How do I price/charge for a campaign for local business?

Their are a few threads on the forum that talk about this. Look up Jason Kanigan here he has discussed this in a few post. Don't forget to value what your time involved is actually worth. Being the cheapest will only ruin your business!

Only you know what your time is worth and only you, over time, can ascertain what the marketplace will bear.

All you can get in the way of answers, here, are an endless streams of personal opinions, based on nothing that has to do with your particular situation.

The only person that can effectively answer this question for you, is you! I can tell you $50. Someone else may say $100 and someone else, $150.

Which one of us is correct? Why?

Whatever you do, get paid upfront, at least 50% of the price.

Really OP is talking about two different things. Ad management is an ongoing expense while an optin is a one time deal unless it includes split testing, etc...

Browse competition sites that have the same/similar services, that will give you a ballpark range for prices. You can always tweak prices as you get established.

I would also advise you to factor in something for your overhead.

If you work at this for 40 hours per week, you may only have 20-25 hours of actual, billable time. If you base things on an hourly rate, add 30%-50% to that rate to cover your non-billable time (admin, marketing, bookkeeping, etc.)

As OptedIn wrote, you'll get personal opinions. Here's mine...

For a deal like this you are, as others have noted, actually providing two services -- setting things up and ongoing ad management.

Typical rates for ad management are 15% of ad spend. Depending on how much time you actually spend managing the ads after you have the campaign up and dialed in, you may want to adjust this.

For the setup phase, I'd look to what you've already done for your friend and document how many hours it took you. Multiply that times your hourly rate (which you do not share) and you have a per-project baseline. You can adjust this based on your judgment of the project particulars.

Quote a per-project price. There are two advantages to this.

One, many clients are more comfortable with a set price.

Two, as you become more proficient, your net per-hour rate goes up. Say you start out figuring a project at 10 hours at $50/hr (numbers picked to keep math easy), which is $500. As you become more proficient, maybe you can get the same project done in 5 hours, but you still charge $500. Your per-hour rate is now $100/hr. If you charged purely per hour, you would be penalizing yourself for getting better at your craft.

All that said, you are the only one who can fill in the actual numbers, based on what you need to make and what your market will bear. Just remember to charge based on the valueof the project, not some notion of the "going rate" on one of the race-to-the-bottom freelance sites.

Charge a monthly fee for each business.

I'd do a setup fee and then a monthly retainer. It protects you and can be less stressful for client budgets. Campaigns like this require updates and refinements over time, so you'll want to keep your hands on it to ensure the client sees value.

For pricing the setup fee, figure out your worst case scenario for set up time. This might be 20 hours and multiply by how much you want to make per hour. As stated, small business contracts can usually only handle $50-150 per hour.

For pricing the retainer, I'd just do a fixed price and not take hours into account (other than ensuring you won't dip below your minimum hourly rate). For reference, our PPC guy charges $800-1,200 per month to manage campaigns, make updates, and keep things going smoothly.

Hope this helps!
Alex Hughes
www.thecontentreactor.com

Your price is going to come down to a lot of things, but mainly:

How comfortable you are asking for your price vs. the perceived value of your service to the business

If they're local and depending on the business, they'll be comfortable with the $500 - $2500 range for ad management. I know of a company that does FB ad management for $50 a month as an add-on service.

I wouldn't touch any type of ad management for less than $1500 a month.

It takes a lot of work to set everything up so make sure you have some kind of compensation for that. I usually waive the setup fee for individuals that are able to refer other businesses to me that I successfully sign up.

Facebook and Google ads require budgets upfront so getting paid for the leads after ads were run is not a safe strategy. There is always a chance that your ads won't bring as many leads as you would have hoped for and so wouldn't be able to regain the loses.

I think the safest way is to have them cover the ad budget and go with a monthly retainer.

The amount you charge for yourself will really depend on how much is each client worth to them and how many leads you would expect to generate in a month.

Per always with money stuff, as you follow some of these practical tips, double down on feels fears aka lack aka discomfort with money in your life. If I ever feel a bit off when pondering pricing, I always go higher than the norm in my niche. This is an awesome way to get clearer on money and to allow in more cash, by facing and feeling your money fears.

Let me add this...

Start high. Like gravity, coming down is much easier than going up.

Have you done any marketplace comparisons? Have you called any marketing companies to see what they would charge you for similar work?


It's not a final strategy or 100% foolproof for your service fees . . . but it always sheds light on what the marketplace competition is charging and you can certainly adjust your own fees up or down as deem necessary.


Steve