Why we charge what we charge.

We ran a poll with 100 business owners and we found that most people think Social Media Marketing costs between $450 - $900 per month.

The actual cost can range anywhere from $2500 to upwards of $20,000 per month. There are a lot of variables. Here, we’re going to focus on a social-first approach to break down the question “why do we charge what we charge?”

When we get inquiries, a common problem we see is the skewed expectation and understanding of what truly goes into doing social media well. After all, anyone can post a dog video, slap a few hashtags on it, and make it go viral right? (we know because we did that too!)

With a lens on social media, there is so much more to it than posting and hashtags. There needs to be alignment with your brand, your offering, your vision, and your messaging. There needs to also be a deep understanding of user behavior, platform changes, algorithm updates, and the optimization of your campaign. Just posting a dog video might feel like an easy job but will that really result in business growth? Maybe sometimes? I can’t even confidently say sometimes.

So how does pricing work?! To answer that, we have to first look at what goes into Social Media.
For us, this is split into 4 parts:

• Social Media Management

• Social Media Strategy

• Social Media Ads Management

• Community Management on Social Media

Within these parts, 6 distinct roles are involved:

• Account Manager - this role is responsible for ensuring our clients feel heard, intake business goals, and managing partnerships and business opportunities. Coaching clients is a big part of this role!

• Social Media Manager - this role is responsible for the editorial calendar and managing the campaign process from conception to distribution.

• Strategist - This role is responsible for designing the strategy of your campaigns to make sure they match your business goals. They look at the data, the audience, and other factors to determine the best way to move forward for your brand.

• Creatives (Photo Editors, graphic designers, Video editors, Animation specialists, Photographers, Videographers, and Creative directors) - This role makes things look cool! They focus on visual trends, making sure your visuals are in alignment with your brand and messaging.

• Social Media Ad Specialist. - Paid Ads are part of a solid social strategy and this role focuses on maximizing your ad dollars. It’s a whole specialty!

• Community manager - This role is critical and is responsible for managing your customers and are often the first in touch when something goes right...or wrong. They have a pulse on your brand’s perception from the community’s perspective and communicate with your ideal audience on brand, on tone, and on time.

That means for an agency like ours, that’s 6 people with specialties focusing on your account, working collectively to ensure a successful social media campaign for your brand.  Now, remember, we’re framing this article with only social media in mind and are not including other forms of content marketing that might result from a successful social media campaign. Social Media is just a part, one single part, of your marketing strategy, it should not be your entire strategy.

Each of these roles involved in each brand has a set of responsibilities and an average time in which it can be accomplished it. This is determined by the client’s budget. Let’s say a client’s budget is $5500, then our strategist will outline a strategy and goals to match that budget. The time and resources each part of the strategy should take are also defined in this process.

Now you know how pricing works but there’s that nagging feeling that you can get it done for cheaper. Especially understandable if you’re a smaller business.

“I’ll just hire someone to do all the above, for cheaper.”
“Maybe I’ll just patchwork together freelancers.”
“My friend’s cousin’s babysitter’s best friend has been managing the family business’s Instagram. She must be an expert and it only costs $500!”

I’ve heard it all. Remember, cheaper doesn’t always mean better. The great thing about agencies is that each person is highly specialized. They aren’t learning on your dime. They know their industry, they have cultivated skills over years and can execute quickly and effectively. If you were to hire 6 specialists, it would likely cost you way more than an agency in payroll and overhead alone. Patchworking together freelancers might feel like a good idea but the breakdown in communication often yields satisfactory results. There’s also the people management aspect to think about. That’s why agencies like ours thrive as outsourced solutions.

We give you the comfort of having a fractional marketing office, the execution manpower without the overhead, and the fuss with making your campaigns work.

Your next question might be so why do we charge what we charge? It’s the title of this article after all.
It’s true, we’re not the cheapest option. We also don’t provide a cheap service.
We’re not the most expensive option either. We’re good at identifying savings without cutting corners. We pass those saving opportunities to our customers in the interest of mutual growth.

Here’s why we charge what we charge:

People First
Our people are the people that show up on behalf of your brand. I invest a lot of resources into mentorships, training, additional education, and general mental and even physical health for our team. Why? Because happy and healthy people do happy and healthy things. They are the right people for the job with the right mindset and the right attitude. They produce better, more holistic, more thoughtful outcomes to our campaigns AND they LOVE what they do...that love can be felt by your customers.

Beyond People
We take care of the resources and that goes beyond people. At first glance, you don’t consider all the costs that go into what we do, the programs, licenses, insurance, security, training, education, platforms, and the cost of taking care of the people that do the work. We have an overhead to ensure success. This overhead you do not consume, it’s the cost of doing business for us. Some of our programs cost as much as an entire project, and to take on the powerful tools on your own would ultimately be pricier than running the campaign through our agency.

Success Minded
We go above and beyond - contracts are contracts but we don’t stop because of our agreements and we don’t throw it in your face either.
Sophie owned a bakery. Her marketing strategy relied on deliverables from her team. Upon realizing they needed some coaching and extra support for execution, we scaled back our campaign and jumped in to help her get straightened out first, then we ramped back up. We’re part of your team and your success matters to us. It’s baked into our commitment to excellence and our personal values.

Client Minded.
Marketing is an interactive and very integrated experience. Our goal is not to just execute and call it a day but to truly immerse ourselves with the brands we take on and that means really understanding our clients. Not just your goals but your behaviors too. This helps us coach you when we can. It helps us anticipate your requests and serve you better. It helps us get in sync with you and helps us have hard conversations and fun conversations. We are committed not just to the brand, but to the people that own them, run them, and work for them.

Growth Minded.
We take our time to understand your needs and we don’t pigeonhole you into rigid agreements. Everything is an evaluation and as your business grows and evolves so do our strategies.
One of our Clients SFBCo, started with creative work for their product lines as they evolved, we realized that they needed that same creativity to run throughout their brand touch-points and we began helping them develop social media content. After understanding the ins and outs of their business, we realized that their customer journey ended with social and needed to expand. We scaled back on social media and focused on setting up email marketing and nurturing funnels. By pivoting, we were able to free up hours to set up a critical part of their sales funnel. Once that was in place we ramped back up with social media and also adopted email marketing too! An agency would typically change the scope of work and charge more rather than prioritize tactics and work with the client to keep the budget the same.

Transparency always.
We’re honest not just with our suggestions but with our pricing too. We’ll tell you exactly what we’ll do and why we’ll do it and how that works with pricing. There aren't surprises and it’s scalable. When something isn’t working, we’re honest. When something is working, we celebrate. Marketing is a marathon and not a sprint and we make sure that the cornerstone of our relationship is transparency and trust.


Pricing is always an uncomfortable topic of discussion but we’re ready to have it with you openly and honestly, we’ll let you know exactly what to expect with what you can afford and you can decide what level of support you’re comfortable with. Now that we’ve gotten this far into understanding each other a common follow-up question I get is “what budget should I set?” Now that’s a hard one to answer but we dive into how to set your budget in this article here.

Combined, these two should articles should help you prepare for a productive discovery call to see if Forward Media is a good fit as your creative marketing partner.