As a marketer, you might look at content marketing as a way to increase awareness of your brand, reach a new audience, and boost the number of leads you get. While the executives at your company might be open to the benefits of content marketing, they might also have more pressing concerns on their minds.
Among those concerns might be “What is this going to cost us?” and “What are the average content marketing rates?”
“How much is this going to cost?” might be one of the oldest and most persistent questions among content marketers and wanna-be content marketers. As the Content Marketing Institute observed way back in 2010, “it depends.”
Content marketing rates run the gamut from “dirt cheap” to stratospheric. When evaluating rates and the amounts charged by those in the industry, it’s important to understand what you get and why there’s so much variation.
Why Look at Average Content Marketing Rates?
You know what you can spend on content marketing. Looking at the various rates that creators typically charge helps you understand how much you can get for your content marketing dollar.
In 2018, the B2C brand spent about 22 percent of its total marketing budget on content marketing. According to the 2018 State of the Creator Economy Study (SOCE), the majority of marketers whose brands offered content marketing spent between $1 and $499,999 on content marketing.
Whether you have $100, $100,000 or $450,000, knowing what someone is going to charge you to write a blog post, develop a strategy or measure your content marketing performance will help you see how far your money will go.
Knowing the average content marketing rates can also give you some leverage to negotiate a budget boost from the higher-ups at your company.
What Does Content Marketing Typically Cost?
There’s some good news when it comes to content marketing rates. The amount that people typically charge is often considerably less than the amount marketers expect to pay. The price difference was noted in both the 2017 SOCE and the 2018 SOCE.
According to the 2018 SOCE, here are a few rates content creators typically charge (compared to what marketers typically expect to pay):
- Blog post: $329 (Marketers’ expectation: $1,129)
- Sponsored photo: $163 (Marketers’ expectation: $1,772)
- Sponsored video: $471 (Marketers’ expectation: $3,132)
- Sponsored Stream: $151 (Marketers’ expectation: $1,191)
There’s more to content marketing than content creation. It’s also worth understanding the average salary of people working in content marketing. For example, the median annual salary for a content strategist is $60,135. A content manager earns a median salary of $56,849. If you’re going to hire an agency, then monthly retainer rates start at $1,000 and go up to about $3,000.
Can You Negotiate Content Marketing Rates?
Everything in life, including content marketing rates, can be negotiated or adjusted to fit your needs.
For example, if you want to hire a content strategist or manager but can’t swing the $50,000+ salary, there are ways to find someone for less. You can hire a person with less experience or hire someone on a part-time basis.
When it comes to negotiating rates for content creation, the ball seems to be in your court. It’s a matter of adjusting your price perceptions downward. You can use the prices quoted in the SOCE as a jumping-off point.
It’s a good idea to make the first move when you’re negotiating content marketing rates. That way, you can set the anchor point as low as possible. For example, if you know that the average blogger charges around $329 for a blog post, you can open the negotiations with an offer of $250 per post. If you’re expecting to pay over $1,000 for a post, then you’ll still be coming out in the black if you end up paying more than $250.
Is ‘You Get What You Pay for’ True When It Comes to Content Marketing?
When you’re looking at content marketing agencies or marketplaces and reading over proposals and quotes from content creators or marketing professionals, is it always in your best interests to choose your team based on price?
Although it’s important to keep an eye on your budget and purse strings, it’s also important to be wary of rates that seem too good to be true. Super cheap content marketing, like cheap fast food or cheap fast fashion, might seem like a good idea at the moment. But the odds are that you’ll end up paying for it in the long run.
For example, if a blogger quotes you $15 for a post, then you might not get the most well-researched, well-thought-out post possible. You might end up with something scrapped together from a handful of other blog posts already published online or (worst-case scenario) something that’s identical to another blog post with maybe a few adjectives changed.
You might then be stuck either significantly revising the blog post or tossing it and hiring someone else.
In many ways, trusting your gut reaction when reading over a proposal or reviewing applicants for a content marketing position can be the ideal way to make sure you find the right person or team for the job without having to go way over budget.
If in doubt, contact the creator’s or agency’s references, and take a close look at their portfolio of work. You might also try negotiating a trial to see how your working relationship goes before making a long-term commitment.
With the right approach, you should be able to negotiate with the creators and marketers you want to work with to come up with content marketing rates that work for everyone.
