SEO and Online Marketing - pay how much?

[caloomba]

Hello All - this is my first post :) Be gentle :D

Apologies for the ridiculously long post. I hope I'm not being too presumptuous with my question.

I've got a quick question relating to rates of pay for online/internet marketing but first of all it's maybe best if I give you a bit of background as to how I came to be doing internet marketing, my experience and therefore how much I should be charging this 'client'!

My current '9-5' job role is a Business Development role for a training provider based in Scotland. We're a fairly small operation in terms of the back office roles, but we have access to a huge amount of training resources so, in terms of the training delivery areas we offer, it's a fair old range of stuff. My role involves generating new business throughout traditional sales activities and also key account management. There's also a fair bit of marketing involved and as a result I've been doing my CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing.

At the tail-end of 2008, the company invested a significant amount of money in a new website as the old one was awful and out-of-date. For the record, I had no involvement in the specification for the new website. The web developers did a great job of the site structure and a good job of the mood and tone of the aesthetic design. However, the SEO and site useability (forms etc) seemed to fall by the wayside - really down to a change in staff in my company and the web developers.

So, to bring you up to date, in addition to my business development role, I ended up being responsible for:

maintaining the website (liaising with web developers if too 'techy'
improving the company's web presence
generally, resolving any site issues


Over the course of the past year or so, I have researched and implemented means of implementing means of improving the web presence and general internet marketing. As I had to continue with my regular business development role, the time I've been able to commit to this has been really limited.

Just over a year ago, visits to the site were poor and keyword performance was abysmal! In addition to this, conversions to good leads were also very poor.

Through my research and with a bit of guidance from some people, I have managed to improve the site visits significantly (tripling the number of visits - I can't get the exact date just now, Google Analytics is playing up!), greatly improving the number of conversions to course enquiries and course bookings and generally making the site a lot better...

I did the following:

submitted to DMOZ
keyword optimisation
chasing news articles to be put on site
implemented interal linking where possible and appropriat
enhanced customer engagement by improving forms
implemented new categories, such as who we work with, partners, associates etc
made use of email marketing software to send out emails outside the scope of regular campaigns
addition of a 'share' button (add-this) on appropriate pages
creation of profiles and pages on twitter and facebook
twitter feed on the front page
started a blog on wordpress
started a YouTube channel
put videos on the site
changed the focus of our twice-yearly marketing campaigns from print media to digital media
using web banners
using PPC through AdWords


Doesn't seem much for a year, but I haven't had much time to dedicate to this :p

Now, in less than a couple of months, I'll be leaving this job to basically go off and do my own thing for a while. My manager mentioned to me that, when I leave, there's going to be quite gap in the department when it comes to the skills I've applied to improving the website - I suggested to him that I could continue to do the SEM/SEO/SMO/website development as I'll have the time to do it. He's asked me to put a business case together for it.

I'm quite happy justifying the need for the internet marketing - quite confident in making the business case and 'selling' my skills (I'm a salesman after all ;))

However, I have no idea how much to charge as an hourly rate! And this is where I ask your advice.

Taking into account that:

I have made a vast improvement on the impact the website has on sales
I know the business and our market really, really well

BUT
my company know that I've only managed to gain my knowledge and skills in this area in the past year or so

what do you think would be a fair rate to charge to continue this work?

I'm putting a proposal together that has a range of suggested internet marketing activities which include:

SEO

in depth content analysis and optimisation of titles, keywords etc
making the most of local search and making the sure the site is ready for geo-marketing

PPC

management of AdWords campaigns
investigating alternative PPC providers to supplement AdWords
implementing a Link Building strategy

General website

pushing colleagues for news articles so we have three or so good news articles per week
good client case studies
a comprehensive website copy analysis
Conversion to enquiries/sales through Google Analytics (currently done manually!)

ocial Media Optimization

add appropriate pages on social bookmarking sites etc
blogging on appropriate platforms
establish an RSS feed so people can see new courses etc
good and worthwhile use of twitter and facebook


What would you expect to pay for this service?
If you work in the industry, what would you charge for this service?

I should add that I'd propose to be doing about four or five hours per week on this.

Hopefully someone can help

[zigojacko]

My fees are completely varied based on a ton of factors...

Size of website
Status of current SEO/PPC/Social Media etc
Work/time/depth of campaign required
Requested work/relying on my expertise

The list goes on...

[caloomba]

Thanks zigojacko

If I'm honest, I'm worried about underselling myself but I don't want make it too expensive so they tell me to bu**er off :eek:

The strange thing about this whole 'proposal', is that first of all I need to sell to the Director the fact that these activities need to continue...come across this before?

When you say size of website, I guess you mean number of pages?

[sirearl]

Competition.

Profitability.

Potential.

To many variables to give a one fit all price.

I know many companies do offer various fixed price package deals.

But one has to question the amount of commirment when working to a budget.?

Just remember that SEO is likely to increase a companies profits many times over if you are proficient.

Earl

[WeblinkPlus]

I would look at the lifetime profit potential of the average customer, and the amount of work involved. If you can come up with a figure that matches the hourly/daily rate you expect/willing to accept and is still profitable for the client, then that's your figure :-)

[I, Brian]

Personally speaking I found it never worked to charge per hour for marketing, but instead charge on a per project basis.

The benefits work both ways - the client pays a generally lower rate than per hour charging would demand, but it also allows the provider far more flexibility to apply what they need to and when to.

This is especially the case when some tasks will be more technically challenging than others, and therefore will require not necessarily more time, but certainly more focus.

A potential pointer that may be helpful - consider how many hours they asked you to focus on the above mentioned marketing activities, and how much they paid you. Now look at how much time you could offer them, and make the charge relative.

So if you were employed 40 hours a week for £20k per annum, and now you're offering to give them 20 hours, then from your employer pay you have a guideline figure of £10k per year, or £833/month.

However, note that employees are paid a lower figure than consultants, not least because consultants have more responsibilities and liabilities specific to the task, so you'd probably need to raise that figure to some either side of £1k per month - just under if you think they're budget is tight, ie, £970/month recurring fee - or if they can spare the budget, and are likely to make additional demands, then raise to around £1200 per month.

Even the upper figure gives you an hourly rate of £15/hour, which is definitely not what a consultant would charge on a per hour basis - but what you have instead is reliability and flexibility that suits you both, as well as guaranteed income to offset for costs, as opposed to chasing piddling little hourly-charged invoices every month as the workload changes (and can cause delays with payments due to the inability of the client to set up a standing order payment).

Hope that helps. :)

[RedEvo]

You might find this (http://www.redevolution.com/day-rates-explained/) quite useful. Others seem to.

d

[caloomba]

great stuff folks - all really good stuff to consider :)

thanks to all

[directmarketingadvice]

You might find this (http://www.redevolution.com/day-rates-explained/) quite useful. Others seem to.

d

Excellent article.

Steve

[caloomba]

Hi folks - hope you don't me asking (yet) another question.

I put the proposal together and all seems okay, however, I'm interested in finding out which metrics people use to determine the success of their site.

I want my work to see beyond the hits/month and look more at conversions to leads and sales.

What other metrics would you recommend including?

[sirearl]

Hi folks - hope you don't me asking (yet) another question.

I put the proposal together and all seems okay, however, I'm interested in finding out which metrics people use to determine the success of their site.

I want my work to see beyond the hits/month and look more at conversions to leads and sales.

What other metrics would you recommend including?

Look in the till.;)

what else.?

Earl

[caloomba]

Look in the till.;)

what else.?

Earl

:D

very good ;)

Should've said, metrics easily recorded and displayed in Google Analytics

[securians]

marketing in seo is called sem. sem majorly includes ppc and adwords. for that we need to pay money depending upon keywords