Digital marketing budgets range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands a month, depending on your goals and channels. Here's how the pieces fit together.
What drives campaign costs
Campaign type
Different channels have different price tags:
SEO: Typically $750–$2,500 per month
PPC advertising: Often $1,000–$10,000 per month
Content marketing: Around $2,500–$12,000 per month
Social media marketing: Roughly $1,000–$20,000 per month
Campaign goals
Awareness, lead generation, and sales campaigns all need different strategies and budgets. A launch needs more hero imagery. A retargeting campaign needs more practical product shots.
Target audience
Niche audiences often require more tailored creative, which increases costs.
Agency or in-house
Agencies charge for expertise and speed. In-house teams involve salaries and operational costs. Neither is inherently cheaper. It depends on your scale.
Where professional imagery fits
High-quality campaign photography is one of the highest-leverage investments in a digital marketing budget. The imagery you create once can run across your website, email, paid ads, organic social, and retailer listings for the life of the campaign.
My photography day rate starts at $6,500 and includes worldwide digital usage in perpetuity, so your assets can work across every digital channel without additional licensing fees. Print usage is negotiated separately.
How to budget for it
Define your campaign goals.
Research what similar brands invest.
Allocate budget across channels, with imagery as a foundational asset.
Build in a buffer for testing and adjustments.
A quick example
A skincare launch might allocate budget like this:
Campaign photography: the hero imagery that sets the mood
Product photography: clean, accurate images for product pages
Paid social: running the imagery to your audience
Email: using the imagery in launch sequences
The imagery powers everything else, so investing in it first often makes the rest of the budget work harder.
Want imagery that earns its keep? Let's talk.