28.5.13

How Professionals Set Their Digital Marketing Consultant Rates

By Ryan Lockhart


It has been noted that digital marketing consultants are trail blazers in today's modern way of marketing. Some people may seem to think that being a marketing consultant is easy. However, like other jobs and responsibilities, it also has its own challenges. One of which is how to effectively set digital marketing consultant rates that would not only meet the requirements of your clients but also grant reasonable compensation to your hard work.

However, some consultants are not good in giving reasonable charges to their clients. They are afraid to bid or ask because they do not have the idea on how much working hours it would take them. It is never wrong to be practical and direct to your clients, especially when you know your capabilities. There is nothing wrong in asking for the rates for digital marketing consultant that would compensate your hard work and experience in digital marketing even if you are still an amateur.

You do not want to undercharge nor overcharge your client. You just want to make the right price. So do we do it? Start making an annual salary target.

If you take $70,000 as your annual salary target, you have to count the number of weeks there is in a year. Normally we have 52 weeks all in all. However, you do not want to spend all your weeks in a year working. You will always have some weeks for vacation, special holidays or unexpected events. Let us just say you end up with 45 weeks allotted solely for work and you need to spend 40 hours every week. So, multiply 45 by 40 and you will get your total number of hours in a year for work, which is 1800. With 70,000 USD as your salary target, divide it by 1800 and you will get your hourly rate for the whole year. In this case you have $38.39 per hour.

However, you do not want to skip the actual (real-time) hours you work for your client. You do not actually work for him or her straight for 1800 for the whole year. Preferably, you might only be working for him by half of your 1800 hours because you need to spend 50% of it for marketing or administration. This time, you have to calculate your billable hourly rate for the actual time you need to spend for your client. Take 50% of 1800 which gives you 900 hours. So, $70,000 divided by 900 hours would give you a billable hourly rate of $77.78 per hour.

The digital marketing consultant charges strategy above also applies to project based work. You just have to estimate the total hours you might spend for the whole project. Always consider other factors not just the working hours you spend to your clients. Most importantly, have your own estimation of the number of hours for marketing and administration would consume.

Most marketing people make use of this calculation on consultant rates in marketing. Some are comfortable with daily fee and result based charges. Well, if you are new in the digital marketing arena, it is highly recommended that you take first the concept of calculation above before taking any further to result based charges, where you need to close a deal with a client. This will help you get rid of mistakes and will secure the agreement you have with your client. However, no one is stopping you if you want to jump into the difficult ways of charging your clients right away.




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