How Much Does Inbound Marketing Cost? Use This Tool to Calculate

Marketing requires a significant amount of time and effort. While there are tools available to help maximize your effort, you might still hesitate to use them - how much does inbound marketing actually cost? 

The cost of B2B digital inbound marketing varies widely based on your overall goals and the pricing package you choose. Today, we’ll cover what factors contribute to the price, including company needs and size, desired timeline for growth, and the range of specific services you select. 

A good starting place is checking out our digital marketing cost calculator. This gives you a personalized look at how various popular services, including B2B marketing costs, can boost your marketing.

How Much Support and Training Will Your In-House Team Need?

Before you commit to an inbound marketing plan, reflect on your company’s needs, its internal capabilities, and future goals. Consider these questions to help you with the decision: 

• Do you have the internal capacity, writing talent, and SEO skills to handle this in-house? Or would that be more trouble than it's worth?
  
  
• Would any third-party inbound marketing company you hire support your in-house team, or step in as your full team? Does that agency have all the services you need?
  
  
• Will you need HubSpot training or marketing and sales coaching? Are your training needs one-off, or an ongoing thing?

How Does Company and Team Size Impact the Cost of Inbound Marketing?

The size of your company can impact the amount you pay for inbound marketing. Larger companies typically have higher inbound costs due to more contacts, higher budget allocations, and more complex marketing campaigns. This will affect your onboarding costs, too. 

Smaller teams likely won’t need to pay as much. Their marketing efforts can be more focused and not as broad as those of larger companies. Plus, they will have a smaller fee when it comes to training and onboarding with fewer employees. 

Website size is another huge factor if you’re looking for a redesign or structural overhaul. More pages = more technical and copywriting work necessary.

Will a Faster Timeline Change the Price?

Just like with Amazon shipping, the quicker you want results, the more it will cost. Speeding up the pace of marketing efforts will require additional resources and more hours in a concentrated amount of time. 

Factors that may increase the cost include:

• Paid advertisements: To drive more traffic at a faster pace, using paid advertising is a great option while you’re waiting for your organic marketing efforts to bear fruit. 
• Rapid content production: Your price will increase when the marketing team has to create more high-quality content in a shorter amount of time.
• Additional staff members: The marketing team may need to add more staff to the campaign to reach the output goals of the quicker timeline. 
• Current website and CRM: Will the inbound marketing team have to start from scratch with your company’s website and CRM (customer relationship management) system, or simply improve what’s already in place? More time and staff may be needed, depending on the state of each.

That last one is big. If you’re starting from ground zero with no SEO authority and an outdated website, you’ll need a bigger commitment than a company with an established digital footprint.

What About Software & Platform Fees?

The home you choose for your website and CRM will dictate any recurring or one-time fees you owe. You’ll need to choose a website template, along with any add-ons or plugins you need to achieve the functionality you desire.

Your goals can help you identify exactly which platforms are best for your digital marketing. For website hosting, we almost always recommend HubSpot over platforms like WordPress. HubSpot’s digital marketing and sales pricing packages fall into the following hubs:

• Marketing Hub: An in-depth, yet user-friendly platform that supports businesses at each step of the buyer’s journey with its different CRM tools, designed to turn prospects into customers. These tools include: analytics, dashboards & reporting, automation, form generation, content creation, and social media management.
• Sales Hub: Provides customer and data management tools that help the team with the whole sales process. 
• Commerce Hub: A combination of tools allowing you to streamline the opportunity-to-revenue process and get paid through HubSpot, creating invoices, payment links, etc. 
• Content Hub: Helps you build and manage your company’s website. 
• Service Hub: Helps you seamlessly manage online and offline customer touchpoints. 
• Operations Hub: An ideal place to streamline your business processes through insights gathered from data. 

HubSpot offers four different tiers, each offering various levels of support for your team. These tiers include Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise, which you can read about in this article. 

(Related Resource: Your Guide to HubSpot Setup and Onboarding Services offers even more information on each hub and how they can help your company with its long-term goals.)

CRMs are no different than most other pieces of software out there – the more you pay, the more you get. Often, your monthly subscription is only part of the total cost. As you move up through payment tiers, you’ll unlock more capabilities. Be aware of these additional costs:

• Additional hubs: HubSpot hubs are a la carte. Each hub is an additional fee, depending on your subscription tier.
• Number of contacts: For certain hubs, each tier includes a set number of contacts. Going beyond that limit will result in an additional charge.
• User seats: In certain hubs, each tier also has a limit on the number of users per account. Additional seats will add cost. If your budget is limited, be sure to purchase seats for only those who truly need access.  
• Integrations: Some third-party integrations require an additional fee. For example, integrating Salesforce or Shopify in HubSpot will add an additional fee. If you’re using WordPress, expect to use a mix of free and paid plugins to achieve any decent level of functionality.
• Training programs: Fees may vary depending on the size of your team and the extent of the training and onboarding you need.  

How Much Does Inbound Marketing Cost? Depends on Your Journey

Inbound marketing is like a warm sweater that can incubate your leads, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. You may still be unsure which digital marketing agency pricing fits your company best – or whether you should even outsource at all. This is where an inbound marketing calculator comes in handy. 

Want to see how you can make your business run smoother? Try our marketing process discovery quiz: