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There are two main options for businesses to get social media marketing help: digital marketing agencies and social media managers (hired, or freelance).
If you have ended up here, you likely fall into one of those two categories, and don't worry, we have ideas for you either way!
How Much Should I Charge for Social Media Marketing?
The rates for social media vary greatly between freelancers, marketing agencies, and hired social media managers, so we'll examine them separately.
According to UpWork, freelancers or individuals are charging for social media management anything from $15-$250hr, varying depending on their experience level:
Entry Level: $15-$50/hr
Intermediate: $50 - $100/hr
Advanced: $120-$250/hr
Agencies charge anywhere from $600/month to $15,000 per month for social media management.
The Importance of Pricing For Your Market
Your package's price may deter potential customers or put you at risk of under-delivering if you price it too high. Many businesses view companies that price their packages way too low as cheap or inexperienced and will therefore not inquire about their services.
There's an ideal middle-ground between pricing too low and too high that allows you to cast a wide net with potential business, while also leaving room for profit.
There are a few main factors to keep in mind when determining the audience you are targeting with your packages and pricing.
What size companies are you targeting? Are you selling to small businesses or are you aiming to win contracts with large corporations? It is important to identify this early on so you can design your service packages to cater to that size business and their specific needs.
Are you targeting any specific industry? It's important to decide if you plan to niche down as an agency or a social media manager because that will determine the specific social media needs of your clients, as well as the willingness to pay for social media services for your specific industry.
What is your cost of customer acquisition? How much time and money are you spending to attract new business? How many new clients are you signing per month? By taking your total cost to acquire new customers (i.e. all your marketing and sales expenses) divided by your number of new clients, you can determine how much acquiring a client is costing you, on average.
What social media marketing services will you be offering? If you are offering full-service social media management then your pricing will be drastically different than if you are strictly offering social media content creation. Decide early on what services you will be provided as part of your packages so you can price accordingly.
How to Structure Pricing for Social Media Services
Today, businesses need a variety of social media services including:
- Social media strategy
- Social media content creation (graphics, captions, and hashtags)
- Scheduling and publishing of content
- Engagement/community management
- Social media advertising campaigns
As a marketing agency, you may be in a better position to provide a full-service social media marketing package since you can leverage your internal team as well as outsource or white label services.
As a freelancer or individual, it's vital to determine which services you will be able to fulfill yourself and those which will need to be outsourced (if that is something you are considering).
The great part about offering social media packages to your clients is that they are recurring and can quickly cultivate a steady stream of repeat business every single month.
Related: White Label Services Agencies Can Resell to Scale Recurring Revenue
Typical Social Media Management Pricing Packages
While the "ideal" social media package can differ greatly from business to business, we’ll give you some suggestions based on our experience.
The Starter Package
- Social media strategy
- Social media content creation (graphics, captions, hashtags)
- Social media scheduling and publishing
This is the starting point for a business to create a presence on social media. On its own, it might not help them with generating an immediate return on investment, but it will help them build their brand, tell their story and give a professional impression to customers by maintaining an active presence on social media.
Creating a social media strategy is an important step that allows you and your client to find alignment over the target audience, brand voice, types of content, frequency, and, most importantly, the goals and objectives for their social media channels.
Content creation and scheduling are the two easiest services to provide since you're able to easily outsource and white label them.
MixBloom is a white label social media content creation service. We partner with marketing agencies or social media managers to create original social media content, schedule it, and publish it for their clients. We have an expert team of 100% native-English writers and creators and a white label social media scheduling and approval dashboard.
As an agency or social media manager, you could take on the responsibility of guiding your clients through the initial strategic development, then hand over the content creation, scheduling, and publishing to us.
The Full-Service Package
- Social media strategy
- Social media content creation (graphics, caption, hashtags)
- Social media scheduling and publishing
- Engagement/community management
- Social media advertising
Generally speaking, more established businesses will need full-service social media support. That's where a comprehensive package might be helpful.
This package would include all of the services from the Starter Package, with the addition of engagement/community management and social media advertising.
As an agency, if you have an existing social media team who can assist with engagement and advertising experts who can support your client’s paid social needs, then this package should be easy to put together.
As a freelancer or individual social media manager, this package may be more difficult for you to offer without additional support as fulfilling all of these services yourself would be challenging to scale. Consider focusing on one core element, organic content or paid advertising, and outsource or delegate the rest, so you can offer a complete package and a single point of contact to your clients, without overworking yourself or under-delivering.
Over the years we’ve seen more and more agencies and freelancers focusing on paid campaign management, this makes sense, as it’s often the most profitable service to offer. It has a direct impact on your client’s business and you can therefore easily price it based on results, or as a function of your client’s ad spend.
This creates an opportunity for you to outsource organic content creation, so you can focus your team’s efforts on paid campaign management.
How to Price Your Social Media Packages
Okay, so you've determined what your social media packages will include.
Now, how do you price them?
Well, the first step to creating a social media pricing sheet is to determine your scope of work.
Some of the key components of the scope of work related to social media services are:
- Number of platforms: How many platforms will you be servicing for each client? (Tip: We suggest offering services for the four main platforms, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram - but you can also consider Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and Google My Business, as adoption for these is on the rise).
- Quantity of content: Will you be publishing content multiple times a day? Seven times per week? Only during the work week? 2-3 posts per week? (Tip: For most small businesses, posting 3-5 times per week is good enough, whereas larger companies may do better with 5+ posts per week or daily posting).
- Content creation: Will you be designing content from scratch or will you require your clients to provide brand assets or images? (Tip: Many small businesses have limited brand assets so we suggest creating content from scratch using a mix of high-quality stock imagery and graphic design elements. If the business does have its own brand assets, well, that's a bonus!)
- Engagement: How much time will you spend engaging with your client's followers per week? (Tip: We suggest encouraging the client to do a lot of the outbound engagement. If you want to help your client with their engagement, we suggest offering to monitor their social media inboxes and relaying any important questions or communications to the client).
Once you’ve determined the scope of work, you should be able to break down the time required for each deliverable and the cost associated with each. This should give you a good idea of costs to use in calculating your packages.
Not only should you account for the time spent on the deliverables and the software/tools used, but you must account for the cost of customer acquisition.
How are you getting new business? Are you spending money on marketing in order to attract new clients? What is your average cost per client based on your advertising spend?
It’s crucial to calculate exactly how much acquiring each new client is costing you so you can account for that in your pricing.
How much value are you creating for your clients?
A value-based pricing strategy involves charging clients based on the value they receive from your service.
In this context, what is the value to your client of a new customer acquired from social media? How much are they spending on social media campaigns? How much revenue do they expect to generate from their social media campaigns?
All these questions will help you define what value means for your client and come up with a price that not only covers your costs and allows you to make a good margin but also takes into consideration the effective value of the results you’re creating.
Examples of Social Media Package Pricing
Here at MixBloom, we work with both marketing agencies and social media managers to help them offer social media packages to their clients.
We offer white label social media packages that include:
- Content created for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram
- Original graphics, captions, and hashtags (check out examples of our work here)
- Access and use of our white label social media scheduling and approval platform
- Content review and approval by clients
- Scheduling and publishing of all approved content
Our plans - so, your costs if you decide to work with us - are below:
The pricing you see above is our price to you and the pricing is per client, per month.
The recommended resale price is 2-4x, but agencies and individuals who work with us are free to resell our plans for whatever amount they wish.
Learn more about MixBloom pricing here or get started with a 14-day trial here.
Example #1:
Say you have a client who needs 12 posts per month so you would sell them our Business Plan, which is $299 per month.
You should add the cost of your time to manage the client relationship: four (4) hours per month x $50/hr = $200
The total price of your package is now at $499.
You want to make a healthy profit so you plan to markup the package at three times the price meaning you should charge $1,497 with a $998 profit.
Example #2:
Now you have a client who needs 20 posts per month so you would sell them our Growth Plan, which is $449 per month.
You need to add in the price of client management at $200 per month, making the new total $649 per month.
You want to make a good amount but are more focused on retaining the client long term so you want to charge less for your services. If that's the case, you can markup the package at twice the cost and charge $1,298 with a $649 profit.
What are others in the industry doing?
We scoured the internet to find some concrete examples of what other marketing agencies offer their clients. Here are some examples of how packages vary and how they are being priced in the current market.
Lyfe Marketing
This agency is offering full-service social media management for Facebook and Instagram including content creation and publishing, page monitoring and engagement, and boosted ads. Their pricing ranges from $650 - $1,270 per month based on the plan you choose.
Sculpt
Sculpt started as a social media management agency and grew into the full marketing agency that they are today. They offer all-things social media marketing ranging from paid social media advertising campaigns to social media content creation.
Their pricing varies based on your needs and budget but ranges from $3,500/month to $5,000/month for just social media management.
Kadima Digital
This digital agency has three set packages they offer ranging from $900 - $2,800 for managed social media marketing campaigns.
They have package options to include just content creation, publishing, and reporting, then bigger packages that include community management and reputation management as well.
Now what?
It can be tough to figure out the right social media packages and pricing structures for your clients, but we suggest researching your audience and their needs and deciding what's best for your specific case.
You'll have a better idea of what packages and pricing structure will help you achieve your business goals while serving your clients and their needs.
If you’re considering outsourcing social media content creation or looking for a white label social media agency, check out MixBloom's social media pricing plans and apply for a free 14-day trial to try out our services at no risk.
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