Do ‘Cheap’ Digital Marketing Packages Actually Work?
- 24 June 2025
- Marketing
- 15 minute read time
They flood your inbox. They clutter your browser. They ring you up when you’ve finally – finally – found a moment of peace.
That’s right, we’re talking about companies offering ‘cheap’ digital marketing.
The packages are always the same. Just under £100 per month for a ‘comprehensive’ digital marketing strategy that will ‘boost rankings, increase traffic and get your phone ringing off the hook’.
What’s not to like about that?
The answer is pretty much everything.
From harmful SEO practices to downright negligence, this article examines the real costs of cheap digital marketing.
What Should You Expect from a Digital Marketing Agency?
First things first, let’s set a baseline. What does a digital marketing agency need to do to have a real impact on your business?
While such a question is like asking the length of a piece of string, there are certain practices that every business should implement, regardless of the budget, objectives and competitiveness of the marketing space. These include:
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1. A well-crafted website that represents your business and encourages customers to pick up the phone
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2. Effective search engine optimisation in line with your budget, including SEO setup, technical SEO and offsite SEO
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3. Targeted paid ads that appear in the right place, at the right time and with a compelling strapline
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4. Content marketing (budget allowing) that helps users find your business and sells you as experts
Anything less and your efforts will likely be gone with the digital wind.
What £99/month Actually Buys
With the above in mind, what can cheap internet marketing packages actually deliver?
To put it into context, £99 per month is just over £3 per day. That’s about the price of your morning coffee or bacon sandwich (though probably not both!). Bearing in mind the agency needs to make a profit from this fee, that doesn’t leave much for marketing your entire business.
At best you can expect the following:
A Cookie-Cutter Website
Given the website is one of the first interactions customers have with your business, it can make a bad – and lasting – impression.
Search Engine (De!)Optimisation
A thorough SEO audit can run into the hundreds already; in fact, any SEO specialist worth their salt will charge upwards of £50 per hour. An hour or two per month might mean a specialist has the time to check your vital signs, but there will be little room for high-quality work that improves your SEO.
It might result in taking shortcuts with spammy SEO tactics, such as building low-quality backlinks. The result? Low organic search rankings or, worse, a Google penalty.
Set-and-forget Paid Ads (if any at all)
Given many small businesses spend hundreds of pounds per month on paid ads, even if you were to dedicate the entire budget to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, it wouldn’t go far. At best (and this is a stretch), it might allow for a couple of set-and-forget ads. PPC requires forward-planning, monitoring and continual adjustment, so such a strategy (if you can call it that) is just money down the drain.
Content Marketing that Could Damage Your Brand
The emergence of AI has enabled the production of cheap, quick content marketing. That means budget marketing agencies can promise reams of content at low prices. The problem? Quality. Not only will Google disregard generic or low-quality content, but blog posts that read like a robot’s shopping list will put off customers and cause harm to your brand.
Automated, Generic, Templated
The Real Cost of Cheap Digital Marketing
Ever had a customer go with the ‘cheaper option’, only to call you back a few months later to ask you to fix the mess? The same goes for digital marketing.
Here are three ways cheap digital marketing can end up costing you more in the long run.
Reputational Damage
We get it, putting up a plastic sheet is better than leaving a hole in the roof – but that doesn’t mean it’s a sustainable solution. While shelling out for digital marketing might seem painful, and £99 per month is an attractive sticking plaster, in the long term, it may do more harm than good.
A weak digital presence is worse than none at all. Consider this scenario. A local customer seeking your services looks up your business to find an outdated website, some blog posts that read like a public service announcement and an abandoned social media page.
That hardly screams a reliable and trustworthy business.
Are they really going to pick up the phone? Probably not, especially when your competitors have slick-looking websites and an active online personality.
A lazy online presence doesn’t build trust. It erodes it.
Wasted Time
Part of the reason why you’ve paid an agency to do your digital marketing is because you don’t have the time to do it yourself. So how is it that you have to spend hours chasing up results and trying to figure out why nothing is happening?
A good digital marketing agency will keep you up to date with your performance and remain proactive when the results aren’t meeting expectations. If you trust your agency and see the leads coming in, you won’t have to spend time poring through the data yourself trying to figure out whether you’re getting conned or not.
A cost-cutting agency will end up wasting you more time than you save.
Missed Opportunities
Competitors with more effective online marketing will happily snap up the leads that would have come your way if you’d had a more pronounced online presence. That means lost opportunity, reduced revenue and stagnating growth.
This point doesn’t need labouring any further – the ultimate downside of cheap digital marketing packages is that your business does not fulfil its potential.
Instead, quite simply, it suffers.
How Much Should A Local Business Pay for Digital Marketing?
While the exact amount you should pay depends on your objectives and the marketing efforts of your competitors, we’ve put together a whole blog post detailing a rough calculation regarding the typical costs of marketing for local businesses. Check it out!
But I Don’t Have a Huge Budget...
All this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to fork out thousands of pounds each month. If you’ve got a limited budget, here are some tips to set you in the right direction.
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Start small and smart. Focus on just one or two channels that actually matter. For most local businesses, that’s your website and Google Business Profile.
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Hire someone who understands your industry. They don’t have to be a huge agency – just someone who speaks your language. You want a marketer who has worked in your industry before, or at the very least, something like it.
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Look at ROI, not just price. A £500 campaign that brings in £5000 worth of work? That’s worth it. A £99 campaign that brings in next to nothing? You need to look elsewhere.
Are Cheap Digital Marketing Packages Worth It? Final Thoughts
The saying “You get what you pay for” has never been more true than with digital marketing. Cheap marketing packages waste your time, money and the potential of your business.
Find a trustworthy digital marketing partner, one that offers a tailored approach to your business at a reasonable fee. Assess the effectiveness of their approach, both in terms of growth and ROI. If something isn’t working, have an honest conversation. If they’re not able to do that, then they’re probably not the right fit.
And if you’re still not sure where to start – maybe ask yourself this:
Would you hire someone who promises the world for less than the cost of a coffee?
Exactly.
Need a Bespoke Quote for Your Business?
Here at Advance Online, we are proud to run the digital marketing of over 400 satisfied businesses. We know what to do to get the leads flowing to your business on a reasonable budget.
If you want to receive a bespoke, no-obligation quote, book a meeting with one of our team on the link below. We would love to hear from you.
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