Digital marketing pricing and packages template
This is a digital marketing pricing template as an Excel workbook, with three example package structures and a retainer profitability calculator that works out your true margin, your effective hourly rate and the maximum hours a retainer can absorb before it stops being profitable. Prices are deliberately left blank, because a number copied from a template is a number you cannot defend.
- TEMPLATE
- XLSX
- EXAMPLE
- FREE
- Best for
- Freelancers and agencies setting or reviewing their prices
- Includes
- Excel workbook with calculator + price list structure (PDF)
- Time to use
- 45 minutes
Free to download and use in your own client work. No email address required.
Created by Alston Antony Senior digital marketing management, reporting and measurement Updated
Almost every “digital marketing pricing” page tells you what other agencies charge. That number is useless to you: it reflects their costs, their market and their positioning, none of which are yours.
This template does the opposite. It gives you the package structure, and a calculator that tells you the lowest price at which a given scope is still worth delivering.
Why the prices are blank
Deliberately. What a package should cost depends on your cost base, your market and how substitutable you are. A figure lifted from a template is a figure you cannot defend in a negotiation, and the moment a client pushes back you have nothing to say.
What the template gives you instead is a floor. Enter your real delivery cost and your target margin, and the calculator returns the fee below which the work is not worth taking. Price above that with confidence; refuse below it.
Digital marketing package examples
Three tiers is the practical structure. Most buyers pick the middle one, so the middle tier should be the one you actually want to sell.
| Package | Best for | Typical commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Small businesses with one main channel and no in-house marketer | 3-month minimum |
| Growth | Established businesses running two or three channels that need coordination | 6-month initial term |
| Scale | Businesses with an internal team needing senior direction and specialist delivery | 6 to 12 months |
The important design rule: the tier above should be visibly more senior, not merely more hours. “Growth but with more of everything” gives a buyer no reason to move up. “Growth, plus a named senior lead, quarterly roadmap ownership and a documented experimentation programme” does.
Retainer vs project pricing
| Model | Best for | What to watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing channel management that continues indefinitely | Scope creeps quietly — define a monthly hour or deliverable ceiling |
| Fixed-price project | Defined work with a finish line, such as a migration or audit | You carry the overrun risk; price discovery separately |
| Day rate | Advisory, training, overflow capacity | Rewards slow work; poor fit for long engagements |
| Performance-based | Mature accounts where you control most of the levers | You rarely control conversion quality, pricing or sales follow-up |
Performance pricing deserves a specific warning. It sounds like alignment and often is not: you take the risk for outcomes that depend on the client’s sales team, their pricing and their product. If you use it at all, tie it to something you genuinely control — qualified leads delivered, not revenue closed.
How the calculator works
Six outputs from four inputs. The arithmetic is deliberately simple so you can audit it rather than trust it:
- Delivery cost = hours × cost per hour + recharged software
- Gross margin = (fee − delivery cost) / fee
- Effective hourly rate = fee / hours — usually the most sobering number in the sheet
- Fee needed for target margin = delivery cost / (1 − target margin)
- Max hours at current fee = (fee × (1 − target margin) − software) / cost per hour
That last figure is the one to write into your contract. It converts “we’ll be reasonable about scope” into a specific number of hours, which is the only version of that promise that survives a demanding month.
Use your cost, not your rate
“Cost per hour” means what an hour of delivery actually costs you — salary plus overhead — not what you bill. Entering your billing rate here produces a margin figure that looks fine and means nothing.
Pricing mistakes to avoid
- Pricing from your costs rather than the value of the outcome — the calculator gives you a floor, not a price.
- Publishing an hourly rate, which invites clients to buy hours instead of results.
- Offering unlimited anything.
- Bundling ad spend into your fee, so your margin looks like their media budget.
- Discounting month one instead of reducing scope.
- No written ceiling on a retainer, so profitable months subsidise unprofitable ones.
Publishing a price list
You do not have to publish prices, but publishing a starting price filters enquiries usefully. “From £1,500 per month” costs you the enquiries that were never going to convert and saves you the calls.
If you do publish, keep the PDF structure and leave the deliverables detailed. A price with a vague deliverable list invites negotiation on price; a price with a specific deliverable list invites negotiation on scope, which is the conversation you want.