Digital project cost estimates – templates to use

Agency digital marketing budgeting template blog post image

Getting your digital project cost estimates right is paramount for the future profitability of any Agency. Underestimation of time, skills or external costs or missing off whole services areas (e.g giving away the upfront thinking for free) can cost you dearly. You are – or you employ – clever, creative people: make sure you recoup on the costs of that skill and experience.

To support your estimating work, I just created two digital marketing budget templates for the excellent Smart Insights website.
Job estimating / budgeting / costing : the terms vary in the industry but understanding a robust approach will pay you dividends.

The link above takes you to the Expert Member download page of Smart Insights. If you are not already a member and you work in digital marketing, I really recommend you have a look at the site and think about signing up (no, I’m not on commission).

Extract from Agency budget creation template
The two digital marketing budget template spreadsheets are designed for marketing agency staff who create digital project cost estimates for either existing client online marketing projects and campaigns or for new business proposals. They also may be a useful insight for client-side marketers.

The templates are spreadsheet-based, which is a good place to start if you don’t have a ‘job management platform’ in place. Actually, even if you do, it’s good to refresh yourself and the team in the ‘best practice’ of how to construct robust estimates (including looking at different remuneration models).

I mention that in the accompanying blog post:
5 Options for charging fees and paying for agency resource

And I also look at those job management platforms in a separate blog post: Budget Estimating and Time Management platforms for marketing agencies

As well as working with direct clients I also support and advise agencies on both specific projects and overall business processes and service propositions, please give me a shout if that’s an area you need support with.

2 thoughts on “Digital project cost estimates – templates to use”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.