How much does social media management cost in the UK?

If you want content made for you, your accounts run for you and ads run on top, expect to pay around £1,500 to £2,000 a month, plus your ad spend. Most price guides list those 3 separately. Most of the businesses who come to us need all 3.

What social media management costs in 2026

These ranges come from the prices UK agencies and freelancers publish on their own sites. They line up closely with each other, which makes them a fair guide.

Based on prices published by UK social media agencies and freelancers in 2026. All excluding VAT.

Why content, management and ads belong together

Most guides price these as 3 separate things. In practice, if one is missing, the other 2 struggle.

• Content without ads often reaches mostly the people who already follow you. That is why so many owners post for months and get nothing back. We cover this in organic is luck, ads are control.
• Ads without good content get people to your page or website, but there is nothing there that makes them trust you.
• Content and ads without management means comments go unanswered, messages sit for days and nobody checks what is working.

Put together, it works like a loop. Video builds trust, ads put it in front of new local people, and someone keeps it all running and reports back on enquiries, not likes.

On ad spend: you pay this straight to Meta, on top of the management fee. Our clients usually start somewhere between £150 and £300 a month.

Is it cheaper to hire a social media manager?

It depends who you hire. The average UK social media manager earns about £34,500 a year, according to Indeed (September 2026). Here is what that person really costs you.

Rates for 2026/27 from HMRC. Small employers may be able to claim the Employment Allowance (up to £10,500 a year), which can cancel out some or all of the National Insurance. It does not apply if your only employee is a director.

That £3,314 a month still does not include:

• Their camera, lights, microphone, laptop and editing software
• Scheduling and design tools
• Cover for holidays and sick days, when posts can be scheduled but nobody is replying
• The time it takes to recruit, train and manage them
• Your ad spend

You can hire someone, and the right person is worth keeping. But what you get depends on their skill set. A social media manager might be great at running your accounts and have no video experience. They might have design skills but have never run an ad. Finding 1 person who can plan, shoot, edit, design, post and run ads is rare, and if you find them, hold on to them.

With an agency you get a mix of skills for less than the cost of 1 hire. Take us as an example. We do the filming, the editing, the social media management, the ads, animation and your website, all in one place, for one monthly fee of £1,500 to £2,000, against about £3,314 a month for 1 full-time hire. A retainer gives you an agreed amount of work each month rather than a full-time person, but it comes with a whole team's skills.

For most small businesses, that makes an agency the better deal. Hiring in-house starts to make sense when you need someone on site every day, or when your marketing has grown big enough to need a whole team.

What a cheap package actually buys

Cheap packages are not a scam. They just cannot include much. A freelancer charging £25 an hour for £250 a month has 10 hours to give you. That is just over 2 hours a week to plan, make, post, reply and report.

In that time you get scheduled posts, probably made from photos you send. You do not get video shot for you, a content plan built around what brings in enquiries, or anyone answering messages quickly. If that is all you need, it is fine value. If you want enquiries, it is usually not enough.

Will social media bring in enquiries, or just likes?

This is the question underneath the price. Owners have been burned here. One business owner on UK Business Forums, after paying for social ads: "although I did get a slight increase in orders, the money that came in didn't cover the advertising cost."

And from someone who used to manage social media for clients: "my clients wanted social media to be some magic bullet to bring success to their business. Not many of them understood that it takes the time to get meaningful results."

Both match what we see. Nobody can promise results by a set date, but a sensible first 3 months looks like this:

• Weeks 1 to 4: get tracking in place, note where enquiries come from now, and check the ads are reaching the right local people.
• Months 2 to 3: test different videos and messages, and see which ones bring the right people to your page.
• Month 3 review: compare enquiries with where you started, keep what works and cut what does not.

Week 2 it never looks like much. Month 3 it starts looking like something. That is consistency doing its job.

Small budgets can work. Liz Flavell, a recruitment coach we work with, spent £145 promoting 1 of her videos on Instagram and booked 2 days of work at £1,350 a day from it. Her words: "Still good return from the ad!" Read the full Liz Flavell case study.

5 numbers to ask your agency for every month

If a monthly report leads with followers and likes, ask for these instead.

• 1. Enquiries: messages, calls and form fills that came from social.
• 2. Cost per enquiry: what you spent in total, divided by enquiries.
• 3. Booked work: how many of those enquiries became customers. Only you know this, so tell them.
• 4. Local reach: how many people in your area saw your content, not just how many in total.
• 5. Best performing videos: which ones brought enquiries, so next month makes more of them.

Then do the sum. If 1 new customer brings you £2,000 profit and you are paying £1,500 a month, you need 1 new customer a month to cover the fee. Add your ad spend to the sum too, and every customer after that adds to your profit.

Red flags before you sign

• Guaranteed follower numbers. Ask how they will get them. Bought or untargeted followers will not become customers.
• Long lock-in. A 3 month start is reasonable, because it takes that long to judge. A 12 month contract on day 1 deserves a close look at what you get and how you can leave.
• They own your accounts. Your pages, your ad account and your content should stay in your name.
• Reports with no enquiries in them. See the 5 numbers above.

How we do it, and what you get

Our clients pay between £1,500 and £2,000 a month, plus their ad spend. We plan it, shoot it, post it and report on it. That covers:

• Regular content shoots. We plan and script everything, come to you, and turn 1 day into weeks of video.
• Social media managed for you. Posting, captions and reporting on what brings in enquiries.
• Ads run for you. Set up, targeted locally and adjusted every month.
• Your website looked after. Updates, new pages and your videos on it, so the people social sends over land somewhere that works.

You can see the kind of work we do on our social media marketing page.