For a Quebec SMB, web marketing generally runs at 5 to 10 % of revenue: the lower end for an established company holding its position, the upper end for one going after market share. In money, that usually lands between $1,500 and $6,000 a month for a company of five to fifty employees, fees and ad spend combined, plus a one-off investment of a few thousand dollars for the website. All figures here are in Canadian dollars. They are orders of magnitude, and the rest of this piece explains why the real spread is so wide.
Three things make these numbers hard to compare from one supplier to the next: how they bill, where the line falls between fees and money actually spent on advertising, and the fact that the same service carries different names depending on who is selling it. We take them in that order.
Fees and ad spend: the confusion that distorts everything
This is the first thing to settle, because it explains half the apparent price gaps. When an agency quotes $2,000 a month, the question to ask is: are Google and Meta paid out of that? In one case you receive $2,000 of work. In the other you might receive $800 of work and $1,200 of media buying. The two offers have nothing in common, and they arrive wearing the same number.
Our position, and that of most serious suppliers: the advertising budget is paid directly by the client, on the client's own accounts, and fees are billed separately. It is the only structure that lets you see what you actually spend on media, and that lets you walk away with your accounts if the relationship ends. An agency that will not give you access to your own ad account is selling you something other than a service.
Three billing models, and what each one hides
By project. A fixed amount for a defined deliverable: a site, an audit, a rebuild. It is the most readable model, and the only one that suits a need with an end point. The risk is the classic one: whatever is not written into the quote is not included, and web projects drift mainly through accumulated additions.
Monthly retainer. A recurring amount for ongoing work — advertising, search, content, upkeep. It dominates, because that work has no end. The thing to watch is the definition of what gets delivered: a retainer with no list of deliverables and no frequency quietly empties out after a few months, without anyone deciding to.
Percentage of ad spend. Fees calculated as a share of what you spend on media, often 10 to 20 %. Simple, and badly aligned: the supplier earns more when you spend more, including when the right call would be to spend less. It has a case on large budgets, much less in an SMB.
A price means nothing until you know how many hours it buys, and who works them.
What each line item costs
The website. The widest range on the market, because the words cover objects with nothing in common: an adapted template, a bespoke ten-page site, a store with inventory management. What really drives the price is the number of pages actually written, the photography, and the integration with your tools — rarely the technology. Our packages run from $800 for a one-pager to $12,000 for a store; the detail is on the website design page and the level-by-level ranges in what a website costs in Quebec.
Advertising. Two separate lines: media budget, paid to the platforms, and management fees. For an SMB, a media budget under $500 a month rarely produces enough data to steer anything; most of the campaigns we run sit between $500 and $3,000 monthly. Where to put your first $1,000 covers the platform choice. On fees, our ad management starts at $500 a month with no long-term commitment, and the rate does not climb because your media budget climbs — which keeps anyone from advising you to spend more for the wrong reasons. If you would rather buy requests than management, our lead generation packages run from $1,200 a month for eight qualified leads to $2,950 for twenty-five, with a $750 setup.
Search. A monthly line, and a slow one: effects are measured in months, not weeks. The price depends almost entirely on the volume of content produced and the technical fixes required, two things a serious quote itemises. Be wary of very cheap search packages: at that price there is only budget left for an automated report. Our SEO and GEO engagements are $2,499 a month for a services business and $3,499 for an online store, on an initial three-month commitment. Before you pay anything, most suppliers offer a free audit: what it needs to contain to be worth your time.
Content. Articles, pages, emails, video. Billed per piece or on retainer. The easiest line to cut and the one that takes revenge most slowly: the effect of stopping only shows up a quarter or two later. The full reasoning is here.
Tools and upkeep. The line everybody forgets, and it runs all year: hosting, CRM, email tool, site maintenance. An SMB generally gets by on a few hundred dollars a month in total: budget $120 for maintenance and hosting on a brochure site, $150 for a store — see WordPress maintenance — plus an automation stack that stays under $150 monthly in most cases.
Agency, freelancer or marketing director: three prices for three things
A freelancer costs least per hour and covers one skill: someone excellent at advertising will not write your pages. An agency covers everything but bills for the structure, and you often speak to an account manager rather than the person doing the work. A fractional marketing director costs more than a freelancer and less than a hire, and exists mainly to decide — to arbitrate between the line items above rather than execute one of them. The detailed comparison is here, and our own version on the fractional marketing director page, at $60,000 over twelve months — on the order of 1 to 3 % of revenue for a company between $2M and $5M.
The most useful benchmark remains hiring. An experienced marketing manager in Montreal represents an annual salary on top of which you add payroll costs, tools and the time spent supervising. That number, not a freelancer's hourly rate, is the measure of what outside help is or is not worth.
The real price is cost per customer, not cost of service
A $3,000 a month service that brings in eight customers costs less than a $1,200 one that brings in none. Obvious written down, and still the most common mistake: people negotiate the fee and never measure the return. The number that settles it is the cost of acquiring a customer, fees and media included, set against what that customer is worth over time.
Cost per lead varies enormously by sector. In renovation, a typical cost per request sits around $25 to $45 and drops to between $3 and $12 when the campaign is properly tuned; in industrial B2B the same figure runs into the tens or hundreds of dollars, which is normal given the value of a contract. A concrete example of the gap between those two columns: a contractor who went from $28 to $2.44 per request, on an unchanged budget.
And if requests arrive but never become contracts, no renegotiated rate will fix it: the cause almost always sits downstream of the campaign.
Four questions to ask before signing
Who actually does the work, and how many hours a month? Is the ad budget included in the number quoted? Who owns the accounts, the site and the data if we stop? And which indicator will be used to judge, decided now rather than in six months? An offer that answers those four clearly is comparable to another. One that does not is not, whatever its price.
On the last point, few indicators well chosen beat many: the five numbers a business owner should track are enough to judge any supplier. And for splitting the amount once it is settled, allocating your marketing budget gives the logic channel by channel.
If you want to place your own situation before asking for quotes, book a call: we look at your numbers and tell you what is justified, including when the answer is nothing for now.
The one-page marketing plan template — where to record this budget so it does some work.
Quebec digital grants — what public funding covers, and what it never covers.