Straight answers/What marketing costs
How much does digital marketing cost for a small business in Nashville?
The short answer.
Most Nashville small businesses pay for two things: someone to run the marketing, and the ads themselves. At Etch, running it costs $450 a month for one ad channel, $1,500 for ads plus email and social, or $2,500 for every channel with a live dashboard. Ad spend is on top, paid straight to Google or Meta, and most local businesses start with $500 to $1,500 a month.
So a realistic starting budget is about $950 a month (Starter with $500 in ads) to $3,000 a month (Growth with $1,500 in ads). One-time work, like a new website, is separate and usually small: our websites are $500.
What Etch’s plans cost.
Ad spend is paid directly to Google, Meta and OpenAI and never marked up. Plans start with a three-month setup period, then run month to month.
The three parts of any marketing budget.
Whoever you hire, the bill breaks into the same three parts. Knowing which is which makes quotes easy to compare.
- The work: the monthly fee for planning, building, testing and reporting. This is what an agency or freelancer charges.
- The media: the ad spend, paid to Google, Meta or OpenAI for clicks and views. It should go straight to the platform, in an account you own.
- One-time builds: a website, a brand, tracking. At Etch, a website is $500, brand creation starts at $1,500 and an AI audit is $500.
How much to spend on ads.
Start from what a customer is worth to you, not from what a competitor spends.
An illustrative example: if a new customer is worth $400 to you after the cost of doing the job, and your ads bring one in for $100, more budget is worth buying. If each one costs $500, it isn’t, and the fix is the ads, the page or the follow-up, not a bigger budget.
Most local businesses we work with start between $500 and $1,500 a month in ad spend. We recommend a number from your area, your margins and how much work you can take on.
What to ask any agency before you sign.
These questions are fair to ask anyone, including us.
- Is ad spend marked up, or paid straight to the platform?
- Who owns the ad accounts, the website and the data if we part ways?
- What exactly happens every month for the fee: how many campaigns, emails and posts?
- How long is the contract, and what does it cost to leave?
- Will the monthly report show calls, forms and bookings, or only clicks and impressions?
- Of the total each month, how much goes to fees and how much to the ads themselves?
Where a small budget goes furthest.
If the budget is tight, start where people are already looking for you.
- Your Google Business Profile. Free to run, and often the cheapest source of calls a local business has. It is included in every Etch plan.
- Answering every lead fast. Most jobs go to whoever replies first, so a text back in minutes can be worth more than more ads.
- Search ads on ready-to-buy searches. Pay only for searches that mean someone wants to hire you now, not every loosely related word.
Questions we get.
Is there a long contract?
Plans start with a three-month setup period, because the first month is spent building and the second learning what works. After that they run month to month.
Do you mark up ad spend?
No. You pay Google, Meta and OpenAI directly, and our fee stays the plan price when your budget grows.
Can we start with less than $950 a month?
Yes. Starter is $450 a month and the ad budget is yours to set. Some businesses begin with the Google Business Profile and fast lead replies before spending much on ads. The free checkup shows where a small budget goes furthest.
Who owns the ad accounts, the website and the data?
You do. We work inside your accounts, and if we ever part ways everything stays with you.
Do you only work in Nashville?
Our home is Brentwood and most of our clients are in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, where we can meet in person. We take on businesses farther away too.
Want a straight answer about yours.
The free checkup looks at your Google profile, your website, any ads you run and what AI assistants say about you, and sends one page back in two business days.