Need Some Idea on How to Price a Project

[mtatum4496]

A local small business has approached me about writing a marketing plan for them. I don't anticipate any problems with the writing, but I am not sure how to price out the project.

Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Tish Davidson]

I would try to calculate a per hour rate even if you quote the business a single rate for the entire job. Break it down into research hours, writing hours, and revision hours. Be sure you specify in the contract the re-write terms, as that is where you often lose money, especially if the client doesn't know what he wants and changes his mind mid-project. Specifying one re-write is pretty standard for industry work. As to what you should charge per hour, since this is a local project, the hourly rate depends in part on the local market and what professional salaries are in your region. I know that isn't much help. Another factor in setting your rate is whether you are a full time freelancer paying your own expenses such as health insurance and the full burden of social security (almost 15%) or whether this is a side job and your regular employer is picking up expenses like insurance, in which case your expenses are lower. Pricing a job is part business sense, part gut feelings, and a LOT of experience. You can see from other threads around the board that all of us, even with a lot of experience, sometimes bomb out on pricing and end up with jobs that don't pay off in terms of dollars per hour the way we expected them to.

[Quiller]

Be careful. A writer should NOT write a marketing plan. Marketing or sales or top management should write a marketing plan. No pretty words needed, but a *SERIOUS* understanding of what's going is needed.

The research a writer would need to do just to bring himself up to speed would be some months long.

Fixing someone else's words for a marketing plan would be rather easy to price out. Just take a look at what they wrote and figure how many hours it would take you to make it readable.

Writing a marketing plan for next year's ZX-1 Widget takes specialised knowledge of widgets, the current marketplace for widgets, and the marketing advantageof the ZX-1 compared to the rest of the widgets in the marketplace.

[mtatum4496]

Thank you, Tish, very helpful guidelines.

You are right, Quiller. An outsider could not come up with a viable marketing plan for any business without a great deal of research on the industry in general and a great deal of information on the current status of the company, how it's officers see the company progressing over the next several years, and what internal changes in the way of personnel, facilities and equipment upgrades are needed.

I was approached about doing this for several reasons, among them the fact that I have fifteen years in a closely related branch of the same industry, have done marketing plans for two previous employers, and their current officers feel they have gotten stale and need some eyes outside their company to bring in a different perspective.

Fortunately, they are not expecting a quick turnaround on this project and understand a great deal of the information required is already in their hands. As soon as we have the confidentialty agreement in place, they will use the bullet list I have prepared and begin feeding the data to me.

I'm not concerned about my ability to prepare a credible marketing plan in this particular instance, although in general terms I would agree that to attempt to write a marketing plan with no prior knowledge of a company or the products/services offered by the specific entity is asking for big trouble and a lot of headaches.

[Sassenach]

I've done it when the marketing plan exists, but has to be translated into clear English.