Your company doesn’t have to worry about marketing tools when you partner with an inbound marketing agency. They will have access to the resources for building and managing your online marketing strategy.

• Specialization: Inbound marketing agencies generally specialize in several areas of inbound marketing, including search, paid, social, and email. Partnering with an inbound marketing company gives your business instant access to dedicated experts, which can help your strategy.

• Scalability: Adapting and scaling your inbound marketing campaign is easy when you work with a top inbound marketing company. A sizeable inbound marketing agency like WebFX (we feature more than 500+ team members) can quickly scale to your needs.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of using an inbound marketing company include:

• Location: Businesses that want a local partner for marketing themselves online will likely have limited options unless operating in an area like Los Angeles or New York City. If you do expand your search, focus on agencies experienced in working with companies across the country.

• Multiple clients: Inbound marketing agencies have dozens of clients. If your agency doesn’t partner you with a dedicated account manager, it can often make you feel neglected. That’s why it’s essential to work with an agency that takes a client-first approach, like WebFX.

An inbound marketing company offers lots of advantages, especially to SMBs. That’s why many businesses opt to partner with an inbound marketing agency because an agency can provide the resources and skills your business needs to make inbound marketing a success.