Last updated on January 13th, 2023
Marketing is tough – and I’ve seen plenty of businesses with great ideas struggle to get off the ground because their marketing strategies were a bit lackluster.
There is no denying that marketing is important for all businesses out there but for small and new businesses, working out how to market your business in the most effective and efficient way possible is incredibly tricky.
As a result, a lot of small businesses turn to marketing packages for help.
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But what are marketing packages? What do they offer? And which ones are the best for your small business?
Here, I am hopefully going to answer all these questions by going through everything I know about marketing packages and what they mean for small businesses. This way, I hope to provide you all with valuable insights that could potentially help kick off your business’s marketing.
The Importance Of Marketing
Firstly, I’d like to talk a little about marketing and why it’s so vital for companies and businesses.
As a digital marketer, I have been in this industry for years now but now and again, I still meet business owners who do not want to put a lot of effort into their marketing or are very dismissive towards the idea of putting more into their marketing.
One of the biggest reasons why is due to budgeting restrictions.
A 2022 study found that inflation led to marketing spending to decrease by 42.3% and with a looming recession predicted to in 2023, 74% of chief marketing officers (CMO) have said they have already seen or are facing budget cuts during 2022.
The same thing happened in 2020 during the COVID19 pandemic as 44% of CMOs reported budget cuts during the same year. It’s clear that whenever businesses want to tighten their budgets to increase their profits, marketing is one of the first places they start making cuts.
This is really surprising to me as I believe that marketing is an incredibly important part of running a business, and without a robust marketing strategy, a business can collapse.
A 2022 study into causes of startup failure found that the main cause for 38% of startups was the failure to generate new revenue – and to generate new revenue, you need marketing.
Marketing is defined as the activity businesses do in order to promote and sell their products and services.
It ranges from audience and market research right down to customer service, building a main website for your business to creating a presence for it on third-party platforms like social media.
Basically, it’s a business’s main activity that helps it generate new revenue to keep operations running.
Increasing customer acquisition is a primary concern for nearly half (49%) of businesses and customer retention is an objective for 82% of customer relationship management teams – and marketing is a key element for achieving these objectives.
This is because marketing involves actively engaging with customers through different channels and marketers will research their audiences to find out what new customers want and what existing customers need in order to keep coming back to the business for more.
Marketing is also key to helping businesses set up a brand and maintain its reputation. Branding is important for businesses as it can help businesses feel more authentic for its customers and help build their trust in the company.
As 46% of consumers say they purchase more from brands they trust and 88% view authenticity as important when choosing what businesses to support, a good marketing strategy could be the difference between reaching these consumers or missing out on their support!
So, marketing is important for businesses but owners are still very wary to invest more into their marketing due to costs. This means that businesses are looking for ways to reduce their spending in marketing without losing its efforts – and one solution I think I may have is marketing packages.
What Are Marketing Packages?
Marketing packages – what are they and how could they benefit small businesses?
Well, it’s no surprise that small businesses are a little more restricted when it comes to funding than larger enterprises. In 2021, most businesses invest around 6.4% of their company’s revenue into their marketing budgets which isn’t a lot of cash – especially if you are running a small business.
This is where marketing packages come in.
Defining Marketing Packages
Marketing packages are basically ‘bundles’ that marketing platforms and providers offer that include lots of different resources, tools, and materials that businesses can use to carry out multiple marketing campaigns and strategies.
They come in all shapes and sizes, and allow businesses to offload some of their marketing practices and activities to third parties.
How Marketing Packages Work
Marketing packages are usually sold by marketers or marketing platforms, who offer their experience and knowledge to help take over some of the marketing activities for businesses.
What you receive in your marketing package all depends on services the marketer or marketing agency offers, as well as what you explicitly want and request during your package consultation.
This can range from building websites, designing logos, setting up email campaigns, optimizing websites, building a social media presence, etc.
I will go more in-depth into this topic later but for now, marketing packages can contain all kinds of marketing services and resources but they vary from provider to provider.
Some agencies and marketing platforms will often sit down with their clients (that’s you), discuss what their goals are for their company, and then use this information to recommend the most effective marketing strategies they have to offer.
These optimal marketing strategies can then be sold to the client under one price as a ‘package’ – and the provider gets to work building them up on the client’s behalf.
Others may offer pre-built packages with a set number of features and services, and it’s down to the client to choose the one that best suits their business needs.
The Benefits Of Marketing Packages
Marketing packages offer a bunch of benefits to small businesses.
Firstly, they can help reduce costs in marketing – a big concern for businesses at the moment. This is because marketing packages require either a monthly or annual fee, and that’s it.
It’s much easier for small businesses to stay on budget, they don’t have to worry about hiring additional employees, and it reduces operational costs too because a different company will be building your marketing strategies for you.
Secondly, marketing packages are the more efficient option for a lot of small businesses.
This is because small businesses often have a much smaller pool of employees to help with marketing efforts and campaigns. Small businesses want to ensure these employees are being productive as possible but repetitive, menial tasks can eat into their work time.
Around 40% of employees say they waste a quarter of their working week on repetitive tasks, and these tasks could include updating your business’s social media regularly, creating written content for websites, sending emails for marketing campaigns, etc.
Opting for a marketing package could solve this issue by handing over these tasks to a marketing company, and leaving your employees free to focus on more important work.
Another benefit is that by choosing to use a marketing package, you are getting your marketing done by marketing specialists and experts.
There are approximately 32.5 million small businesses in the US and when it comes to naming challenges these business owners face, conducting market research is a main struggle for 75% of them.
This means that small business owners are likely struggling with their own marketing efforts as they don’t necessarily have the in-depth knowledge and qualifications behind them to back up their decisions.
Marketing packages allow businesses to hand over their marketing to more qualified and experienced marketers. This means that the quality of their marketing improves and it can become much more effective, helping to generate sales and retain customers.
What Marketing Packages Can Offer Small Businesses
The term ‘marketing package’ is incredibly broad and does little to define what exactly you can get out of a marketing package.
This allows marketers, platforms, and agencies to build their own marketing packages to contain whatever services they like – and for clients, it means a lot of research to find the right one.
However, some marketing packages are pre-built with its services and features decided by the provider, while others are built by clients so they can add whatever marketing services their business needs.
Here are the kind of services that different marketing packages can offer and the categories they often fall into.
Digital Marketing Packages
This type of marketing package is arguably the most widely available (and popular) out there. I’ve seen quite a few small businesses pick up this kind of marketing package in order to help them set up a digital presence because it really does cover all your basics.
Digital marketing is all about creating an online presence for your business and carrying out your marketing efforts through the power of the internet.
A lot of other marketing packages I will be discussing later sometimes do come under the wider umbrella of ‘digital marketing’ but in this instance, digital marketing packages usually contain services related to web development, branding, and paid per click (PPC) advertising.
A website is a must for small businesses, with 98% of US small businesses currently having their own websites. However, getting that website can be a long, tedious journey.
It can take over two months to make a website, and that is two months that a lot of small business owners do not have to spare while trying to juggle other aspects of their business.
Not only that but a poorly designed website can also have a negative impact on your conversion rates and bounce rates.
According to a 2020 survey by GoodFirms, 38.5% of web users judge a business by how their main website looks – at a glance. This means your website only has a split second to make a positive impression on your visitors.
Not a lot of business owners have the skills and knowledge to build a beautiful website for their business, yet alone come up with their own designs for their business’s branding.
Another report found that having a consistent brand can help increase a business’s revenue by 20% and as a result, increasing brand awareness is now a top priority for 45% of businesses.
Digital marketing packages can help businesses set up effective branding by designing logos for their clients, building their website for them, and also setting up engaging advertisements through platforms like Google and Facebook.
These services are great for improving a business’s audience reach and it handles a lot of tasks that require skill and experience in web development and digital marketing – things that some small businesses may be sorely lacking.
SEO Marketing Packages
SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is crucial for helping businesses become more visible online.
Search engines rank the websites it suggests to its users and each one has their own criteria of factors that contribute to a website’s ranking.
As for 2022, Google has 83.84% of the world’s search engine market and it uses over 200 different factors for its search engine ranking. In order to reach the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERP), you need to ‘optimize’ your website so it is more trustworthy.
Getting to the top of SERP rankings is so important because over 25% of search engine users click the first recommended website. Another study found that the websites who fell onto the second page of Google’s search results received 0.63% of clicks!
So, if you want your website to be visible online, you need to optimize it.
SEO can take months to learn and even after years of working as a digital marketer myself, I am still learning new things about it as the internet grows and adapts.
As a result, small business wonders do not necessarily have the time and resources to fully learn and understand SEO inorder to optimize their website – and so marketers have created SEO marketing packages to help address this issue.
SEO marketing packages offer services that help optimize your website for search engines in order to help make it easier to find online.
This includes services and features such as review building to help build backlinks, keyword research and analysis, improved user experience through increasing your website’s speed and load times, improved headlines and metatags, image optimization, and so much more.
All of these can help improve your website and boost your click through rate which, in turn, can help your business generate more revenue.
Social Media Marketing Packages
There are currently 4.59 billion social media users in the world (that’s roughly 58% of the world’s population,, by the way) which means that one great way for businesses to find and target their audiences is to use social media.
Approximately 75% of internet users admit to using social media to research products and this means that businesses could discover a lot more leads if they make a presence for themselves on social media.
The largest social media platform is Facebook, with an average of 1.96 billion daily users. So, it’s no surprise that Facebook also ranked the best social media platform for marketing investments, quality leads, and return on investment paid aids, in HubSpot’s 2022 social media marketing report.
Businesses using social media also opens up the opportunity for links to be built with influencers (as 61% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations), become a platform for direct customer engagement, and a place where businesses can ‘listen’ in on what their customers are saying regarding their own brand, their competition, and their products as a form of feedback.
Social media marketing is agreed to be effective for 77% of businesses, but it can take a lot of time and effort.
74% of consumers expect brands to post at least once a day on each social media platform, and most businesses have a presence on more than one social media platform – so that’s a lot of social media content your small business will need to post for this marketing strategy to take effect.
This can eat into your employees’ productivity but luckily, there are social media marketing packages to help provide a solution for this.
Social media marketing packages will offer to take control of your small business’s social media efforts. This includes generating posts and content, and publishing said posts regularly and across multiple social media accounts.
These packages will often access social media marketing consultants, analysis and reports into the success of your social media marketing campaigns, profile optimization and designs, and more.
The main benefit I find from this kind of marketing package is that businesses can outsource their social media management to help boost employee productivity.
Your business’s social media accounts will get regular updates and content while you and your employees can focus on other more important tasks and activities.
Content Marketing Packages
Content marketing plays into SEO as it helps make content (usually in the form of blog posts, videos, and more) to help stimulate more interest in your business and help others find your website.
According to the latest B2B content marketing report, approximately 67% of marketers agree that content marketing helps generate leads and as a result, only 7% of B2B businesses don’t plan on developing a contempt marketing strategy.
The issue with content marketing is that it involves a lot of research and planning, along with workers with strong writing skills and other content creation skills to actually make the content.
As a result, around 84% of marketers outsource their content creation – and marketing packages can also take over those activities!
Email Marketing Packages
The final type of marketing package I will mention here is email marketing.
Email marketing is all about creating a direct relationship with your clients by sending them emails to inform them of business events, reminders relating to abandoned carts, invoices, and even a simple happy birthday message!
Email marketing is very popular with marketers, with around 1 in 2 media planners utilizing it with more growth expected with each passing year.
Around 62% of small businesses use email marketing to help reach customers, so it’s clearly a popular marketing choice for small businesses like yours!
However, it involves a lot of management and research to help make your email marketing more personalized. This can eat into employees time and reduce their productivity.
As a result, there are marketing packages which offer automated emails, email marketing research, and generation reports to help you make informed marketing decisions.
Best Marketing Packages For Small Businesses
The truth is that there is no single ‘best’ marketing package out there for any business. This is because each business (big or small) will have their own needs and goals when it comes to marketing.
Not only that, but there are lots of different packages out there that each offers amazing benefits and services to its clients.
As a result, I am going to go through some of the best marketing platforms I have worked with that also offer different marketing packages for its clients. Some platforms offer more than just one, others have great but more limited marketing packages available.
I am not saying that one is better than the other – these are just some recommendations to inspire you to work out what you want from your marketing package and give you some idea of what is on offer out there.
So, let’s jump right in.
WebFX Digital Marketing Packages
WebFX is a huge digital agency with tons of different services and softwares available. They have a lot of digital marketing solutions on offer, and each package was built by award-winning marketers and developers who have plenty of experience in the industry.
The end result is a range of amazing, innovative marketing packages that offer solutions and services ranging from SEO to social media, email marketing to content marketing, and much more.
You have the opportunity to build your own package, adding only the services you want for your business, and not paying a dollar more for anything you won’t get any use out of.
The main concern here is the price. Even the basic rates for WebFX’s services are very expensive. This means that some small businesses (particularly those on tight budgets) may struggle to afford many of WebFX’s marketing services at the same time.
However, if you want a high quality service in one particular area of marketing (such as social media marketing, or email marketing), then WebFX definitely has an in-depth and high quality plan to offer you.
Customer’s Verdict
My online research found that WebFX has a really great online reputation with its clients and users. According to their website, WebFX has helped drive over $3 billion in sales and 7.8 million leads – those are some pretty big numbers!
As for reviews, many people online love to praise the excellent services and staff, their extensive and informative resources, and strong support and guidance offered from the WebFX team.
As for complaints, I was only able to find a very few, and these mainly concerned how long it takes for some campaigns to start to see effects – but that, in my opinion, is just a part of marketing.
As much as I would love to see instant results too, you need to be patient and wait for your hard work to pay off.
My Verdict
What I like the most about the marketing packages available on WebFX is how in-depth the services go. Everything you get in return is super high quality and at a glance, I could tell that real marketers and developers played an important role in their design and creation.
Overall, I was very impressed with what WebFX has to offer – but I wish their prices were more affordable to make more of their services available to more small businesses.
HubSpot’s Bundles
Another great platform for marketing and business software and solutions is HubSpot.
HubSpot has a great reputation online thanks to their amazing services and easy to use interface, which allows business owners and marketers of all skill levels to access and utilize their services with ease.
Their marketing packages work a little differently because they only really offer one. Their Marketing Hub plan offers everything small businesses need to start capturing leads and converting them into regular customers.
This includes services such as email automation and marketing, live chat to help improve customer experience and branding, advertisement management, and more.
However, it’s worth mentioning that HubSpot also offers a great CRM suite that helps small businesses manage their marketing, sales, and content all from one platform.
This makes it much easier for small businesses to track and improve their business’s performance, improve their productivity and streamline a lot of marketing processes.
So, you have the option to purchase a purely marketing package from HubSpot – or integrate a range of other features related to your sales and customer service together.
Price-wise, HubSpot’s starter Marketing Hub is perfect for small businesses and there’s room for scalability in the future – although the price jumps considerably between each plan!
Customer’s Verdict
Like with WebFX, HubSpot has an amazing online reputation with tons of great reviews and high ratings to back up its quality and reliability.
Most of the praise is directed towards HubSpot’s ease of use, high quality features and services, and super friendly support team who have helped many businesses find their feet with their services.
However, nothing is perfect and I spotted a few complaints and criticism when conducting my online research.
These complaints were mainly focused around some difficulty tracking data and customizing features such as landing pages or surveys. This is definitely something to keep in mind, especially when consistent branding is so important.
My Verdict
Whether you want to opt for HubSpot’s Marketing Hub package or upgrade to the more robust CRM bundle with additional sales, customer service, and operations features, is completely up to you.
Reputation wise, you can’t get much better than HubSpot as both packages offer high quality service that can seriously benefit your business. I am personally a huge fan of automation as it can really boost your productivity, so I loved seeing so much of it present here.
Odd Dog Marketing Packages
Odd Dog is a relatively small digital marketing agency which has been in business now for over 15 years, but their reputation has still yet to reach the heights of other companies like WebFX and HubSpot.
Despite this, Odd Dog has a great build-your-own marketing package offer that allows small businesses to access a ton of services and support to lift their marketing off the ground.
They offer a range of packages including a digital advertising package which provides clients with regular consultations to help them set up the right PPC ads for their business, a website package which offers help building a website for your business (including copywriting, branding, photography, UX design, and mobile adaptability services), and an SEO package which offers services including keyword research and tracking, copywriting, link building, and more.
Their built-your-own marketing package allows you to mix and match services so you can get exactly what you want and need without having to dip in and out of different packages. This can help businesses save a lot of money and have more control over the services they receive.
Speaking of money, because Odd Dog designs their services to help small businesses, their prices are much more affordable – although it does depend on how many different services you want to add to your package.
This means that the cost can build up quite quickly but on the other hand, this also means there’s a lot of room for scalability with your package.
Customer’s Verdict
Being a relatively little-known company (especially when compared to others like HubSpot), Odd Dog has a lot less reviews and ratings to research online.
Despite this, they still have great ratings across different platforms, with reviews praising the quality of the company’s services and how helpful and dedicated the team were with helping their clients get the most out of their services.
My Verdict
I’m always cautious when trying out smaller, lesser known businesses but I have also discovered over the years that sometimes, giving a small business a chance can help you find some real great services for a super low price.
This is true for Odd Dog as during my experience with them, I was really impressed with the quality and range of services on offer here. I just wish they were more visible with their pricing on their website.
Munro Agency Small Business Marketing Packages
Another smaller digital agency I decided to test out was Munro Agency.
This digital agency also offers a range of marketing packages that are designed to meet the needs of startups and small businesses, which means that their prices are affordable but their services slightly more limited.
There’s still plenty of services to choose from including SEO services (both local and international) with link building and keyword research features, social media services for automated content uploads across multiple platforms, copywriting services for blogging and article writing, plus a marketing workshop which helps you with competitor and industry analysis.
So, Munro Agency’s affordable pricing and range of services make them a very attractive choice for startups and small businesses – at least until your business is more robust and your marketing budget can afford to upscale to a larger package.
Customer’s Verdict
Like with Odd Dog, I struggled to find many testimonials, reviews, and ratings for Munro Agency – but what I did find was overwhelmingly positive.
Reviews came from businesses all around the world and the main praise was directed at the approachable, hardworking team who have helped a lot of business owners.
With great client support and very high quality services, I also struggled to find any criticisms or complaints about Munro Agency too!
My Verdict
I agree with the comments made online about how friendly and supportive the team at Munro Agency are as I truly had a great time working with them.
I also loved the range of services available here, especially the consultant package which I think could be a really informative and helpful plan for a lot of small business owners!
The workshop helps small business owners learn more about technology and planning when it comes to marketing, so even after your contract with Munro Agency is over, you can still take something with you in the form of a better understanding of marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Is The Best Marketing Option For A Small Business?
There are a lot of different marketing strategies available for small businesses and this huge range of options makes it difficult to decide on just a few to invest in and carry out.
As a result, small businesses are often asking which marketing option is their best chance of increasing their target audience and boosting their revenue.
The truth is that there is no ‘best’ marketing strategy that is sure to be a success for every small business. However, there are some marketing strategies which are more popular than others due to their many benefits.
These include:
Social media marketing
Email marketing
SEO and content marketing
The success of these marketing campaigns depends on your audience research, competitive analysis, and more. As you can see, there’s a lot of work that goes into effective marketing!
What Type Of Marketing Is The Cheapest Marketing?
Costs are always a big concern for business. One recent study found that the top reason why 38% of startups fail is due to a lack of new capital and cash and inflation is reported to be the biggest concern for 35% of small businesses.
So, more and more small businesses are looking for affordable ways to market their business.
There are lots of affordable marketing campaigns and strategies small businesses can do.
You can create your own business website for free on platforms like Wix or WordPress, you can attend industry events and network with other businesses, you can set up a customer referral program to help encourage your current customers to recommend their friends and family to use your business’ services, and create a platform for your business on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter.
These are just a few examples of affordable marketing strategies your small business can try out. However, although they may cost little in terms of funds, they each do require a lot of time, patience, and effort.
Which Marketing Platform Is Best?
There are lots of different marketing platforms out there and this can make it difficult for businesses to choose just one to help them with their marketing strategies.
As a result, I get a lot of questions asking which marketing platform is the best in my opinion.
Some of the most popular marketing platforms include HubSpot, MailChimp, SendinBlue, Zoho, and OmniSend, as they offer a range of different solutions and services all through one platform. I may go more in depth into this topic in the future, so watch this space!
Final Thoughts
To paraphrase a famous movie, marketing packages are like boxes of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get!
Because of this, small businesses need to do a lot of research to try and find the best marketing package for them. They vary in features and services, in prices, and in length – and some platforms even allow you to build your very own by adding or removing services and options.
This makes finding the right marketing package very difficult for a lot of small businesses.
Hopefully, the advice I have given above (along with my recommendations) have helped you understand marketing packages a lot better and given you a better idea of what you want out of yours.
Best of luck for your future marketing plans and remember – my inbox is always open if you want any more information or recommendations!
