How Much Should a Small Business Budget for Social Media? (UK)

Ask most owners what they spend on social media and they'll say nothing, or they'll name one bill. Both answers are usually wrong. The money leaks out in five different places, and the biggest one never shows up on a bank statement.

So a sensible social media budget for small business owners isn't a single figure. It's five lines added together: your time, your tools, your content, your ads and any help you pay for. Get all five on paper and the number stops being a guess.

Line 1: your time, the cost nobody writes down

Doing it yourself feels free because no invoice arrives. But every hour spent thinking up a post, taking the photo, writing the caption and answering the comments is an hour you're not quoting, working or at home.

Put a price on it. Take what an hour of your time is worth to the business, then multiply it by the hours you actually spend. If you don't know the hours, keep a note for two weeks. Most people are surprised, one way or the other.

For our examples we've used £30 an hour. That's a made-up figure to show the sum, not a guess at your rate. At that price, three hours a week works out at about 13 hours a month, or £390 of your time.

Line 2: tools

This is the smallest line, and the easiest to overspend on. For Facebook and Instagram, most small businesses need two things: something to make graphics and something to schedule posts.

The Canva prices are from Canva's UK pricing page, checked on 19 September 2026. The scheduling side is covered by Meta Business Suite, which handles posts, messages and ads for both apps.

Paid scheduling tools with bigger dashboards exist, and they earn their keep for agencies juggling dozens of accounts. For one business on two apps, they're usually a subscription you'll forget you're paying.

Line 3: content

Posts need pictures and video. You have three ways to get them, and most businesses end up mixing the first two.

• Your own phone. Costs nothing but time. Real photos of real jobs usually beat anything polished, because customers can tell they're yours.
• A shoot day. Someone comes out and films and photographs enough for months of posts. Ours start from £350 a day. Spread one across a year and it's about £29 a month.
• Stock images. Cheap and easy to find, but use them sparingly. A stock photo of a smiling stranger tells a customer nothing about you.

Line 4: ads, if you run them

Ads are optional, and they're the line most likely to be set too low. A tiny budget spread thin doesn't give Meta enough to learn from, so you pay for the weakest version of the campaign.

The floors we give clients are £150 to £300 a month for local awareness, £300 to £600 for generating enquiries, and £600 or more for a busy trade in a large town. Our breakdown of what social ads cost explains where those figures come from and the extra costs that sit around them.

If you are not sure how much you can put behind ads at all, work that out first. Our step-by-step method for setting an advertising budget starts from how much extra work you can actually take on, which is the right place to start.

Line 5: help, if you pay for it

The last line is paying someone else to plan, make and post the content. It can be a freelancer, an agency or a staff member, and each one moves the time line down by moving money into this one.

We price our own social media management from £225 a month for Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok can be added for £50 a month. For wider price ranges across the market, see our social media management pricing guide.

Three worked examples, by business size

These are invented businesses with example figures, there to show the five lines adding up. The time is valued at our example £30 an hour. Replace them with your own as you read.

What the examples show

The sole trader spends nothing in cash and still has a budget of £390 a month, all of it hours. That's fine if those hours would otherwise be quiet. It's expensive if they're hours you could be billing.

The small team spends £563 in cash, but the owner's time falls to about an hour a week of checking and replying. Notice that the ads line is the biggest single cost, not the help.

The established firm spends £1,000 and adds TikTok and more filming. Once a business is at this size, the content line starts to matter as much as the ads, because three apps need a lot of fresh material.

What handing over the posting looks like

Joe Haywood runs Verity Heating Solutions in Barnsley on his own. Every hour he spends on social media is an hour off the tools. We built his website and run his social media alongside it, which takes the posting off his list of jobs. In his words: "We recently used Bee Viral to build and automate the website for our heating business, as well as manage our social media, and we couldn’t be happier with the results." His site is in our portfolio.

If money is tight, where should the first pounds go?

Here's the order we'd spend in, at three rough levels:

• Under £100 a month. No ads yet, because you'd be below the floor. Put a little into Canva Pro if the free version is holding you back, and spend the rest of your effort on regular posts from your phone.
• Around £300 a month. Choose one: pay for help, or run ads at the enquiry floor. Pick help if you have no time to post. Pick ads if you already post regularly and want more reach.
• £600 a month and up. Help and ads together, plus a shoot day now and again so the posts and adverts don't run dry.

Whatever the level, keep the budget steady for at least three months before judging it. Social media rarely pays back in the first few weeks, and a budget that stops and starts never gets a fair test.

What not to spend your social media budget on

• Bought followers or likes. They don't buy anything from you, and they make your real numbers harder to read.
• A presence on every app. Each extra app adds to the time and content lines. Two done well beats five done badly.
• Tools you won't open. If a subscription hasn't been used in a month, cancel it.
• Ads with nowhere to land. If your website or booking link lets people down, fix that before paying for clicks.

Frequently asked questions

Want help working out your number?

Setting a social media budget for small business life is easier with someone who does the sums every week. Pop a message over on WhatsApp, or phone 01709 225755, and we'll help you fill in the five lines for your business. Every price is on our packages page. And while we're chatting, your website and Google profile get our free 10-point check too.