The Salt Lake ValleyHand-picked Salt Lake County happenings, straight to your inbox. No fluff, no spam, easy to leave.
A marketing budget has four parts: the agency or employee who runs your ads and posts, the money that buys clicks, the local media you rent, and the website and software in between. Most owners only get quoted the first part. This guide prices all four with Salt Lake numbers, so you can add up a real monthly total before you sign anything.
Many small businesses set marketing at a share of revenue; an SBA blog post cites averages from 6.3% for B2B product companies to 11.8% for consumer service companies. In Salt Lake City, Sites by Sara publishes Google Ads management at $500 a month after a $1,000 setup, social posting from $450 a month, and bundled packages from $1,500 to $7,500 a month, and the ad spend is billed on top. A business doing $600,000 a year that follows those averages spends roughly $3,500 to $6,000 a month in total.
The SBA does not set one number. A 2019 post on the SBA blog says many businesses use a percentage of revenue as a guide, and that a startup should use projected revenue. It then cites two sets of averages. Web Strategies found average marketing spend of 7.9% of revenue in 2018: 6.3% for B2B product companies, 6.9% for B2B service companies, 9.6% for consumer product companies and 11.8% for consumer service companies. Small Business Trends put the average spend on advertising alone at 1.08% of revenue, with retailers near 4% and restaurants at 1.93%.
Run your own number through those averages. A Sugar House physical therapy clinic doing $600,000 a year is a consumer service business, so 11.8% would be $70,800 a year, or $5,900 a month. A Murray HVAC supplier that sells to contractors, at 6.9%, would spend $41,400 a year, or $3,450 a month. The same post says new businesses usually need to spend more to get known, and that consumer businesses budget more than B2B ones.
The SBA's business guide adds the rule that matters most after launch: compare what you spend on marketing with the revenue it brings in, and change the plan when the numbers say so.
Every dollar in the budget lands in one of four places. Each row below uses a published price or an official figure; the source is named in the last column.
| Part of the budget | What it pays for | Published Salt Lake or national figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency or freelancer fee | Running your ads, posts, SEO and website | Google Ads management $500/mo; social posting $450 to $1,250/mo; bundles $1,500 to $7,500/mo | Sites by Sara price list, Salt Lake City |
| In-house hire | A marketing employee on payroll | $64,670 median salary for a marketing specialist, $139,830 for a marketing manager | BLS, Salt Lake City metro, May 2025 |
| Ad spend | Clicks and views bought from Google or Meta | $5.42 average per search click, $66.69 per lead | LocaliQ 2026 benchmarks |
| Local media | Billboards, radio, print, mail, newsletters | About $4,800 per billboard per four weeks; $225 eighth page in the Deseret News; $0.26 a postcard by EDDM; $149/mo in our newsletter | Alluvit Media, Deseret News, USPS, our price list |
Most Salt Lake agencies quote after a call. We checked the sites of Found Local Marketing, Stay Wild Digital and Webtonic, all with Salt Lake City offices, and none list prices. Sites by Sara, based in Salt Lake City, publishes a full menu, so it makes a useful yardstick for what each piece of work costs here.
On its price list, Google Ads costs $1,000 to set up, including the first month of management, then $500 a month. Meta Ads cost $850 to set up and $375 a month. Social media posting is $450 a month for 5 posts, $900 for 12 and $1,250 for 20, on up to three networks. A 2 to 10 page WordPress site is $3,500, with hosting and maintenance at $150 a month. Its bundled Marketing Visibility Packages run $1,500, $2,750, $5,500 and $7,500 a month; the $5,500 tier is the first that includes Google and Meta ads management, and the $7,500 tier adds PR outreach.
SEO is usually the biggest monthly line. RedSEO in Salt Lake City lists an SEO Lite plan at $749 a month and full retainers from $1,500. Our guide to SEO packages in Salt Lake City compares those plans with the published tiers from Sites by Sara and Garit Boothe Digital in South Jordan. If you want names of firms that quote custom work, start with our list of marketing agencies in Salt Lake City.
Clutch, a directory that collects client reviews of agencies, publishes pricing summaries built from that review data. Its digital marketing guide, updated September 21, 2026, says the typical reviewed project costs $10,000 to $49,999 and that US agencies most often bill $100 to $149 an hour. Its advertising agency guide puts the average monthly cost at $9,890.93, with an average engagement of about 20 months.
Those averages describe the companies that hire agencies listed on Clutch, which skew larger than a single shop in West Jordan. They are still useful as a ceiling. If a Salt Lake agency quotes you $10,000 a month for one location, you are being priced like Clutch's average client, and you should ask why.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 8,250 market research analysts and marketing specialists in the Salt Lake City metro. In May 2025 their median pay was $64,670 a year, or $31.09 an hour. A marketing manager's median was $139,830, and a graphic designer's was $65,450. Payroll taxes and benefits come on top of those salaries.
Compare that with the agency menu. A full-time specialist costs about $5,400 a month in salary alone, roughly what Sites by Sara charges for its $5,500 package with both ad platforms managed. The employee works only for you; the agency brings a team and software you would otherwise pay for.
A freelancer sits between the two. A freelancer pays their own taxes, insurance and software out of the rate, so expect hourly quotes above the $31.09 median wage. Hire one for a single job you can check, such as setting up your Google Ads account or writing your service pages, before you hand over a monthly retainer.
A management fee pays the agency. The clicks themselves are charged by Google or Meta to your card. LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks, drawn from thousands of its customers' Google and Microsoft search campaigns, put the average click at $5.42 and the average lead at $66.69. At those averages, $1,500 a month in search ads buys about 276 clicks and 22 leads.
Your trade moves the number a lot. LocaliQ lists attorneys at $9.87 a click and $131.63 a lead, home improvement at $8.33 and $90.92, dentists at $8.00 and $72.97, and restaurants at $2.05 and $30.57. A Draper injury firm needs a far bigger ad budget than a Sugar House cafe to get the same number of calls.
Local media is priced per placement, not per hour, so it fits into the budget as its own line.
Billboards. Alluvit Media's average across 94 Salt Lake City boards is $4,802.13 per four weeks, and AdQuick's metro data puts static boards at $4,780 and digital at $3,590. Blip sells digital billboard time from $20 a day. Our billboard advertising guide covers the I-15 and I-80 boards and the city's ban on new digital billboards.
Radio. Salt Lake stations do not publish rates, but contracts in the FCC public file show KSL NewsRadio at $100 to $200 a spot on weekdays in 2024 and FM100.3 at $60 for a 30-second spot. The station-by-station numbers are in our radio advertising guide.
Print. The Deseret News 2026 rate card lists its Saturday paper at $225 for an eighth page in black and white, $510 for a color quarter page and $2,040 for a full color page.
Mail. USPS Every Door Direct Mail costs $0.26 a postcard in retail postage, with a 200 piece minimum. Mailing 2,000 homes around your shop costs $520 in postage before printing.
Newsletters. We publish The Salt Lake Valley and sell the ads in it, so read this with that in mind. It had 2,482 subscribers on October 31, 2026 and goes out Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with no more than three ads an issue. The Closer plan is $149 a month for the closing spot in four issues, Neighbor is $179 a month for a text mention in two issues, and Local Favorite is $539 a month for the top image ad. Plans run month to month. The full menu is on our advertise page, and a Local Directory listing is $49 a month. Our guide to where to advertise in Salt Lake City lists the rest of the options, from UTA buses to the Salt Lake Chamber.
These budgets add up published prices from this page. Setup fees are left out of the monthly totals and listed separately.
| Budget | Line items | Monthly total | One-time costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doing it yourself | Free Google Business Profile, $600 Google search ad spend you manage, The Closer newsletter plan $149, directory listing $49 | About $800 | None |
| One agency, two ad platforms | Google Ads management $500, $1,500 Google ad spend, Meta Ads management $375, $300 Meta ad spend, local SEO $850 | About $3,525 | $1,000 Google Ads setup, $850 Meta Ads setup |
| Bundled package plus mail | $5,500 visibility package with Google and Meta ads managed, $2,500 ad spend, 2,000 EDDM postcards at $520 postage | About $8,520 plus printing | Ask the agency; none listed for the package |
Ask every agency to split its quote into the fee and the ad spend, in writing. A $3,000 quote that includes $2,000 of Google clicks is a $1,000 a month agency.
Make sure you own the Google Ads account, the Meta business account and your Google Business Profile, with the agency added as a manager. If you part ways, the history and the data stay with you.
Give each channel its own phone number or promo code and check the count every month against what you paid. That is the comparison the SBA guide tells owners to run, and it is how you find out whether the $149 newsletter ad or the $1,500 of clicks brought in the work.
If you plan to write your own posts, emails and ad copy to keep the fee line small, our free AI 101 class shows how to do it with AI tools.