Many small businesses do not have an advertising budget for what I believe to be a few reasons. It’s not that they don’t advertise, but they just don’t know how much they should spend on advertising and online marketing. The sad truth is that in order to go from a small business to a medium sized business, you’ve got to have some knowledge of these things. In order for you to be a successful medium size business that outperforms your competitors, you’ve got to know exactly how much you can spend, and how much you should spend.
Website Costs
On average, expect to pay between $45 – $75 an hour for web design projects. This varies depending on the market you are in. Typically, you should expect to pay anywhere from $900 on up for a newly designed custom website depending on what you need to the site to do. For example, if you need a fully customizable shopping cart with multiple products and custom shipping options, expect to pay over $2,500. Web hosting is anywhere from $85 to $200 a year. We work with and recommend Media Temple. They are used by Sony, Nike, and Starbucks, and we’ve used them since 2006, and we have been very happy.
Search Engine Optimization Costs
Absolutely do not skimp out on this area of your online budget. For this type of work, for a 10-page website, you should allow 4 – 6 hours for the initial optimization upon launch at a standard rate ranging from $45 – $75 per hour. On a monthly basis, allow for 3 – 5 hours of ongoing SEO work, depending on how often and how much your website changes.
SEO work on your website can be done in a number of ways. There are entire companies that focus only on SEO, but it’s helpful to find a web development or design firm that can do the website project along with the search engine optimization for the site, like we do at Innovated Media. In my opinion, the company that takes care of the monthly updates for the website should be the same one that does the SEO, otherwise you’ll have two companies crossing paths and making different changes to the same website thus taking longer than it should to accomplish both tasks. Search Engine Optimization companies should have a thorough working knowledge of how to build and maintain a website, since the construction of a website has quite a bit to do with optimizing a site for Google and the other major indexes.
SEO companies that only know SEO and do not stay current on software upgrades, trends of web design/development, and programming languages are going to have a hard time when development knowledge crosses hairs with actual search engine optimization work. What happens if they make changes to the site and a loss in formatting occurs? Well, the website is broken until the developer that designed the site can go back in and make the necessary repairs, and again costing the client more money than necessary.
In short, make sure that the company you choose for search engine optimization work has a decent portfolio of websites that they have built as well as ones they promote. Having everything under one roof is the ideal situation. If you don’t believe me, watch this video from Brain Fitness Strategies, one of our clients.
Internet Marketing & Paid Ad Words Campaigns for Local Search
Local Search results is what you want to drive more traffic to your site, and leads to your business. Depending on how far out your definition of “local” is, expect to pay anywhere from $299 – $599 per month on a good, solid Internet Marketing Campaign for your business. Internet or Search Engine Marketing isn’t necessarily work being done to your actual website, but instead it is work that is done to promote your website and contact information to local directories, video websites such as YouTube, and through paid Ad Words campaigns.
It is smart to use an Ad Words Certified expert to handle your Ad Words campaign. Do not assume that your web developer knows how to do this, even if he/she tells you they can get it done. This is a particular skill that requires specific training and understanding in order for your money spent on the campaign to actually drive quality traffic to your site. Paid Ad Words programs can work well with a monthly Internet marketing campaign that provides content development, directory submission(s), customer reviews, and good in-bound links to your site, which are all important Search Engine Marketing strategies.
Since this type of work does not require access to your actual website, we encourage clients to use companies that specifically specialize in this type of work known as Local Search or Search Engine Marketing. Many of our clients use BizNDex, based out of Skiatook, Oklahoma. We monitored a 4-month campaign with one of our larger clients, LawnAmerica. As you can see from the results below, From Jan 1 – May 1, the website traffic went up consistently compared to the year before. This makes sense, because the campaign that BizNDex implemented for LawnAmerica was during this range of time.
What made the difference? It wasn’t so much the content that was added to the website and optimized – it was the Internet Marketing campaign that they used with BizNDex that included paid and organic benefits for local search results. The numbers speak for themselves.
Direct Mail, Billboards, Phone Books, and Print Advertising
Why are you reading this section? Stop spending your money on these advertising mediums!!!! You don’t us a phone book anymore, and neither do your customers!! How will you ever know if money spent on these things will ever yield a return on your investment? You won’t! Put your money towards something that will show you exactly what your budgeted advertising dollars are doing. That’s why we love Internet marketing, and it should be the reason you love it 
Video Production Costs
It’s not a fad or something to do that’s cool, Mr. Business Owner. Online video drives traffic to your site, and keeps them there. It’s proven that the amount of time a visitor spends on your website increases up to 7 times if there is a video on the landing page. Simply put? People want the content to come to them. If they don’t have to read, they appreciate the effort you took to accommodate their laziness to provide the information to them without them having to do anything. At least that’s my take on it. It falls right in line with creating the path of least resistance to help your visitors make a buying decision. A 60-second video spot can cost anywhere from $400 – $2,500, depending on the quality of the video you are looking for. Or you can go out and buy a Flip camera and see if you have a cousin or nephew that has figured out how to edit and upload videos to YouTube. It’s not rocket science. A last note: make sure the company you are working with knows about video production AND a little search engine marketing so they understand how the video should be promoted online in order for it to work.
Video testimonies are also a powerful way to help your visitors decide to you use instead of one of your competitors. It shows that you care about your company enough to provide testimonies of real people that have been satisfied with your product, and evidently they were satisfied enough to take time out of their busy schedule to say something about your product or service. Oh yeah, and the testimony (what they say) is important to (haha)! We’ve had scores of new clients in the last 3 weeks decide to sign with us because of a video testimony that we put out from Brain Fitness Strategies.
Bottom line: if you aren’t using online video, you are way behind and need to stop avoiding it.
In Closing
Stop advertising the way that you used to, even 6 months ago! The world, the Internet, and mobile devices are changing the way that people look for your product and service. Stop ignoring social media and thinking it’s just a way that your employees can waste time while they are on the clock. Its not a fad – it’s how people communicate now. Stop referring to Internet marketing as “spending money on our web page” or “Internet thingy.” Even though you will hire a company to do this work for you, you yourself should know at least a little about it so you can choose the right company that will fit you and your organization well. Otherwise, you could get taken by an online company that has shady business practices and only interested in your budgeted ad dollars. It’s best, in my opinion, to go with a local service provider for these services. Go buy a book about Internet marketing for medium size business owners, and look through all of the analytical data that they provide, and read the case studies that they did. Don’t be ignorant when it comes to redirecting advertising dollars that you were considering using for a half-page phone book ad to use online instead. Know what you are doing before you pull that trigger, or you’ll walk away thinking it didn’t work, when in reality you just didn’t know what you were getting yourself into, and had unrealistic expectations.
