There are lots of posts already exists telling you the cost and whether Digital marketing expensive or not.  So I just keep it brief and straight to point.

At minimal what you need for Digital Marketing?

• Good quality Content
  • At least one blog post per week.

• Website optimization

• Keyword research

• Meta data research

• Link building (now a days its called link earning and that’s much better)

• Social media engagement

• Consultation and reporting typically monthly basis

What is the cost of Hiring Agencies?

• Agencies mostly prefer monthly fees

• Costs between $1500-$2000 month for minimal needs in Digital marketing
  1. Mostly includes
     • On average 10 Keyword research
     • Link earning up to 20 per month
     • Social media engagement limited to Facebook and twitter (mostly don’t include cost of content creation and graphics)
     • Monthly Consultation and reporting

• Costs more than $3000 per month if you want more services , I found some agencies charging $10k per month too.
  1. Mostly includes
     • On average 20 Keyword research
     • Link earning up to 50 per month
     • Social media engagement limited to Facebook and twitter (can include content and graphics)
     • Website optimization
     • Meta data research
     • Quality content (depends upon agency to agency)

What is the cost of Hiring Freelancers?

• Freelancers mostly prefer hourly or per project feed
  • Can be negotiated to monthly charges due to long-term requirement of Digital marketing.

• Cost
  1. Per hour cost vary between $50-$150 country to country.
     • For USA its $100 on average
  2. Monthly Charges between $500-$1500
  3. Mostly includes
     • On average 10 Keyword research
     • Link earning up to 20 per month
     • Social media engagement mostly limited to Facebook and twitter
     • Flexible Consultation time.
     • Monthly or fortnightly reporting
     • Don’t include cost of content and graphic

Who is best Agency or Freelancer?

• Agencies

  1. More experienced
     • Most of the agencies are formed by someone who have expertise in that field
     • Team work increase experience
  2. Expensive
     • Agencies are expensive than freelancers
     • Mostly do long term contracts to show results.
  3. Get everything under one roof.
  4. More Reliable
  5. Yearly Cost
     • $35000 approx.
     • Cost of web optimization
     • Cost of social media engagement for other than Facebook and twitter.

• Freelancers

  1. Less Experience
     • They might have good experience in one or two items of Digital marketing but they can’t be master of all trades
  2. Cheap
     • Instead of cheap I should say they are less expensive than Agencies
     • Don’t look for long-term contractors. Why? See point below
  3. Can’t give you everything under one roof. You might need to hire different person for SEO or website optimization or content writing.
  4. Less Reliable
     • Word of caution: try to hire local Freelancers.
     • Freelancers of some countries have bad reputation of leaving work in middle
     • Not easy to judge there potential
     • NDA’s can’t save you from data stealing
  5. Yearly Cost
     • $12000 approx. +
     • Cost of content (at least 1 blog post per week…50 blog post yearly).+
     • Cost of website customization +
     • Cost of social media engagement other than Facebook and twitter.

Conclusion:

With so many options in market, its hard to find a good result oriented Agency or Freelancer for your business Digital marketing.

On Average a business go through 3 different Agencies or Freelancers in span of 08-14 months to decide the best one for them.

One size doesn’t fit all.

You are the only person who able to see clearly what is your business needs.

However to know digital marketing help you or not is really a big question.

But your option doesn’t end here…. There are other options too… Like:

• Pay Per Click: Google ad words
• Lead Generation websites: salesxpert.me
• E-commerce stores: eBay, Facebook