Deciding how much to charge as a Digital Marketer is a difficult question. You want to get clients, so maybe you should aim low, but you don’t want to cheat yourself out of earnings, so where do you set your price? A good rule of thumb is to consider what services you offer, how much those services are worth, and what prospective clients are willing to pay.
What Is a Freelance Digital Marketer?
Digital Marketers promote products and services on the internet through data-driven social media campaigns, email, paid and unpaid advertising, and website optimization. After determining a target audience, Digital Marketers use various tools to research the market and design a campaign to attract traffic to a website or mobile app. Freelance Digital Marketers are self-employed and work for numerous clients rather than just one company.
Most freelancers work remotely from their home or a shared workspace. The beauty of freelancing is that you are independent: you set your own schedule, rates, and work environment. You can live anywhere you choose and work anywhere you want as long as there is a good internet connection. But deciding where to set prices can be a challenge.
Working as a Freelance Digital Marketer
If you are just starting as a freelance Digital Marketer, you can find gig work on sites like Upwork and Fiverr. Many of these sites charge a fee once you are paid for a job. This can be as much as 20%, so you will want to factor that into your pricing structure. This can feel like a pinch, but an advantage of using these gig work sites is the large volume of business they attract.
Pricing Structure
Setting prices for digital marketing services can be difficult, especially when you are just starting out in your career. There are three common ways to set prices for freelance digital marketing services: by the product, by the package, and by the hour.
Product
Pricing by product means that you charge individually for services like social media posts, marketing emails, videos, or blog posts. The price can vary widely depending on the amount of experience you have. If you are just starting your career as a Digital Marketer, one strategy is to pick a niche and offer individual products within that area. You might offer to write an SEO blog post for $25 or to run an SEO audit on a website for $50. As you complete gigs and get good reviews, you can start to raise your prices. These prices are very low and that is on purpose. You are trying to attract clients who will give you a chance despite the fact that you have very little experience.
The more you work as a freelance Digital Marketer, the more your client base will grow. The more jobs you do, the more five-star reviews you will get, and this will move you up in the rankings and give you better placement on the webpage.
Package
Another way to set prices is for a package. Some popular package categories for freelance Digital Marketers are social media management and virtual assistant, email marketing campaigns, content creation and management, and complete digital marketing strategies. These services require a lot of work, so be careful not to take too many jobs at one time because you need good reviews and missing deadlines or sloppy work will hurt you.
Once again, many freelance Digital Marketers who are new to the field set their prices low to attract a few good clients to build up their reputation. Be sure to take any fees into account when setting your prices. Once again, prices vary widely for social media marketing from as low as $20 to $200 or more.
Hourly
The third pricing strategy is charging by the hour. This is not common in gig work, but if you have a digital portfolio on a website to promote your freelance Digital Marketer business, charging by the hour could work for you. Once again, if you don’t have much experience as a Digital Marketer, you could start low to attract work and collect screenshots to add to your portfolio.
You can start low at 0-$15 an hour and then work your way up from there. Once you gain some skills, expertise, and confidence, you can begin to raise your rates to $15-$25 an hour. After a few years, as you build up a client base, you can charge $25-$50, and when you have developed a reputation and a specialty, $50-$100 per hour is not unusual. Once you get to the point that you are charging over $100 per hour as a Digital Marketer, you aren’t really a freelancer anymore; you have your own boutique marketing agency.
Niche Prices
Your area of specialty also affects prices for freelance Digital Marketers. Copywriters and Content Creators can make between $16-$100 depending upon their level of experience. If you are an SEO Specialist, you can command $100-$150 per hour. Video marketing is very hot right now and freelance Digital Marketers who shoot and edit videos make between $19-$100.
Learning Digital Marketing
One way to take the first step to a Digital Marketing career is to sign up for a digital marketing bootcamp. Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Strategies Bootcamp covers the role of digital marketing in today’s business landscape, as well as how to design successful email campaigns, optimize websites and landing pages for conversions, and create content to drive traffic to your or your company’s website by engaging your audience. The SEO Bootcamp will teach you how search engines work, how to do keyword research and competitor analysis, and how to use SEO-driven content to increase web traffic. You can also sign up for a Google Analytics Bootcamp to learn how to set up an account, know which metrics to track, and understand the Google Analytics reports.
Another way to prepare for a career as a Digital Marketer is a digital marketing certificate course. Noble’s Digital Marketing Certificate includes the digital marketing, SEO, and Google Analytics bootcamps, plus Google Ads and classes on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter marketing, and content marketing with blogs. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
You can choose between full or part-time classes and classes that meet during the day, evening, or on weekends. When you successfully complete the course, you will receive a verified digital certificate of completion recognized by the New York State Department of Education that you can download or post on your LinkedIn profile. This type of certification can help you get a job as a Digital Marketer.
Conclusion
If you want to learn more about digital marketing careers, check out Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Certificate or Social Media Marketing Certificate. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online courses and attend from anywhere. Use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me to find other courses in digital marketing in your area.