Social Media Management Pricing: What Are the Costs in 2023?

If you've ever wondered, “How much does social media marketing cost in 2023?” a standard social media management package will cost $750 per month and cover Facebook and Instagram. Hiring a freelancer to manage your social media will cost between $35 to $350 per hour, depending on the level of expertise you're looking for.

Or, using a DIY social media management software tool, such as Planable, will cost you anything from around $5 to $170 a month (or even $0 for a very limited, basic free plan!).

The end price will always depend on exactly what you need. We've used data from the tail end of 2022 to guide you about social media management costs in 2023.

As businesses recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, and struggle through a recession, growing your sales is more important than ever. Social media outreach can be an effective tool for hooking new customers and strengthening the loyalty of existing ones.

In this article, we'll explain how much social media management costs, breaking down the price of various services you can afford with your budget, as well as the costs of DIY social media management platforms.

How Much Does Social Media Marketing Cost?

You have two options here. You can either work with a social media management company, which typically charge monthly, or you can hire a freelancer, who usually charge by the hour. Below, we outline the average cost of both options.

Social Media Marketing Company Costs

The services of a social media marketing firm can come in anywhere between $50-$300 per hour depending on the breadth of services you're looking for.

Taking digital marketing firm BrandLyft for an example. They've received five-star customer reviews from the majority of their clients. Let's look at some quick-fire stats:

• Hourly charge: $50-$99
• Client focus: 80% small business (<$10M)
• Cost of a four-month advertising and marketing project in 2021: $10,000-$49,999
• Cost of a five-month digital marketing project including social media in 2021: <$10,000

Pricing may not always be on an hourly or per-project basis. Some social media marketing companies offer monthly price packages for a standard set of service. This can take a weight off your shoulders as you can easily plan month-to-month budgets this way.

Here are some examples of typical monthly costs for social media marketing companies with good reputations:

Social Media Marketing Temp, Part Time and Freelancer Costs

These days it's easy to find peer-reviewed social media managers offering freelance services through platforms like UpWork and Fiverr. In researching these prices, we included top-rated and vetted freelance professionals endorsed by their respective platforms as reliable for quality and punctuality.

Highly-rated social media managers charge can charge anywhere in the range of $35 to $350 per hour, though most fall between $50-$85 hourly.

You can always find someone willing to do the work for less money, but buyer beware of poor quality marketing which could actually harm your business reputation.

You can use specialist agencies offer an even more thorough level of vetting and will match you to a specific pool of professionals according to your business' needs. For example, MarketerHire, which has a $1,500 minimum monthly spend requirement.

What Would it Cost to do Social Media Marketing Myself?

The first cost you've got to consider if doing social media marketing in-house is the staff time; the upkeep of one social media channel ideally requires an hour of concentrated work per day. If you're willing to commit the time to posting regular updates and monitor customer messages, it's a great way to maintain brand authenticity. Plus you can ensure each message is consistent in tone and information.

You can do this for free or relatively cheaply with professional-grade social media tools. Our top recommendation is Planable, which allows for clear channel oversight and makes it easy for colleagues to work together on making, planning, and approving posts. You can start for free, and plans for upgrading are $11 monthly per user or $22 for more social media pages and better features.

Alternatively, Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial and a much more comprehensive set of tools. Pricing is $99 monthly for one user; $249 monthly for three users or $739 monthly for five users. We'll go into tool pricing comparisons more in the section ‘Are Social Media Marketing Tools a Cheaper Option?'.

What Social Media Services Will I Get for my Money?

Here's the question you really want answered: “What exactly will I get in return for $X,000?” and it's important you can give a satisfactory reply when the finance department hears your figures.

Social media marketing should be a key pillar in your digital marketing cost strategy. But you need it to deliver measurable results like improved conversions and more website traffic. So before you hire anyone, remember to ask social media managers how they will achieve your specific business goals. And you must examine evidence of their past campaigns.

Here's a list of basic social media management services you can expect to receive:

• Optimize or create social media profiles from scratch
• Develop a content calendar
• Publish custom branded content (i.e. posts and tweets)
• Responding to customer questions, reviews and complaints across social platforms
• Connect with influencers to broaden the reach of your content

Hm, do some of those seem a bit wishy-washy? You may be wondering whether clicks, hearts, shares and follows actually translate to increased sales, turnover and ROI. It's true that having more followers doesn't automatically mean more customers, and it's not a good goal to just “add more followers” in exchange for your marketing budget. You'll want to think more carefully about your benchmarks for success.

Before you go into your first meeting with a potential social media manager, you should draw up concrete business goals based on your particular industry. Here are some examples:

• Increased website traffic of at least x% – consultancy and services
• More customers through the door at lunchtimes – food and beverage vendors
• Uptick in sales – ecommerce, designers, resellers and physical stores
• More bookings – medical and personal services
• Better attendance at events (x% more visitors than previous event) – hobby clubs or religious groups

Instagram is the number one most used social media channel for marketing purposes, followed by Facebook and then Twitter. Statistics: HubSpot 2021

Don't forget, however. that there will inevitably be more intangible benefits to polishing up your social media presence. Although harder to measure, you may want to consider the potential knock-on effect of these when it comes to improved investment opportunities, hiring and retaining talent, and responding better to market changes. To name a few:

• Widen brand awareness
• Improve brand reputation
• Increase opportunities to define yourself as a company (including beliefs and values)
• Strengthen customer loyalty
• Better communication with customers, building rapport and understanding
• Manage customer dissatisfaction, concerns and complaints

It requires more creative thinking to see the wider brand value in the above, to be sure. If your business needs to focus on sales and conversions, you always have the option to invest more directly into social media advertising, specifically.

If you choose to pay for social media advertising services, these should entail:

• Lead generation
• Driving website traffic through paid-per-click advertising
• Precise audience segmentation and targeted advertising
• Run social media advertising campaigns

Are Social Media Marketing Tools a Cheaper Option?

If your staff are skilled at social media, have the capacity to focus on this for at least one hour a day, and are in tune with the ever-changing industry trends, using social media tools could be a good option for your business. They allow you to replace the manual effort of tasks such as being online to post at desired times and logging into various accounts one by one.

As you're using your own or your staff's time, you'll only need to pay the monthly fees for tools. This saves you the agency's retainer fee. General pricing for social media management tools is dependent on the number of users and the number of social channels you're posting across. That's why costs are as wide as $0-$3,600+ per month.

Here's a summary of some top social media marketing tools:

Social Media Marketing Cost Per Month

It's worth looking in depth at the various services you can afford depending on your monthly budget. Generally, the more you pay, the more social media channels your social media manager will cover.

To give you a clearer picture, let's explore the price plans, add-ons, and additional costs charged by one of the best social media marketing companies: Lyfe Marketing, and competitor The Content Factory.

Lyfe Marketing Pricing

Lyfe Marketing Social Media Management Pricing Plans

Lyfe Marketing charges a one-off setup fee of $150 for social media management services.

The Content Factory Pricing

The Content Factory Social Media Management Pricing

Management of three social media channels: $7,500 per month.

Additional social media channel management: $2,000 per month.

In-person social media training (three days on site): $10,000 plus travel.

Online consulting (min. three hours): $250 per hour.

Online social media training with live instructor: $3,500.

How Much Do Businesses Spend on Social Media Marketing?

According to research by the Content Factory, the average company in the US spends between $200 and $350 per day on social media marketing. This means total costs can end up somewhere between $6,000 and $10,500 per month, equating to anywhere between $72,000 and $126,000 annually. 

The reason these figures are much higher than those we've cited is because they include all potential overheads, such as hiring in-house social media staff and training them up. These are things you don't need to worry about when you work with a social media management company or freelancer – so you can see how you might save money by working with a third party instead of managing your social campaigns in-house.

There's no denying that social media marketing can be expensive, but the results of an effective campaign will pay dividends; helping your business find new customers and boost sales. So, in the end, the rewards you’ll gain make it a worthwhile investment.

How Much is Social Media Marketing Worth?

The majority of businesses and marketers agree that social media marketing is a worthwhile investment. According to 2022 stats, 73% of marketers report that their social media marketing efforts have been effective, and 90% say it has increased their business's exposure.

We also know the popularity of social media marketing is trending upwards. It was predicted that $173 million would be spent on social media advertising in 2022. In fact, social media advertising is currently the second-biggest market in digital ads.

But how does that translate into meaningful figures for your business? One way to calculate the ROI (return on investment) of your own social media marketing campaign is to measure your quantifiable goals, such as the number of online form submissions or product purchases you gain, compared to the amount of money you spend on your social media marketing.

For example, let’s say you pay $0.97 – the average cost for Facebook PPC (pay-per-click) ads – for each time a customer clicks on your advert link. Now let's say you get 1,000 clicks. You’ve spent $970 in total. You’ll then need to divide that total spend figure by your average cost of acquiring a new customer in order to get your ROI percentage for Facebook PPC advertising.