Most agencies will not put a number on their website, which is exactly why you are here. So here it is. Digital marketing in Australia runs from roughly $800 to $17,700 per month depending on which channels you run, how big you are and how fast you want to move. That range is uselessly wide on its own, so the rest of this page breaks it into numbers you can actually plan against.
These are the same figures behind our digital marketing cost calculator, so you can build your own channel mix and get a monthly estimate in about a minute.
What each channel costs per month
Digital marketing is not one product, it is a set of them, and each has its own economics. These are the typical monthly bands for an Australian small to medium business.
| Channel | Typical monthly | What you are buying |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | $1,200 to $3,000 / month | Compounds slowly and keeps paying after you stop. The slowest channel to start and the hardest to switch off. |
| Google Ads | $1,500 to $5,000 / month | Fastest to produce enquiries, and stops the day you stop paying. Figure includes management, and ad spend can sit on top. |
| Social ads | $800 to $3,500 / month | Good for demand you have to create rather than capture. Creative quality moves results more than budget does. |
Content marketing, email and website conversion work sit alongside these and vary far more with scope, which is why we price them against a brief rather than publishing a band that would mislead you. For a channel-by-channel figure built around your own situation, the calculator is the fastest route. If SEO is the only channel you are weighing up, we go deeper on it in how much SEO costs in Australia.
What a realistic total budget looks like
Channels are rarely run alone, so here is what the common combinations come to. A small Australian business running SEO and Google Ads together typically budgets $2,700 to $8,000 per month. A full-service program spanning search, social, content, email and website improvements usually lands at $5,000 to $17,700 per month at a balanced level of ambition.
Below those numbers you are not running a smaller program, you are running fewer channels. That distinction matters. A single channel funded properly beats four channels funded badly every time, because only the first one generates enough data to improve on.
The question that changes the number: is ad spend included?
This is the single most common misunderstanding in agency pricing, and it can double what you thought you were committing to. When an agency quotes $2,000 per month for Google Ads, that very often means $2,000 to manage the account. Your actual ad budget is paid separately to Google, on top.
Neither model is dishonest. What is dishonest is leaving it ambiguous. Ask directly, get it in writing, and make sure you are comparing two quotes on the same basis before you decide one is cheaper.
How Australian agencies charge
Most work sits in one of three shapes, and each suits a different situation.
- Single-channel retainer, $800 to $3,000 per month. One discipline done properly. The right start for most small businesses.
- Full-service retainer, $3,000 to $10,000 per month. Several channels coordinated by one team, so the work compounds instead of competing.
- Project or percentage of spend. Projects suit one-off jobs like a migration or an audit. Percentage of spend quietly rewards an agency for spending more of your money, so read that one carefully.
Agency, freelancer or in house?
A freelancer is the cheapest way to run one channel well, and the riskiest place to put your whole program, because you have a single point of failure who also takes holidays. An agency costs more per hour and gives you a spread of specialists you could not afford to hire individually.
An in-house hire starts making sense when your retainer approaches a salary and there is genuinely enough work in one specialty to fill a week. The trap is hiring one generalist and expecting them to cover SEO, ads, social, email and the website. That is four jobs, and it usually ends with all four done at the level of none.
What should make you walk away
- A guaranteed number one ranking, or a guaranteed lead volume, from someone who has not seen your market.
- A proposal that will not say plainly whether ad spend is included.
- A twelve month lock-in with no performance break clause.
- Reporting that shows impressions and rankings but never enquiries or revenue.
- You do not own the ad accounts, the analytics or the website they build for you.
How we price at Vikilinks
We scope against what you need to achieve, then tell you which channels we would fund first and which we would leave until later. If your budget only supports one channel done properly, we will say so rather than sell you a thin version of five. Ad spend is always stated separately, and you own every account we touch.
Build your own estimate with the cost calculator, or look at how we structure digital marketing packages.
In short
How much does digital marketing cost in Australia?
Key takeaways
- Expect $800 to $17,700 per month overall, driven by how many channels you run rather than by agency choice.
- SEO $1,200 to $3,000, Google Ads $1,500 to $5,000, social ads $800 to $3,500 per month.
- Always ask whether ad spend is included. It is usually not, and it can double your real commitment.
- One channel funded properly beats four funded badly, because only the first produces usable data.
- Walk away from guaranteed rankings, hidden ad spend, long lock-ins and reporting that never mentions enquiries.