When you’re working independently, it can be hard to know how much to charge for your freelance social media management services.
We know because barely a day goes by without someone posting in our communities asking for help.
And it made us wonder, why is pricing so difficult? And such a mystery?
What if everyone had more knowledge around pricing so that they could price confidently and stop selling themselves short?
The social media managers’ prices survey
With that in mind, we surveyed more than 300 global freelance and in-house social media managers and ad strategists to find out how much they earned.
In some cases, we were shocked by how little people charged for their services. But it’s not all bad news. In the top-earning bracket, some marketers were charging almost 150% more than the monthly average.
This means, that if you’re currently at the lower end of the scale, it’s all to play for.
Although many factors affect social media manager prices – including how often you post, time spent on engagement and whether a client provides images or not – we were still stunned at how little some SMMs were being paid.
One participant charged as little as £60 a month for Facebook management and another just £40 a month for Instagram.
But here’s the good news. Our survey is proof that social media managers can charge a premium for their services and that businesses are prepared to pay.
The top ten paid UK Facebook page managers charged an average of £840 a month. The top UK Tik Tok managers averaged £768.75 a month and, best of all, the top Instagram managers were charging an average £1,165 a month.
In-house Social Media Manager salaries
According to Indeed.com the average salary for an in-house social media manager in the UK is £32.5k a year.
Our survey came up with a more promising figure – £38.8k.
How to charge for your social media services
There’s a lot of debate around whether social media pros should charge by the hour, on a day rate or provide pre-priced packages.
We’re not a fan of any of those options.
Pricing by the hour can make it hard to quantify your workflow to a client – especially when there are so many moving parts. As a result, they may have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved in the time they’re paying you for.
Pre-priced packages aren’t ideal either. They don’t take into account the unique requirements of each client, and you may end up having to work harder than you anticipated to achieve the desired results.
And we all know that social media marketing cannot be done effectively on a day by day basis so that makes day rates obsolete in our opinion.
Instead, we recommend providing prospective clients with custom proposals that are priced to match their specific goals.
Social media management payment in advance
If you follow our content, you’ll know we’re strong advocates of payment in advance. So we were pleased to see that, of the 287 who answered the question, just over 50% were paid in advance.
However, the not so good news is that during the past 12 months, more than 40% of our survey participants experienced a client who didn’t pay their invoice on time.
You can find out how to avoid late payers in our blog Late invoice payments – How to avoid them and what to do if it happens
How important is experience and niching?
If you’re new to social media management, you may feel you should charge less for your service, but that’s not the case.
Having less experience doesn’t mean you have to undercharge – especially if you’re doing a great job.
Niching can help to push up your prices. As with every profession, carrying specialist knowledge of a subject will make you a more appealing prospect to clients, and you can price accordingly.
5 signs you’re underpricing your services
- You’re working around the clock, but your income is stagnant
- People snap your hand off when you tell them your fee
- You haven’t increased your prices in the past 12 months
- You feel resentful towards your clients
- You need an extra pair of hands but can’t afford to outsource
How to increase your social media manager price
If the results of our survey have made you realise you’re undercharging, it’s time to act.
And we’ve got the perfect solution.
Our Dream Client Workshop is a proven system to attract and win high-paying clients who value your work, pay you your worth and trust you to get on with the job.
And finding dream clients isn’t as hard as you think.
When you sign up for the Dream Client Workshop, we’ll walk you through the exact steps we – and hundreds of other successful social media managers – have taken to grow their businesses and boost their bottom line.
Get instant access to the Dream Client Workshop and go from unseen freelancer to in-demand social media marketer today.
