If you’re thinking of working with an outsourced marketing agency, then you may be asking: how much will it cost? Generally, it varies depending on what you need.

A single content marketing blog could cost between a few hundred pounds to a thousand. A website project, between thousands and tens of thousands. A monthly agency retainer, up to £10,000 (according to Expert Market).

Therefore, setting your ideal budget is a collaborative process between you and your chosen marketing agency. In this blog, we outline 4 steps to help you create a realistic budget with your partner, plus some example cost structures.

4 steps to help you set your outsourced marketing budget

1. Understand your budget range

The first step in figuring out your budget is to determine what you can reasonably spend on marketing based on the business budget. Once you know that, the next question may be, ‘what should I be spending?’.

Before you’ve defined your goals, this will be hard to answer (see step 2). But there are some guidelines. The Annual CMO Survey shows that in 2024, marketing made up 10.1% of a company’s total budget on average. You can also look at industry-specific budgets to give you an idea about what people in your field, and at your size, are spending.

Overall, marketing spend is increasing and predicted to keep rising. Specifically, the CMO Surveys shows companies are investing more into branding (+7%), customer relationship management (+6.9%) and marketing new products and services (+12.4%).

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2. Define your commercial goals (or challenges)

Time to home in on your ideal budget. Your commercial and marketing goals should be the main steer here. If you know what you want to achieve, and how quickly, you should have a better idea of how much you need to spend.

For example, small incremental growth can be achieved with a modest investment. On the other hand, large-scale improvements or dramatic change will require a larger budget. For example, a regional go to market campaign or a rebrand project.

Not only does understanding your goals help define your budget, but it also increases your chances of good ROI. Without goals, you may end up burning money in all the wrong places. But if you know your ideal customer, your proposition, and your best performing channels, then you can optimise your investments.

If you don’t know these things, your marketing budget may be best spent on a marketing strategy project to help you figure it out.

3. Understand how budget will be allocated

Marketing isn’t just a single service; marketing is a kaleidoscope of activities. The benefit of outsourced marketing services is that you can get access to all of them. That’s why you should make sure you understand and agree on exactly what services your budget is going towards, and in what ratio.

For example, is the agency planning to prioritise SEO content writing? How much time is going into planning and strategy? Are there things your internal team can do in-house, freeing up your agency to lean into other avenues?

Another way to look at it is the 70/20/10 rule. Some marketers follow this approach to optimise results. Invest 70% of the budget in proven tactics; 20% to untested ideas; and 10% to high-risk, high-reward efforts. Others break it up 50:50 by long-term brand building and short-term brand performance.

The main thing is to make sure that whatever your budget is allocated to, it aligns with your goals and is adapted based on performance over time.

4. Consider additional costs

Finally, don’t forget that some marketing activity comes with extra costs. For example, ads budgets usually won’t be included in your regular contract cost. This is because it’s very dynamic. It will be dependent on your target audience, the advertising channel, the success of the campaign, and much more.

Also, anything that strays outside of whatever you have agreed to be ‘regular marketing operations’ could be quoted for separately. For example, planning and managing an event, paid PR, or a website redevelopment or rebrand.

Compare the costs of hiring in-house vs an outsourced marketing agency

Common outsourced marketing cost breakdowns

Campaign delivery + ad spend

Often, companies look to outsourced marketing agencies to support with lead generation campaigns.

In this scenario, costs will likely be broken down by campaign. For example, you may have separate costs for campaign stages such as brand awareness and brand consideration. Or, your campaigns and, therefore, your costs, may be broken into target audiences or regions.

Additionally, ad spend often sits separately. In other words, agencies will charge for the creation of the assets and the management of the campaign. But, the advertising spend is separate.

This is because this cost will be changeable depending on the performance of the campaign. For example, PPC costs are determined by how many people click on the ad – the more clicks the more money you spend.

Digital projects or solo services

Specific projects, like a marketing strategy or a new website, will likely be quoted as a one-off bulk cost. These kinds of outsourced marketing packages should define exactly what’s included within this cost as they are less flexible than a monthly contract.

Nevertheless, you can also negotiate payment instalments based on work delivered, or key milestones. You don’t have to pay the total fee at once.

Similarly, you may be after a specific service. For example, a social media marketing package. This will likely come in the form of monthly costs, but it will also cover a specific set of activities and responsibilities, such as LinkedIn strategy, posting and management.

Retained monthly hours

If your goals require multiple services, or you’re in a time of growth and change, a monthly hours-based budget may be your best option.

This allows your agency to flexibly allocate its time to the services you need, as you need them. One month you may get more design work, others it may be content creation and email marketing, or strategic support. An hours-based package means your budget stays consistent even if the work you receive changes. Plus, it can be quite a cost-effective option compared to hiring a team of specialists to handle the same amount of work in-house.

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Quick tips to help you optimise your budget

• Report consistently: track short-term and long-term performance indicators, so your agency can adapt if things aren’t working, or double down on what is working.
• Prioritise activities: invest in areas that will have the biggest cost to impact ratio, especially if you have a small budget.
• Know when to change: think proactively about when things in the company are changing, and how that might affect your budget. For example, is there a strategic launch happening that might need additional marketing support? Or are budgets being cut in the new financial year?
• Choose the right agency: your money won’t go as far with an agency that doesn’t know your industry or doesn’t have marketing expertise in the area you need. Instead, working with someone that aligns with your objectives can improve your ROI.

Our outsourced marketing packages start at £6K for access to a full-service team, from designers to strategist to content writers.