Pricing: it’s the one word that makes many social media managers break into a cold sweat. How do you value your time, expertise, and the potential results your social media services can bring to a business? Like a chef preparing a gourmet meal, the ingredients may be plain to see, but the recipe for success remains elusive.
Today, we will unravel the mystery and equip you with the insights needed to price your social media packages effectively.
Understanding Your Market
When it comes to pricing your social media packages, the first stop is to understand your market. Who are your potential clients, and what will they pay for your services?
Study your competitors.
What are their social media package pricing structures like?
Is there a common pricing standard in your industry?
While you don’t need to follow the crowd, it’s important to know the market conditions. After all, you can’t sell ice to the Eskimos, can you?
Know Your Services and Their Value
The next crucial step is to define the services you’re offering clearly. Will you provide a comprehensive package encompassing strategy development, content creation, and community management? Or will you offer separate smaller packages for different aspects of social media management?
Each service you provide carries a different value. Assigning a price tag to each can be challenging, but a good way to approach this is to consider the time you spend on each task, the level of expertise it requires, and the potential return on investment it can provide to your clients.
Remember, your pricing shouldn’t only reflect the work you put in and the value you bring to your client’s table.
How Much Should I Charge for Social Media Marketing?
The rates for social media services vary significantly between freelancers, marketing agencies, and experienced 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
There are drastic discrepancies between the services agencies offer and their clients.
Agencies charge anywhere from $600/month to $15,000 per month for social media management.
The value of pricing in your market
If you price your package too high, it may deter potential customers or put you at risk of underdelivering. Many businesses regard companies that price their packages far too low as cheap or inexperienced and will not inquire about their services.
There is a sweet spot between pricing too low and too high that allows you to cast a wide net with potential customers while leaving room for profit.
When determining the audience you want to target with your packages and pricing, there are a few key factors to consider.
What size companies are you looking for?
Are you looking to sell to small businesses or win contracts with large corporations? It is critical to identify this early on to tailor your service packages to that size business and their specific needs.
Are you aiming for a specific industry?
It’s critical to decide whether you want to specialize as an agency or as a social media manager because this will determine your clients’ specific social media needs and willingness to pay for social media services in your industry.
What is your customer acquisition cost?
How much time and money are you investing in attracting new customers?
How many new clients do you sign each month? You can calculate the average cost of acquiring a client by dividing your total cost to acquire new customers (all marketing and sales expenses) by the number of new clients.
What social media marketing services are you planning to provide? If you provide full-service social media management, your pricing will be significantly different than if you only provide social media content creation. Decide early on what services will be included in your packages so that you can price accordingly.
Pricing Structure for Social Media Services
Businesses today require a wide range of social media services, including:
- Social media marketing strategy
- Creating social media content (graphics, captions, and hashtags)
- Content scheduling and publication Engagement/community management
- Campaigns for social media advertising
Because you can leverage your internal team and outsource or white-label services, you may be in a better position as a marketing agency to provide a full-service social media marketing package.
As a freelancer or individual, it is critical to determine which services you can fulfill on your own and which will need to be outsourced (if that is an option).
The great thing about offering social media packages to your clients is that they are recurring, which allows you to cultivate a steady stream of repeat business every month quickly.
Why Do You Need To Create Social Media Marketing Packages?
So, why are your social media management services packaged at all? We’re glad you inquired! There are several reasons for this, so let’s get started!
- Before hearing about your suitability for the job, many clients want to see an outline of your services’ prices. After all, what’s the point of even considering you or your agency if you’re way over budget? Packages can help you structure your services in a more streamlined manner. Listing your services also shows the client how much work is involved in social media marketing and the value of what you do.
- Some customers may only require one or two services. Your pricing and packages can establish a “minimum” package so you don’t spend time speaking with unsuitable clients.
- Instead of reinventing the wheel each time you send a client proposal, you can use your base packages as a starting point and quickly customize a package for a new client.
- Clients who have never worked with an online marketing agency may be unaware of how much work is involved in social media marketing. Packages can show prospective clients that it is easier for one agency or freelancer to handle everything rather than engaging multiple agencies for things like influencer marketing or paid social media marketing. You also get more work. Winning!
- Organizing your packages correctly will demonstrate your expertise from the start. Structured packages appear professional and highlight that you work pragmatically and consistently with predefined processes.
- Clearly defined social media marketing packages establish expectations by outlining what is and is not included. When you present your packages, make it clear that any additional services will incur a fee. This ensures that you will not be subjected to scope creep.
- Although tracking your hours is still a good idea, you don’t have to with a monthly package. This also makes things much easier for the client, as well as for you! With an hourly rate, the client may be concerned that costs will exceed budget and that there will be ongoing friction when things take longer than they should. Packages can assist you in allocating time and resources to each client and service.
- Depending on your contracts, a monthly, quarterly, or yearly social media marketing package provides security for both the client and the freelancer or agency. Even without a contract, a monthly payment schedule and a set package reassure social media professionals because clients are less likely to opt out in the middle of the month. However, remember that unless you have a solid contract, your client may cancel your workload unexpectedly or disappear from the face of the earth. More to come on that later!
Even though creating and selling social media marketing packages is far superior to charging by the hour or working on a project-by-project basis, it must be done correctly from the start. So, even if you’re just starting out, let’s talk about how to do it!
Pricing Structures for Social Media Management
While the “ideal” social media package varies greatly from company to company, we’ll make some recommendations based on our experience.
The Beginning Package
- Social media marketing strategy
- Creating social media content (graphics, captions, and hashtags)
- Scheduling and publishing on social media
This is the starting point for a company’s social media presence. It may not help them generate an immediate return on investment on its own, but it will help them build their brand, tell their story, and give customers a professional impression by maintaining an active presence on social media.
Developing a social media strategy allows you and your client to align on the target audience, brand voice, content types, frequency, and, most importantly, goals and objectives for their social media channels.
Content creation and scheduling are the two simplest services because they can be easily outsourced and white-labeled.
As an agency or social media manager, you could guide your clients through the initial strategic development and then delegate the content creation, scheduling, and publishing to us.
The full-service plan
- Social media marketing strategy
- Creating social media content (graphics, captions, and hashtags)
- Scheduling and publishing on social media
- Management of engagement and community
- Social media marketing
In general, larger businesses will require full-service social media support. That’s where a comprehensive package can come in handy.
This package includes all the services from the Starter Package plus engagement, community management, and social media advertising.
If you have an existing social media team that can help with engagement and advertising experts who can help with your client’s paid social needs, this package should be simple to put together as an agency.
As a freelancer or individual social media manager, you may find it more difficult to offer this package without additional assistance because providing all of these services on your own would be difficult to scale.
Consider focusing on one core element, such as organic content or paid advertising, and outsourcing or delegating the rest in order to provide a complete package and a single point of contact to your clients without overworking yourself or underdelivering.
We’ve seen an increase in agencies and freelancers focusing on paid campaign management over the years, which makes sense, given that it’s often the most profitable service to provide. It directly impacts your client’s business, so you can easily price it based on results or your client’s ad spend.
This allows you to outsource organic content creation and concentrate your team’s efforts on paid campaign management.
How to Determine the Value of Your Social Media Package
So you’ve decided on the components of your social media packages.
How do you price them now?
The first step in developing a social media pricing sheet is determining your scope of work.
The following are some of the key components of the scope of work for social media services:
- Platforms: How many platforms will you service for each client? (Tip: We recommend offering services for the four major platforms—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram—but you can also consider Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and Google My Business, as adoption for these is growing.)
- Content quantity: Will you be publishing new content several times per day? How many times per week? Is it only during the workweek? 2-3 blog posts per week? (Tip: For most small businesses, posting 3-5 times per week is sufficient, whereas larger businesses may benefit from 5+ posts per week or daily posting.)
- Will you create content from scratch or require your clients to provide brand assets or images? Tip: Because many small businesses have few brand assets, we recommend creating content from scratch with a combination of high-quality stock imagery and graphic design elements. If the company has its own brand assets, that’s an added bonus!
- Engagement: How much time will you spend each week engaging with your client’s followers? Tip: Encourage the client to do the majority of the outbound engagement. If you want to assist your client’s engagement, we recommend offering to monitor their social media inboxes and relay any important questions or communications to the client.
You should be able to break down the time required for each deliverable and the cost associated with each once you’ve determined the scope of work. This should give you a good idea of how much it will cost to calculate your packages.
You must account for the time spent on deliverables, the software and tools used, and the cost of customer acquisition.
How do you get new clients? Are you investing in marketing to attract new customers? Based on your advertising budget, what is your average cost per client?
It is critical to calculate the exact cost of acquiring each new client so that you can account for it in your pricing.
How much value do you add to your clients’ lives?
A value-based pricing strategy involves charging customers according to the value they receive from your service.
- What is the value of a new customer acquired through social media to your client in this context?
- How much money do they put into social media campaigns?
- How much money do they hope to make from their social media campaigns?
All of these questions will assist you in defining what value means for your client and developing a price that not only covers your costs and allows you to make a profit but also considers the effective value of the results you’re producing.
Factor in Your Costs
You must not overlook your business costs when setting up your social media pricing packages. These costs include everything from your software subscriptions to your electricity bill.
Any expense that keeps your social media management business up and running should be factored into your pricing.
Determine The Right Pricing Structure
So, where do you even begin when it comes to structuring your social media management packages? To determine your “cost price,” begin by estimating the cost of each service within each package. This will cost your company to provide that service to each client.
Let us begin with an example.
You may incur the following monthly costs for social media content creation:
TOTAL = $1,855
This cost will most likely vary depending on how many social media platforms the client uses. The number of social media networks you recommend may be determined by the client, their industry, the demographics of their target audience, and their previous progress.
Based on the above scenario, if you’re a freelancer, you’re already making a baseline profit from copywriting and organizing the content shoot.
However, you should probably add a premium on top of this to cover any additional hours. Remember that your hourly rate must include benefits, healthcare, annual leave, and sick leave.
If you run an agency, you’ll have to pay for employee benefits, insurance, staff training, rent, and other expenses. If you want to calculate your true profit margin, add up all your operating expenses, including employee wages, and balance them against your profits.
Regardless, you’ll want to add a buffer to the above costs to ensure you’re making a healthy profit and have room to grow.
Remember, you’re not just selling your clients X hours of work. You’re selling an invaluable service that will help your clients increase brand awareness, online engagement, brand profile, and social media presence, ultimately help them increase conversions and make money.
So, while you should know how long each service may take, you do not have to share this information with the client. You absolutely should not! Furthermore, the time it takes to create social media content for each brand can vary greatly.
Regarding social media marketing packages, not all are created equal. Sure, your agency’s pricing may be higher than that of another. However, the better your ability to articulate your unique selling proposition (USP) and demonstrate your value to prospective clients, the better. Remind prospective clients of all the wonderful services you provide as a freelancer or agency.
Perhaps you have specific experience with brands similar to theirs. Perhaps they’ll have daily access to a dedicated account manager. Or perhaps you have a specific social media campaign in mind that you can pitch to them to show that you understand how to take their brand to new heights. Revisit your USP and look for ways to incorporate it into your proposal decks and online marketing materials.
While staying competitive is important, pricing isn’t the only factor businesses consider. Finding a good agency can be difficult.
Even small businesses and start-ups want to know they work with the best agency, not just the cheapest. You can win more business at the right price if you invest time in proving the value of what you do. You can accomplish this by gathering testimonials and developing personalized pitches and presentations.
Establish Your Profit Margin
Let’s not beat around the bush here. You’re in this business to make money, and your social media management pricing packages should reflect that. While your prices should be fair and competitive, they should also allow you to turn a decent profit.
This is where establishing a profit margin comes in. Typically, a 15-20% profit margin is considered healthy, but this can vary depending on your industry and business model.
Tier Your Services
Tiered pricing is a common strategy employed in social media package pricing. This involves offering different packages at varying price points. For example, you might have a basic package for small businesses, a premium package for larger corporations, and perhaps even a bespoke package for clients with specific needs. This strategy caters to a broad range of clients and allows you to upsell more comprehensive packages.
Flexibility is Key
In the fast-paced world of social media, adaptability is key. The same principle applies to your pricing. While you should have a base price for your services, be prepared to negotiate. Remember, every client is unique, with different needs and budgets.
A flexible pricing strategy allows you to cater to a broader range of clients without underselling your services.
Review Regularly
Last but certainly not least, regularly review your social media management packages. Your prices should reflect these changes as your expertise grows and the market evolves.
Regularly updating your pricing helps to ensure you’re not undervaluing your services or pricing yourself out of the market.
Conclusion
In conclusion, pricing your social media packages doesn’t have to feel like deciphering the Da Vinci Code.
By understanding your market, knowing your services’ value, factoring in your costs, establishing your profit margin, adopting a tiered approach, being flexible, and reviewing regularly, you’re well on your way to effectively pricing your social media services. So, go ahead and put a price tag on your hard work; you’ve earned it!