How much does social media marketing cost? Prices and what you get for the money
Ongoing social media marketing from an agency costs, in practice, a few thousand euros a month. The price is decided by the amount of content, the number of shoot days and whether the agency also runs the paid advertising. The media budget, meaning the ad money paid to Meta and TikTok, comes on top of this, not out of it. A monthly price under a thousand euros does not buy production but mainly post scheduling and comment handling, which is a perfectly decent purchase if the content is otherwise made in-house. At Formi Works the price is built from the amount of content, the channels and the media budget, and it is worked out in a short meeting based on your own situation.
What makes up the price of social media marketing
The monthly price of social media marketing is decided by three things: how much content is produced, how many shoot days it takes and whether the agency also runs the paid advertising.
Production volume is the most direct price factor. Ten short-form videos a month is a different workload from sixteen, and it shows in the price one to one. The price of a video is not just the shoot either, but the script, editing, captions and vertical versions for different channels.
Shoot days are the single most expensive item. A shoot day ties up the crew for a whole day and brings planning, travel and equipment with it. That is why a package with two shoot days a month costs clearly more than a one-shoot-day package, even if everything else is identical. One well-planned shoot day yields ten videos, a badly planned one three.
Paid advertising management is the third factor and the only one that is genuinely continuous weekly work. Managing ad accounts means testing new versions, replacing tired ads and moving budget to where it performs. It is a different job from producing content, which is why it is usually priced separately or pushes the package up a tier.
On top of these comes the groundwork that is invisible from the outside but takes time: the publishing calendar, channel management, replying to comments and monthly reporting. What an ongoing service actually includes is described on the social media marketing service page.
Agency fee and media budget are two different things
These get mixed up all the time, and it is an expensive misunderstanding for the buyer. The media budget is the money you pay directly to Meta, TikTok or Google for buying ad impressions. The agency fee is the money you pay for the work that makes the ads and manages the accounts. The agency does not earn the media budget, it only spends it on your behalf.
In practice, the bill is therefore split in two: the agency's monthly fee on its own invoice, and the media budget paid directly to the ad platform from your own card. The total investment is the sum of the two, but only the fee is the agency's income. A realistic minimum media budget is around €1,000 a month, so the platform has a chance to learn which ad works at all.
If a proposal says "€1,500 / month including ad budget", ask for a breakdown. Either very little work is being done, or so little goes into advertising that it never learns anything. Always ask three things: how much is the fee, how much goes to the platforms and whose name the ad account is in. The ad account must be owned by your company, so the data and history stay with you if the partnership ends.
The right size of media budget depends on your margin and your goal, not on the agency's price list. A small budget with good content works better than a big budget with bad content, because the platforms hand out cheaper visibility to content that gets watched to the end. More on this on the paid advertising page.
What you actually get at different price levels
Below are the typical service tiers and what each one includes. The tier is chosen by the number of videos and shoot days, and the price is built from the amount of content, the channels and the media budget.
| Tier | Production per month | Included | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light maintenance | No production of its own | Post scheduling and channel management | A company that makes its own content |
| One-off production | Around 2 videos, one short shoot | Script, shoot and editing for a single need | A recruitment video or a trade fair |
| Basic production | 10 short-form videos, 1 shoot day | Account management, publishing calendar, monthly analysis | A first serious investment in social media |
| Production and advertising | 10 short-form videos, 1 shoot day | The above + photos for social media and ads, ad versions, paid advertising management | When content needs to drive sales |
| Extended production | 16 short-form videos, 2 shoot days | The above + a live stream and versions for several channels | Several channels or a product family |
The table also shows how the price per video behaves. The shoot day is the single most expensive item, so in a one-off purchase of two videos, each video costs clearly the most. In a monthly production of ten videos, one well-planned shoot day is enough, and the price per video settles lower than in a one-off purchase. Sixteen videos already need a second shoot day, so the total price goes up but the price per video keeps falling. For comparison, a freelancer typically charges €200–500 for a single video, without ongoing planning and reporting.
The most important step is not the volume but the point where paid advertising management comes in. For most, that is where content starts affecting sales rather than just follower counts. The largest tier only makes sense once you genuinely have enough to say for sixteen videos a month. Volume without substance is an expensive way to repeat yourself.
In-house creator or agency
Hiring your own social media creator looks cheaper than it is. If you pay a monthly salary of €3,500, the total cost to the employer with employer contributions is well over €4,000, and on top of that come equipment, software and the time spent on recruitment.
| Item | In-house creator | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Salary and employer costs | Monthly salary + statutory employer contributions | Included in the monthly price |
| Equipment and software | Camera, lights, audio, editing software | Included in the monthly price |
| Recruitment | Weeks of working time, risk of a bad hire | No |
| Holidays and sick leave | Production stops | The team carries on |
| Skills | One person, one skill set | Videographer, editor, ads manager |
An in-house creator is still the right choice in some situations. If you need daily reactions, there is always something to film and management has time to steer the work, your own person produces more than an external partner for the same money. An agency is better when you need several skills at once and do not want to build production from scratch. The most common model that works is a combination: the agency handles production and advertising, and in-house there is one person responsible for day-to-day posting.
When not to buy social media marketing
In a few situations an ongoing monthly contract is a bad purchase regardless of price, and that is worth saying out loud.
Do not buy an ongoing service if you cannot commit to at least six months. Short-form video grows by accumulation, and the first two months are mostly spent learning what bites. A three-month trial just about makes it to an expensive conclusion.
Do not buy if sales cannot handle the enquiries that will come in. Growing demand before you can handle it mostly produces a bad customer experience.
Do not buy if you do not yet know who you are selling to. Content does not replace a missing target audience, it only makes the vagueness more visible.
And if you need one good video for a job ad or a trade fair, buy a single production. A monthly contract is the wrong tool for a one-off need.
How to judge whether the price makes sense for you
Take the monthly price in the proposal and work out from your margin how many extra sales a month it takes for the investment to pay for itself. If the answer is one or two, the decision is easy. If the answer is thirty, start lighter.
Formi Works generates around 7 million views a month for its clients and has made over 1,000 videos, so the estimates are based on actual productions, not general assumptions.
If you want the numbers for your own situation, book a short meeting. We go through where you are now and tell you straight whether it makes sense to buy anything at this point.
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