As a company in today's warp-speed digital landscape, being present and active is a must, even in niche industries. However, staying ahead of creating content, tracking performance, and maintaining the site is hard – especially if your team’s poorly equipped for it all.
What’s an unprepared or overwhelmed marketing squad to do? Maybe it’s time to call in the experts.
Digital marketing training is a suite of services for leveling up an internal team’s skills in any or all of: content marketing, SEO, website development, content promotion, and paid ads. There’s something for everyone, though web marketing coaching isn’t for everyone – especially if your immediate budget is stingy.
What’s the cost of a digital marketing trainer? It depends on what exactly you’re paying for. We’ll help you sort out “typical” services and cost ranges below.
How Does Digital Marketing Training Work?
It’s important to first define what a marketing coach actually does, especially if someone with buying influence on your team is skeptical.
An inbound marketing trainer helps develop your ideal marketing team, covering experience and skills gaps. The goals are to get your team producing:
- Higher-quality marketing assets …
- … more efficiently …
- … with a more cohesive strategic approach.
Whether you’re looking to build a new team or coach up your existing team, inbound marketing coaches can bring consistency and “process” across the board.
Once you’ve hired a trainer, they’ll set up and lead workshops and conversations that align decision markers on marketing goals. From there, it’ll train your team on marketing best practices in:
- Strategic planning
- Content production
- Promotion
- Website development
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- Paid advertising
(Head to the Scope section below to see what each service entails.)
Depending on what you’re looking to do, an inbound marketing trainer may also:
- Identify an ideal transition path to replace an agency/freelancers with your team, and facilitate handoff
- Recommend and train you on marketing tools worth investing in
- Lead ongoing onboarding & training of new hires
- Report on the success & ROI of the partnership
- Support anywhere else you need it!
Once you know an agency’s “what” and “how much,” you can hire one based on the specific marketing or sales activities you need help with. A good digital marketing trainer will be flexible and help you in whatever ways serve your needs best, even if that changes month by month.
What Influences Marketing Training Costs?
The cost of outsourcing digital marketing, including training, fluctuates depending on several factors. Marketing training pricing will vary with the agency or consultant’s:
Scope
Think of coaching services like buying a cell phone. You could buy a $100 flip phone that makes calls, but it'll lack some basic and quality-of-life features you'd find on an iPhone.
Seeking outside help could mean hiring a single consultant to train your team on a certain skill. It could also mean hiring an entire agency with specialists in many fields. Or, your ideal solution (and price point) could be somewhere in between.
Inbound marketing training partners offer assistance in some or all of:
Activity |
A Coach Can Help … |
Benefits |
|
Strategy |
✏️ Refine target audience |
➕ Tactics are more focused, efficient, and data-backed |
|
Content Production |
✏️ Develop topics |
➕ More brand awareness |
|
Promotion |
✏️ Identify email, social activities that are wasting time/budget |
➕ Expands reach |
|
Website Development |
✏️ Optimize navigation & UX |
➕ Improves conversion rates |
|
SEO |
✏️ Identify great-fit keywords |
➕ More traffic |
|
Paid Advertising |
✏️ Channel selection |
➕ Reduces spend waste |
How many services will you need from your inbound marketing coach? If you’re only looking for help in a few certain areas, your bill will be smaller. If you’re looking for an agile agency with experts available in every aspect of marketing, prepare to pay more.
Quality
For digital marketing coaches who have been in the game for a long time, they likely know what they’re doing and do it well. Many of them, even in the B2B space, preach the inbound marketing approach:
|
OUTBOUND |
INBOUND |
|
Interruptive 📢 |
Participation is largely voluntary 🙂 |
|
Cold emails, trade shows, |
Educational content, SEO, optimizing for conversions 🧠 |
|
Sometimes highly targeted 🗣️ |
Always highly targeted 🎯 |
|
Low close rate 📉 |
High close rate 📈 |
|
Feels icky 🤢 |
Feels like teamwork 🤝 |
Good coaching services are collaborative, responsive, and open-ended. That includes customizing the pricing package so you’re getting the most value possible at the budget you’ve set. Don’t accept a bunch of extra throw-in services that inflate the price when you don’t really need them.
There are other flags you can watch for you as you choose a B2B marketing training agency or expert:
|
Green Flags |
Red Flags |
|
Keeps up with its own certifications and tools training |
Recommendations are nothing you couldn't have figured out yourself |
|
Is growing; has proof of happy clients |
“Trust me, bro” |
|
Is proactive in researching new solutions |
Waits for you to lead |
There’s one final, huge piece of how quality relates to cost: ROI. If you pay for good work, it’ll pay for itself over time.
Location
The cost of living differs between locations, and so does the cost of doing business. An agency whose HQ is in New York City will probably charge more than a freelancer calling in from her husband’s alpaca ranch in Wyoming. Both might accomplish the same work, yet have totally different expectations for your investment level.
Pay extra attention to the trainer’s location if you’d like in-person support. Some marketing training services are more valuable and efficient when everyone’s in the same room. Plus, some in-person camaraderie can strengthen the relationship and lead to everyone working a little harder for each other.
Market
What’s your industry or niche? Does the potential training partner have experience in it? Does it primarily work with B2Bs or B2Cs?
These are important questions to ask because they can all affect price point. They’ll also show whether or not a trainer has the knowledge to be a worthwhile investment. More expensive trainers may specialize in a certain industry or type of company.
Other situations where you might need to pay a little extra are high-stakes industries (i.e. medical tech) or especially lucrative industries (i.e. consumer electronics).
Typical Cost Ranges?
The cost of digital marketing training can vary significantly based on the depth and breadth of the services you sign up for.
Let’s break down the costs and ranges for various digital marketing training services. For the sake of consistency, we’ll use the example of a “typical” mid-price coaching agency for medium-sized B2Bs:
1. Content Marketing Coaching
- “Typical” Cost: $1,000 (monthly) or $750 (one-time)
- Cost Factors: Scope of coaching, which can range from basic content strategy to advanced SEO and multimedia content production; one-time session vs. recurring training.
A content marketing trainer can facilitate workshops and conversations that hold more value than any canned online course ever could. This training is at the implementer level, meaning you’ll learn how to execute content creation and promotion in a way that pleases both Google and humans.
For a more focused, immediate impact, you might prefer a one-off webinar or training session. Whether it's creating content that meets Google’s new standards, mastering advanced software functionalities, or using AI appropriately, the possibilities are practically endless.
2. Marketing Strategy Consulting
- “Typical” Cost: At least $1,000/month … but it’s up to you
- Cost Factors: Size of marketing budget and plan, how much needs “fixing”
With so much to balance in an effective online marketing plan, this one’s most likely to be an ongoing partnership.
Most likely, you’ll start with learning how to audit your current situation. That could include your:
- Site’s technical performance
- SEO
- Lead generation
- Brand awareness (i.e. LinkedIn presence)
- Trade show ROI
From there, you’ll learn how to set better goals, recommend more efficient and effective actions, and identify and react to successes and failures.
3. CRM Onboarding & Training
- Cost Range: $250-$5,250 (monthly) or $750 to $2,750 (one-time)
- Cost Factors: Complexity of HubSpot setup, number of users, extent of integration with other tools, customizations, additional modules.
Customer relationship management systems like HubSpot CRM are powerful tool sets for efficient, all-in-one marketing. But only in a pair of educated hands.
A HubSpot onboarding and support agency can guide you to using the tools effectively – and getting your team’s buy-in to using them!
One option for services is a HubSpot Certified Trainer – an individual who can tailor a training program to your business needs. Not only do the HubSpot Certified Trainers go through extensive training, but they are also required to hold the software certifications and use it nearly every day.
Finding a trainer is simple, HubSpot has a directory of trainers waiting to help someone just like you.
Similarly, a HubSpot Certified Partner is an agency that can offer trainers and coaches. With this option, you can leverage an entire company’s worth of experience and expertise on using the software to 100% of its potential.
Even More Marketing Agency Cost Considerations
This is a big investment, and not just because of the check you’ll fork over. There’s a lot on the line, and a lot of potential nuance to how you set up your partnership.
Other options and considerations include:
- Sales training: Why stop at marketing support? There are many options for empowering your sellers – HubSpot onboarding, sales enablement, and so on. Pricing factors include the training program’s length, number of participants, and whether you’ll need ongoing support.
- Hybrid services: Due to time and talent constraints (at least initially), you may prefer working with a player/coach agency. By that we mean one that coaches you while also tackling some of the day-to-day deliverables to keep your production humming.
- Consultation Fees: Some trainers charge initial consultation fees to assess your current marketing strategies and develop a training plan. Watch the fine print.
- Retainer Agreements: For ongoing training and support, some trainers offer monthly retainer models. These can range from $1,000-$5,000 per month depending on the level of engagement.
ROI – Returns of the Jedis
While understanding these costs is crucial, it's equally important to consider the ROI of learning with actual B2B marketing Jedis.
Effective training can lead to improved team performance, more efficient use of marketing tools like HubSpot, and ultimately, a significant increase in lead generation and revenue. (Just watch the jump between Year 1 and Year 2!) That means evaluating the cost should also involve an assessment of potential growth and efficiency gains from the training.
Make sure all stakeholders involved in the agency-shopping process know that sticker price discussions should always tie back to long-term ROI. Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.
What Would Your Training Plan Look Like in Action?
Somewhere along the way, B2B and industrial companies that long relied on face-to-face relationships realized that even they needed to go digital. After all, about 70% of buyer research happens online before ever engaging a salesperson.
The right guidance can turn these scary challenges into opportunities.
From overcoming your fear of the SEO bogeyman to creating lead generation-focused pages, you can learn much from the right digital marketing coach. Pricing a marketing trainer is about not just understanding what you’re paying for, but also how it compares to your 5-year outlook without proper help.
Want to see for yourself how inbound marketing coaching may or may not fit into your operation? Take our no-hassle quiz:
How to Audit your Online Marketing
If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
Without the tools in place to analyze and benchmark your efforts, it is impossible to scale your online marketing and ensure continuous success.
