Social Media Marketing Pricing

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

What social media management costs by band, how many hours sit behind each price, why per-post pricing is poorly aligned, why content-only packages disappoint on platforms with two per cent organic reach, and how to read a proposal. Every number published, including ours.

The short answer

Social media pricing is opaque for the same reason SEO pricing is: the deliverable is visible and the work behind it is not. A content calendar looks identical whether it took two hours or twenty, which is why converting every quote into hours is the single most useful thing you can do with it.

Who this is for

Small and mid-sized businesses evaluating a social media package or retainer, and anybody trying to work out why the last one produced nothing. It is written to be useful whether you hire us, hire somebody else, or bring it in-house.

What each price band actually buys

Below $600 a month

Three to six senior-equivalent hours. That is scheduling, occasional stock graphics and a monthly report. There is no strategy, no original content and no community management, because there is no time for any of it. This band is not bad value; it is simply a different product from marketing.

$600 to $1,200

Six to ten hours. Basic posting on one or two platforms with simple graphics and a report. Suitable for a business that needs a maintained presence rather than a growth channel, which is a legitimate thing to want.

$1,200 to $2,500

Ten to twenty hours, and the band where the product changes. Real strategy, original content, community management and some paid amplification. This is the floor for social media that is intended to produce enquiries.

$2,500 to $5,000

Twenty to forty hours. Multi-platform, video production, paid media management, and enough capacity to react to what is working. Appropriate for businesses where social genuinely drives revenue.

$5,000 to $10,000

Forty to seventy hours. Production capacity, campaign work, influencer coordination and analytics depth. At this level you are buying a function rather than a service.

Above $10,000

A small dedicated team. Justifiable for brands where social is a primary channel, and hard to justify otherwise. Below roughly $5m in revenue this is rarely the right allocation.

What the money actually pays for

Strategy is cut first and matters most

At low price points there is no time to decide who the audience is or what the account is for, so the work becomes posting. That is why cheap packages produce activity and no outcome.

Content creation is the largest real cost

Writing, design, photography and video. It is also the line most affected by whether you supply raw material — a business that sends photographs from the job or the kitchen gets far more for the same fee.

Scheduling is the visible part and the smallest

It is automated in minutes and it is the entire deliverable in most sub-$600 packages, which is why those packages look identical to expensive ones on a calendar and produce nothing on a report.

Community management is where local value sits

Replying to comments and messages, promptly and in a human voice, produces more for a local business than posting does. Almost no package includes it properly and almost every client assumes it is included.

Paid amplification is no longer optional

Organic reach on most major platforms is small enough that a content-only package is producing material almost nobody sees. Any proposal that does not address this is selling you content rather than marketing.

Reporting that changes something

What worked, what did not, and what changes next month. A monthly PDF that nobody acts on is a document rather than a service, and it is what most reporting actually is.

The pricing models, and the conflict inside each

Flat monthly retainer

The most common and the most workable. Predictable for both sides, neutral on incentives, and it degrades gracefully — a retainer that is too small produces less work rather than worse work, provided the agency is honest about it.

Per-post pricing

Common and poorly aligned. It rewards volume on platforms where volume stopped being the constraint years ago, and it makes every conversation about quantity rather than about whether anything is working.

Percentage of ad spend

Imported from paid media and equally misaligned here. The fee rises when your spend rises, which is not the same as your results improving.

Base plus performance bonus

The best-aligned model available, and only workable when the metric is genuinely clean. Tied to enquiries or revenue it works well; tied to engagement it is worse than a flat fee.

Project or campaign fee

Appropriate for launches, seasonal campaigns and content production sprints. Defined scope, defined end, and no ongoing obligation.

Hourly

Rare, honest, and usually a freelancer or consultant. Poor cost predictability and excellent transparency, which is a reasonable trade for some businesses.

What should be in the proposal

Read the community management row first

It is the row clients most assume is included and most often is not. A package that posts and does not reply is producing broadcast rather than social media.

Ask what happens to the ad budget

Whether it is included, separate, managed, or absent entirely. At most price points below $2,500 the honest answer is ‘absent’, and knowing that changes what you should expect.

Ask who creates the content

A junior scheduler, a designer, or somebody who has spoken to your customers. It is the single largest quality variable and it is almost never in a proposal.

Ask how much of your own material is expected

Businesses that supply photographs and stories get substantially more for the same fee. A package that expects nothing from you will produce stock content, because there is nothing else to work with.

In-house, agency or freelancer

In-house is the most expensive and the most controllable

A coordinator costs $50,000 to $75,000 loaded, plus tooling and production. It makes sense when social is central to the business and when there is enough work to fill a role properly.

An agency buys range and redundancy

Strategy, design, video, paid and reporting from several people, with tooling included, for less than one salary. The trade is that your account shares attention with others.

A freelancer is the cheapest and the least redundant

$800 to $2,500 a month for somebody good, and no cover when they are ill, busy or gone. For many small businesses this is genuinely the right answer and agencies rarely say so.

The hybrid that works

Somebody internal who takes photographs, answers messages and knows the business, with outside help on strategy, design, video and paid. It is the most common arrangement among businesses that get real value from social.

Metrics: what to insist on and what to refuse

Follower count is a vanity metric

It can be purchased, it does not predict revenue, and a small engaged audience in your service area is worth more than a large idle one anywhere. Any proposal promising follower growth as the outcome is promising the easiest thing to deliver.

Engagement rate is gameable and misleading

It rises when reach falls, which means a declining account can show improving engagement. It is a useful diagnostic and a poor headline.

Reach is an input, not an outcome

Worth tracking because it tells you whether anybody is seeing the work. Not worth reporting as the result, because seeing is not buying.

Saves and shares are better quality signals

Harder to game, closer to genuine interest, and more predictive of whether content is actually landing with the right people.

Profile clicks and link clicks are the first intent signal

Somebody moving from a post toward your business. Rarely reported and considerably more useful than likes.

Enquiries and revenue are the judging metrics

Agreed in advance, tracked with a mechanism, and checked at twelve months. Everything else on this list is diagnostic.

Why cheap social media packages disappoint

The arithmetic does not work

At $400 a month, after overhead and margin, there are perhaps four hours. Four hours cannot include strategy, original content and community management, so it becomes scheduling. The client sees posts appearing and concludes social media does not work.

Stock content is recognized instantly

Audiences can tell, and it produces the specific impression that nobody at the business is paying attention. That is worse than posting nothing.

Organic reach makes content-only packages structurally weak

On most major platforms a small percentage of your followers see any given post without paid support. A package with no amplification is producing content for an audience that will largely not encounter it.

Nobody is replying

Comments and messages go unanswered, which is visible, and which converts a potential customer into somebody who concluded you were not responsive.

No strategy means no learning

Without a hypothesis there is nothing to evaluate. Twelve months of posting without direction produces twelve months of data nobody can interpret.

The honest recommendation

If your budget is under about $800 a month, do it yourself with a clear plan, or spend the money on a channel where a small budget still buys real work. We say this regularly and it costs us retainers.

Platform-by-platform, honestly

Two platforms done properly beats five done badly

The most common structural error in small business social media. Choose where your customers actually are and where you can sustain the format, and ignore the rest.

The format has to match what you can produce

A business that cannot produce video should not choose a video-first platform, regardless of how well it is performing for other people.

Personal accounts outperform company pages on LinkedIn

Substantially, and consistently. A B2B strategy built entirely on the company page is competing with one hand tied.

YouTube is a search engine

Which makes it fundamentally different from the rest of this table. Content there compounds rather than expiring in a day, and it should be planned like SEO rather than like social.

Our pricing

What is in every package

Owner-level access to every account from day one, thirty days notice, no automatic renewal, a monthly change log, and an agreed judging metric that is not follower count.

What is not included

Ad spend, which goes to the platform rather than to us. Influencer fees. Professional photography and video production beyond what the package states, which is quoted separately.

When we would tell you not to buy this

If your budget is under $850, if your website cannot take an enquiry, or if social is not where your customers are. All three come up regularly and all three cost us work.

You are welcome to use this to negotiate elsewhere

Everything above the pricing table is here to make you a better buyer, whether or not you buy from us. That is the point of publishing it.

What social media produces, and when

Nothing measurable in month one

Setup, strategy, first content and establishing consistency. Any agency reporting results in month one is reporting activity.

Three to six months before anything is interpretable

Long enough to see what content types work, what audience is accumulating and whether enquiries move. Shorter than SEO and longer than paid.

Judge at twelve months, review monthly

Monthly review keeps effort pointed at what is working. Annual judgement stops you canceling in month five something that was starting to compound.

What good looks like at twelve months

Enquiries attributable to social, a defined content approach that works, an audience composed of the right people, and reporting somebody actually reads.

What a month of work actually looks like

Eighteen hours, and where they go

The visible part — posts appearing — accounts for about an hour. Everything else is invisible to the client and is the entire difference between a package that works and one that does not.

Why the community management hours matter most

Three hours a month of prompt, human replies produces more enquiries for a local business than the six hours of content creation does, because it converts attention that already exists rather than trying to create more.

What you should supply, and what it saves you

This is the single biggest variable in value received

Two businesses paying the same retainer get very different results depending on whether anybody sends photographs. It is worth building into the arrangement explicitly at the start rather than discovering it in month four.

A five-minute weekly habit

Somebody at the business taking three photographs a week and sending them changes the output of any social retainer more than any increase in fee would.

Contracts and terms worth checking

Notice period

Thirty days in both directions is reasonable. Twelve-month lock-ins are common at lower price points, which is exactly where they protect the agency most and serve the client least.

Account ownership

Your business accounts, in your name, with the agency holding delegated access. An agency that creates accounts under its own credentials is holding your audience hostage, whatever the intention.

Content ownership

Everything produced for you should be yours on delivery, including source files where relevant. Ask specifically about photography and video, where this is most often ambiguous.

Ad account ownership

Same principle. Your ad account, your billing, your historical performance data. Agency-owned ad accounts make switching far more expensive than it appears.

Scope creep in both directions

A defined scope protects both sides. Clients who add platforms mid-contract and agencies who quietly reduce output are the two failure modes, and a written scope prevents both.

What happens to scheduled content if you leave

Rarely discussed and worth asking. Content already produced and paid for should be handed over, not switched off with the notice period.

Questions we get asked about social media pricing

Watch before you buy

Related: marketing agency pricing covers what agencies charge across all services, social media marketing covers the discipline itself, and social media advertising covers the paid side.

What a social media quote should itemise

Comparable quotes are the whole difficulty in this category, because two proposals at the same monthly figure routinely describe different amounts of work. Ask for these line items:

• Posts per platform per month, by format
• Whether video is filmed, edited from supplied footage, or stock
• How many rounds of revision are included
• Who writes the copy, and how it is approved
• Community management hours, and the response-time commitment
• Whether paid budget is included or billed separately
• Who owns the accounts and the content at the end
• Reporting cadence, and whether it is a dashboard or an analysis
• What happens to unused deliverables in a quiet month
• Notice period and any minimum term
• Which named person actually does the work
• What is explicitly out of scope

Frequently asked questions