Digital Marketing Pricing Survey | Get Gredo: Digital Marketing Consultant Rates

Digital Marketing Consultant Rates


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Average Digital Consultant Rates

The average digital marketing consultant charges $141.67 per hour.

Sometimes hiring a solo consultant is the right choice for a business, rather than hiring an agency.

Below the digital marketing consultant pricing table below, you will find a quick guide to thinking through whether a consultant is right for your business, or if going with an agency or even an in-house team could be the right move.

Here’s the pricing:

  • The average consultant charges $141.67 per hour.
  • 69.44% of consultants have a single project minimum under $3,000.
  • 73.49% of consultants have a monthly retainer minimum under $3,000 per month.
  • 34.94% of consultants have a monthly retainer minimum of under $1,000 per month!
  • 39.29% of consultants have no contract minimum length defined. Only 20% have a minimum of at least 6 months.

Should you hire a freelancer, a consultant, or an agency?

If we had a dollar of revenue for every time we’ve heard some combination of, “We need best in class talent for less than market rates, need them to do 6 channels on their own with no extra budget other than their paycheck, and we want a freelancer,” then we’d be a MUCH bigger business than we already are.

There are absolutely times where a consultant or freelancer is the right fit for a business. I should know – I drove millions of site visitors and millions of dollars in revenue to my clients when I was a solo SEO consultant getting Credo off the ground. They hired me to fill an SEO leadership and strategy role so that they could then further invest in SEO as a channel for their business, which often involved a further investment into a full-time SEO leader plus a team and budget to support it.

There are also times where a freelancer, or freelancers, are needed. Before we go further, let’s align understanding that for this section the definition of a freelancer is “an independent laborer who earns wages on a per-job or per-task basis, typically for short-term work.” (source)

Freelancers are usually solo individual contributors who focus on getting things done instead of working on the strategy level. Both are needed and the right role should be hired for the right job.

We see many companies who build out their various departments through some combination of full-time staff, agencies, consultants, and freelancers. If you have an internal team to manage freelancers and are satisfied with a team that is working part-time for you and also working for other clients, then freelancers can be a great choice and work very well. 

There are also times where an agency is the right fit for a business. Businesses who are ready to work with an agency usually have someone internally tasked with leading the channel or channels (or just the department overall), have a budget defined for the agency as well as for other things they’ll need to buy (software, etc) to make the investment pay off, understand how to manage an agency, and appreciate the value of an account manager.

In my mind and experience, if you’re not paying for an account manager then you are the account manager. Agencies are great for multiple channels under one umbrella. They’re a full team for often the price of one or two in-house hires.

This page last updated on March 15, 2023 by John Doherty

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