Social media budget breaks into three parts: People, Paid Ads & Tools.
UKCV
It’s the question every business owner eventually asks: how much should we actually be spending on social media? Spend too little and you’re invisible. Spend too much without a plan and you’re pouring money into posts that never turn into customers. The honest answer isn’t a single number it’s a framework. This guide gives you one, built for UK small businesses, so you can size your social media budget with confidence instead of guesswork.
Start with the rule of thumb then ignore it
The most-quoted benchmark is that businesses should spend somewhere between 7% and 12% of revenue on marketing overall, with social media taking a slice of that. For a business turning over £250,000 a year, that’s roughly £17,500-£30,000 on all marketing and maybe 20-40% of that going to social, depending on your model.
Useful as a starting point, but it’s blunt. A B2B consultancy and a local café have wildly different social needs. So treat the percentage as a sanity check, not a decision. The real budget comes from working bottom-up: what are you trying to achieve, and what does that actually cost?
Shortcut: our Marketing Budget Optimiser calculates your optimal marketing budget and allocation across channels in a couple of minutes, a faster way to pressure-test the number than doing it on paper.
The three cost buckets that make up a social media budget
Whatever your size, a social media budget breaks into three parts. Get the split right and the total almost sizes itself.
1. People (or agency) - the biggest line
Someone has to plan, create and post. That’s either your own time, an in-house hire, a freelancer, or an agency. This is usually 50-70% of the total. A freelancer might run one platform for £400-£800/month; an agency managing multiple platforms with strategy and reporting typically sits between £500 and £2,500+/month depending on scope.
2. Paid ad spend - separate from management
This is the money that goes to Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn directly, not what you pay someone to manage it. Keep the two separate in your head. A common beginner mistake is quoting an agency £500/month and expecting ads on top of management out of that same figure. As a starting point, many small businesses begin with £300-£1,000/month in ad spend and scale based on results.
3. Tools & content production
Scheduling tools, design software, and any photography or video. For most small businesses this is modest £50-£200/month, but video-heavy brands should budget more.
A simple way to set your number
Work through these four steps:
- Step 1: Set one goal. Awareness, leads, or sales? Your goal decides your organic-vs-paid split (more on that below).
- Step 2: Decide who does the work. In-house time, freelancer, or agency. Price that line first, it anchors everything else.
- Step 3: Add a test ad budget. Start small (£300-£500/month), measure, then scale only what works.
- Step 4: Sense-check against revenue. Does the total land in a sane range versus your turnover? If it’s more than ~15% of revenue and you’re not in aggressive growth mode, trim.
Organic vs paid: where the money should go
How you split spend depends entirely on your timeline:
Most healthy setups blend both, but knowing which way to lean stops you spreading a small budget too thin.
Don't set a budget without knowing your numbers
Here’s the part most guides skip: a social media budget only makes sense next to what a customer is worth to you. Two quick checks before you commit a penny:
- Can you afford to acquire a customer? Run our LTV:CAC Health Check : it tells you whether the lifetime value of a customer justifies your cost to acquire one. If the ratio is unhealthy, more spend just loses money faster.
- Will your ads break even? Before you scale paid social, our ROAS Calculator shows your break-even return on ad spend by margin, and compares Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, so you know what “good” looks like for your business.
These two numbers turn a budget from a guess into a decision. Spend up to what the maths allows, and no more.
What a realistic budget looks like by business size
These are guides, not gospel. A café that lives on Instagram and a SaaS firm on LinkedIn will allocate very differently even at the same revenue.
The bottom line
Don’t start with a number – start with a goal, price the work, add a test ad budget, and check it against what a customer is worth. Do that and your social media budget becomes a lever you control, not a cost you dread.
If you’d rather not work it out alone, our team can build a social media plan sized to your goals and budget. See how we approach social media marketing for Bristol businesses, or read our breakdown of what a Bristol social media agency includes and what it costs. Every engagement starts with a free audit, no pressure, just a clear picture of what your budget could achieve.
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