Old digital marketing channels are extremely expensive. It doesn’t matter paid marketing or organic reach, the average prices for these services can’t get bring ROI back if customers don’t see your marketing messages over 7 times.
It’s tough to convince customers to change their hard-earned money with your products from one attempt. That is why popular brands invest millions to show their marketing messages across all channels.
Companies that have resources should mix paid marketing, organic reach and PR in order to blink with their products on the customers’ eyes, but even though, many of them fail to consistently achieve the target audience a few times.
In this article, I teach you one very underrated and cheap method that save you a lot of money for digital marketing. Keep reading until the end and break down obsolete methods with me. Let’s start with common methods that all big companies use.
How Much Digital Marketing Costs?
Having enough resources is important to get customers everywhere and lead them in the sales funnel. Most companies start with paid expensive marketing because of getting customers fast.
PPC
The average CPC for paid advertising varies by platform, industry, and region:
– GoogleSearch Network: $5.26 across all industries, with legal services exceeding $6 and less competitive industries as low as a few cents.
– GoogleDisplay Network: Typically under $1, with an average of $0.63.
– Facebook Ads: $0.50–$2.00, depending on industry and audience, with an average of $0.83 reported for US retailers.
– Amazon Ads: Varies by product category, with gaming at $1.50, entertainment at $1.40, and others like health & fitness at $1.30.
– X Platform: Average CPC around $0.38, noted as the lowest among major platforms.
LinkedIn Ads: Average around $5.58 globally, with ranges from $2.00 to over $7.00 based on targeting.
Paid marketing can’t convince all customers without getting organic reach with SEO, social media and PR. These channels are not free because you should pay for high-quality services: planning, content creation, submission and promotion.
SEO
Quality SEO typically includes keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, content creation, technical audits, and performance tracking. Averages reflect services for small to medium-sized businesses; enterprise-level can be higher.
– Monthly Retainers: $1,500–$5,000, with many agencies charging $2,500–$4,000 for ongoing campaigns. Smaller businesses may start at $1,000, while competitive industries (e.g., legal or e-commerce) can exceed $7,500.
– Hourly Rates: $100–$250, averaging $150 for experienced consultants or agencies.
– Project-Based or One-Time: $5,000–$30,000, often for audits, site migrations, or initial setups.
Social Media
Quality social media services often cover platform management (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok), content creation, audience engagement, analytics, and organic growth strategies.
Advertising (e.g., paid campaigns) is typically billed separately but can be bundled. Averages are for small to medium businesses; larger brands pay more for advanced features like influencer partnerships.
– Monthly Retainers: $1,000–$5,000, with a common range of $2,000–$4,000 for full management of 3–5 platforms
– Basic services for small businesses start around $500, while comprehensive campaigns can reach $10,000+.
– Hourly Rates: $50–$150, averaging $100 for strategists or content creators.
– Project-Based or Campaign-Specific: $500–$7,000, such as for launches, audits, or short-term promotions (excluding ad spend).
PR
Quality public relations (PR) services typically include media relations, press releases, crisis management, event planning, brand reputation management, and strategic communications. Averages reflect services for small to medium-sized businesses; enterprise-level or specialized (e.g., crisis or IPO) can be higher.
– Monthly Retainers: $5,000–$20,000, with many agencies charging $8,000–$15,000 for ongoing campaigns.
– Smaller businesses may start at $2,500–$5,000, while competitive or crisis-focused retainers can exceed $30,000.
– Hourly Rates: $100–$300, averaging $150–$200 for experienced professionals.
– Project-Based or One-Time: $5,000–$50,000, often for specific efforts like press releases, campaigns, or audits.
Can you allow all these services?
You might allow these resources, but most projects don’t because of paying for extra services of designers, copywriters, content managers, developers, etc.
So, it’s time to break generic methods and describe new effective methods that show your call-to-action message inside browsers of your customers.
Develop a Chrome Extension for Your Customers
Development tools, extensions, software, calculators was expensive for a few decades but the prices decreased significantly. There are many accessible templates on Github, Gitlab, Codecanyon and many other platforms that have almost complete versions that demand some updates.
Cloud payments are also affordable for small projects. But the best accessible element of any development is AI. ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek propose various AI models for writing, design, calculation or code writing.
So, instead of paying for old expensive marketing, start development new AI tools and extensions. If you bring something new and valuable to the customers’ tables, then they set up your extension directly to their browsers and see your logo every day.
For example, check out how my top right side of Chrome browser looks like with my 2 extensions:
I created 2 extensions. The first version was simple about keyword density that my audience asked many times. When I got how simple to build something new to the world because there are no similar tools, I launched another free SEO chrome extension with the following data:
– Meta tag scoring and tips
– Text analysis with SEO, Grammarly, Readability scoring and AI detection
– Monthly traffic data by resources and countries, bounce rate, pages per visit, average visit duration
– Links: internal, external, broken, dofollow, nofollow, etc
– Page Speed Insights
– Images analysis with titles and alt tags
– Social graph
– Domain data: age, hosting, registrar, updates.
The result? 718 SEO specialists set up it with a simple marketing push. Many of them removed 3-5 other extensions to get all data here. I’m working for a few minor updates and speed now to bring even more value with this extension.
Chrome extensions can help to show your brand daily, but if you add a strong call to action inside the extension, then wait for sales.
I add my call to action in the top and in the bottom of each tab.
I stopped overwriting blog posts for my customers and switched my attention to developing AI tools that have a lot more potential to take the market. Customers often use valuable tools over 7 times that is cheap compared to other marketing channels.
How to Build Your Own Extension
I usually start by analyzing all competitors. For example, we promote some big projects in trading and crypto niches where opportunities of bringing something new are endless.
For example, I found a few simple extensions in Chrome Store for the keyword “trading forecast”. This keyword is extremely competitive, but there are no any good solutions. So, it’s my target.
Search for other related keywords with the main goal to find low-quality or obsolete tools that were created many years with no updates.
The next step is to create the task for developers with AI implementation that allows to craft something new and unique.
The last step is to market the extension with all possible methods:
– email outreach
– sharing on relevant groups
– newsletter
– influence marketing.
If the extension is valuable then you don’t need to convince the target audience to set up it, if it’s not, keep update bring more data.
Conclusion
In 2025, keeping your business top-of-mind for your customers looks like showing up consistently, authentically, in multiple touchpoints. Whether it’s in targeted email drip campaigns, share-worthy social media content, or intelligent technology like chatbots and automation, your brand needs to show up where your audience is. It’s not just visibility, the key is bringing value every day. When your business is solution-based and becomes part of your customer’s everyday life, you can create loyalty that will lead to long-term growth. Begin small, keep up with those most subtle elements, and let your brand speak for itself — in your way, daily.
