What does your marketing really cost?
Agency, DIY or Scout7: what am I really paying for marketing?
Your numbers
Researching, writing, designing, posting, reporting.
Your estimate. Scout7 drafts and schedules; approving stays with you.
What Scout7 saves you a year
$46,200
Against doing it yourself, $39,692 saved; against an agency, $46,200 saved.
- Hours back a year
- 676 h
- Scout7 a month
- $442
- Doing it yourself
- $3,750
- Cash
- Your time
Each column is one month: what leaves your account, and the hours it takes you priced at $50 each.
That is 676 hours a year — about 85 working days you get back.
Benchmarks used
What this works out
- Monthly and yearly cost of an agency, including the hours you still spend managing them
- The true cost of DIY once your time is priced in
- What Scout7 costs on the plan you pick, plus your review time
- Hours you get back every year, and the difference in money
How it’s calculated
Every figure above comes from these steps, so you can check the working or run it by hand.
- 1
Price an hour of your time. Everything else in the comparison is cash plus hours times that number.
- 2
Agency: the monthly fee plus the hours a week you spend briefing, reviewing and chasing.
- 3
DIY: tool subscriptions plus the hours a week you spend researching, writing, designing and posting.
- 4
Scout7: the plan price plus the hours a week you spend reviewing and approving what it made.
- 5
Multiply by twelve for the year. The hours-back figure is the DIY or agency hours minus your Scout7 review hours.
Questions
Where does the agency fee default come from?
Ahrefs surveyed 439 SEO service providers and found agencies charging an average of $3,209 a month. Full-service retainers commonly run $3,000 to $10,000. Put your own quote in.
Does Scout7 really take only a couple of hours a week?
That is your estimate to set, not our claim. Scout7 researches, writes, designs, schedules and publishes; you review and approve. How long that takes depends on how much you ask it to make.
Are credits included in the plan price?
Each plan includes a monthly credit allowance and Scout7 tells you the cost of a job before it spends them. Heavy video use can need extra credits; the plan price is the floor, not a hidden number.
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