How much digital marketing costs per month: real prices

Ask what digital marketing costs and almost nobody answers with a number. They'll take your phone number, call you, run a free diagnosis and, three meetings later, a proposal appears. That route is designed so the price arrives once you have already invested time. This article does the opposite: how much digital marketing costs per month, with the figures on the table and ours published.

Why hardly any agency shows its prices

There are two reasons, and only one holds up. The one that holds up: not every business needs the same thing, so a fixed rate can fall short or be more than you need. The other: if the price isn't visible, the conversation starts in a meeting room rather than in your budget, and it's easier to move the figure up there.

We publish ours on our pricing page for a practical reason: it filters. Anyone who sees the figure and knows it doesn't fit doesn't book a call, and anyone who does book already knows what we are talking about.

What you are actually paying for

A monthly marketing fee isn't a licensed tool: it is hours of people doing specific things. When you ask for a quote, check that these appear:

• Content. Articles for your site and posts for your Google listing, written about what your customer is searching for.
• Technical maintenance. Hosting, backups, updates, and making sure the site doesn't break in silence.
• Reputation. Replying to reviews, keeping the listing current and looking after what people see before they call you.
• Campaign management, if you advertise: setting campaigns up, watching them and cutting what doesn't perform.
• Measurement. Knowing what brings customers and what doesn't, and deciding on that basis.

If a proposal doesn't separate these items, comparing is hard. Two identical prices can hide very different work.

The ranges you see in the market

Over the years the same three keep showing up around here:

• Freelancer by the hour: the cheapest and the most fragile. It works well for one-off tasks; if that person gets overloaded or leaves, the work stops.
• Small agency, monthly fee: the tier where most small businesses sit. It covers content, website, Google listing and campaigns, with one person you can call.
• Large agency or consultancy: broad teams and processes, with high monthly minimums. It makes sense when the volume justifies it; for a local business it usually means paying for structure.

The usual mistake isn't picking the wrong tier, it is comparing different tiers as if they were the same thing.

What doing it in-house costs

Before looking at fees it is worth putting the other side of the scale down. A marketing specialist with two or three years of experience earns between €22,000 and €28,000 gross a year in Catalonia. Add the employer's social security contributions, roughly a third on top, plus the laptop, the tool licences and the holidays somebody has to cover. The labour cost figures published by Idescat give a sense of the gap between the gross salary and what actually leaves the account.

And there is a detail that never appears on a payslip: one person doesn't cover SEO, ads, design, web and data. Either they specialise in one and the rest gets subcontracted, or they do a bit of everything.

Our prices, with no small print

They are published, monthly and plus VAT:

• Tu Landing, €100 a month. One page explaining what you do and collecting enquiries, with high-performance hosting and one mailbox.
• Tu Web, €200 a month. A site of up to ten pages, two mailboxes and one monthly article so it doesn't go stale.
• Presencia Básica, €400 a month. Hosting, website and email migration, ten mailboxes, three articles on your site and three on your Google listing, replies to every review, and GEO so AI tools mention you.
• Presencia Media, €750 a month. All of the above with fifteen mailboxes, five articles on the site, five on the listing, and management of Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns.
• Presencia Avanzada, €1,500 a month. Twenty-five mailboxes, seven articles on the site, seven on the listing, campaigns and two monthly social posts.

None of them ties you in: it is billed monthly and thirty days' notice is enough to stop.

Why prices are shown without VAT

Because a company reclaims VAT, so what matters when comparing is the net figure. On €400, €750 or €1,500 you add 21% on the invoice, as the Spanish tax agency sets out. If somebody quotes you a price without saying whether tax is included, ask before you compare.

Ad spend is separate

This one gets mixed up often. What you pay for a plan is campaign management; the money Google or Meta takes comes from you, on your card, and you decide how much it is. Google's own documentation explains how the average daily budget works and why some days spend a little more and others less.

Keeping them apart has one advantage: at any moment you know which part of your spend is work and which part is media. Handed to you as a single figure, you can't judge either.

What doesn't go on a monthly fee

Some services don't fit a monthly fee because they depend on what has to be built: custom software, process automation, AI integration and AI audits. Those are quoted per project and closed in writing before starting. Websites work similarly depending on the case; we break that down in how much a website costs.

How long it takes to show

It depends on the channel, and it is worth knowing before signing anything:

• Paid advertising: traffic almost immediately. Switch it on and visits arrive the same day.
• Google listing: usually the first organic thing to move, within weeks, because hardly anyone looks after theirs.
• Content and SEO: months. Articles take time to get indexed and to climb, and that work compounds.

So even without a tie-in, signing up while planning to stop in month two is money thrown away. If the horizon you can sustain is short, concentrate the budget on what gives signals quickly.

How to tell whether it is paying off

A price on its own says nothing. What decides is how much it costs you to bring in a customer and how much that customer leaves behind. Two divisions and a sheet of paper:

• Cost per new customer. Add what you pay monthly for the plan plus whatever you put into advertising, and divide by the customers who came through it. Pay €400, get four, and each one cost you a hundred.
• What each customer is worth. Not the first invoice: what they leave over a year, counting repeat business and the people they refer.

With those two numbers the conversation changes. It stops being "this is expensive" and becomes "this returns three to one, should I increase it?". And when a channel doesn't work, it shows early and gets cut without drama.

Choosing a tier for where you are

• Starting out and needing to exist: a decent landing page, a finished Google listing and little else. The spend is low and the work is specific.
• You have a site and want it to bring customers: content every month, a live listing and reviews answered. This is where most small businesses see the change.
• People already find you and you want to accelerate: add paid campaigns with their own budget and measure which channel brings what.
• You compete in a tough sector: all of the above with more content volume and social.

And if what you need isn't marketing but getting work off your plate, we'll say so: sometimes the investment that pays best isn't digital marketing, it is automating a process that is eating your hours.