As someone that graduated in finance, it was on regular occurrence that people would be shocked that I ended up working in marketing.
You see, I grew up quite ambitious, always wanting to earn as much as I can. Always coming up with new ways to make an extra dollar.
As you can imagine, finance is where money is free flowing (hello Wolf of Wall Street), so why did I join marketing?
Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our comparisons and recommendations. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.
The average marketing graduate makes $40,000, compared to the common graduate salaries banks give out breaking the 6 figure barrier.
That said, I’ll explain why marketing is still worth pursuing, and when you work hard, marketers can still go toe to toe with the finance guys.
But on that later.
First, if you want to make proper money let’s start you off with making your first $1000.
How to sell marketing?
Before we drive into what you can sell, you need to know how to sell.
There are thousands of books and videos on how sell, but the following is the golden cherry of sales.
Whatever you’re selling, not just marketing, you need to put yourself in the shoes of who you’re selling to. Ask yourself, what benefits are they getting. And always put a dollar amount to that value you’re offering.
For $X, how much can they save?
For $X, how much more can they make?
If you can answer these questions and you can deliver what you promise, you’re looking at a bright future.
Social Media Management
Social media management was my first digital service I sold. The biggest benefit of social media management is that almost every business needs it, and if they don’t, then they’re at a disadvantage.
When you manage someone’s social media, you need to have two key skills: copywriting, to write captions that engage with the audience, and content creation, usually in the forms of photography or videography (or both).
Usually established businesses will hire someone full time to manage the social media channels, but for a smaller business such as the local cafe simply cannot afford to have a social media person working full time for them.
This is when you can come in, freelancing for them, where you can drop by the business once a week and film everything you need for the next week or so.
Then you can use a post scheduling tool such as Hootsuite so you don’t have to manually deal with the posts at certain times of the day.
Running this at scale with multiple clients can become a full time job, and even an agency.
Key features
- Every business needs it
- Expensive for businesses to hire someone full time to do the same job
Cons
- You need to film content yourself
- Photography or videography skills good to have
- Social media marketing work can be subjective, content that you spend effort creating can be turned down by the business owner
Pricing
You should start charging clients $1000 a month, and more depending on the quality of content you’re creating and the audience it is for. Keep in mind, if they hire someone full time to do so, they would need to pay around $5000 a month in salary.
Paid Ads Manager
Another popular service I offered at the start was paid ads, in particular, helping businesses generate leads though paid advertising on Google and Facebook. The biggest benefit of this channel is the abundance of resources readily available, so you can be
Key features
- Easy to learn
- Every business can benefit from more leads and customers
Cons
- High competition
- Stressful to maintain positive ROI results
Pricing
If you’re just starting out, you can charge a simple monthly management fee starting at $500 - $1000 a month, depending on how big of a marketing budget the client gives you. If the budget is any bigger, you can charge a % of the adspend, usually around 5-10%.
Reputation Management
As someone that has worked with a fair share of businesses owners, you’ll be surprised to see how much a negative online review affect a business. That said, you can help businesses manage their online reputation to help them get more potential business.
Reputation management has two main services:
- Dealing with negative reviews
- Implementing a strategy to get positive reviews
There are complete guides out there on dealing with negative reviews, but in a nutshell, when you see a negative review, you must reply to the review accordingly or if the review is fake, then you need to report it.
If you’re skilled enough, you can get in touch with local lawyers on how to reach out to the person leaving a negative review and threaten legal action.
For positive reviews, you will need to learn how to set up a review us automation to help the business actively get more reviews from customers.
Key features
- Every business requires it
- Direct dollar impact for your results
Cons
- Removing reviews is easier said than done
- Results can take time
Pricing
This service is very flexible, once you’re skilled enough, reputation management services can charge up to $1000 to remove a review (when legal action is required), but to simply manage and implement a strategy, you can charge $500 to $1000 a month.
Web Development
Web development is one of the most lucrative (but competitive) services you can sell. As another service that almost all businesses need, you can never have too little web developers.
With web development, you need to familiarize yourself on how to design, build, and manage them as well as the cost of developing a website from scratch.
Although the bottom end of the web development service pool doesn’t make much, once you learn more technical skills such as UX design or e-commerce builds, you can start changing a premium based on your expertise.
Key features
- Every business requires it
- Get paid upfront for your work
Cons
- Removing reviews is easier said than done
- Results can take time
- Non retainer pay structure (but you can offer on-going management fees)
Pricing
If you’re simply putting a theme on for the client and customizing it, you can start your rates at $2000 to $3000 depending on the level of customization and the content you need to produce.
If you’re skilled in programming and can build custom websites, market rates start at $8000 onwards.
SEO
Heard of SEO? Not many people have, SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the process of ranking up a website on Google. SEO is a multi skilled task and will take you longer than other services to master. From learning how to do keyword research to on page optimization to building links to fuel the growth of your website, there are many things for you to master.
If you do want to get into SEO and start offering services, the easiest way to get your foot in the door is to start your own project, in a niche that you have interest in.
Once you’re able to apply your learnings on your own site and rank it up, you can take it to other business owners and offer your service.
Key features
- Every business requires it
- Get paid upfront for your work
Cons
- Expensive for small business to get
- Need to manage client expectations
- Results are up to Google to decide
Pricing
One of the best perks of SEO is the ongoing pay structure - the retainer model. You can charge starting from $2000 a month for your services and only go up depending on the size of the business.
Final Thoughts
To wrap it up, selling marketing services can definitely help you make a quick $1000 and more. But if you’re planning to stay in the game for the long run, you need to make sure your clients get a positive return on the money they spend with you.