It’s a bit of a head-scratcher: Overall marketing budgets are shrinking in 2026, but social spending is climbing.
Social media now eats up 14% of marketing budgets, and it’s not slowing down.
Because social is claiming a bigger slice of the pie, getting your budget right matters more than ever.
Key takeaways
- Your social media budget should include more than just paid ads. Remember to factor in content creation, tools, and even influencer partnerships to cover a well-rounded strategy.
- Stay flexible. Leave room in your budget to adapt to trends. Social media is fast-moving, and you’ll want the flexibility to pivot when necessary.
- Don’t forget about tools. Social media management and AI tools can help streamline your efforts and boost productivity.
A social media budget is a plan that outlines how much a business will spend on social media marketing over a set period of time, typically a year, quarter, month, or campaign. It usually covers a few main categories: Content creation, paid advertising, software and tools, and team or agency costs.
Most social media budgets live in a simple spreadsheet, though some teams manage them inside project management tools.
Whatever format you use, the goal is the same: track your spending clearly enough to analyze where your money is going and measure your return on investment.
A social media budget should include content creation, paid ads, software and tools, agencies and contractors, influencer marketing, contests and giveaways, and training and development.
Here are all the factors to consider when planning your social media marketing budget.
Content creation
Content creation covers everything your audience actually sees — the photos, videos, graphics, and copy that make up your social presence.
Here’s the good news: Content creation can be as expensive or as inexpensive as you want it to be. On the low end, you can fill your feed with free stock photos and phone-shot Reels. On the high end, you can hire professional photographers and videographers to produce custom content.
Here’s what to budget for:
- Photography and images
- Video production
- Talent (i.e., actors and models)
- Production costs (i.e., props and location rentals)
- Equipment, such as microphones and lighting
- Graphic design
- Copywriting, editing, and translation
This is one area where AI tools can have a significant impact on your budget. They can’t replace content creation entirely, but they can speed up writing, editing, image generation, and more.
It’s no surprise that 79% of social media managers now use AI daily, according to Hootsuite’s 2026 Social Trends Report. Plus, 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investment over the next three years.
If you haven’t tried AI for content creation yet, we suggest doing so before planning your next content creation budget. Here’s a roundup of our favorite AI-powered design and editing tools.
Social media advertising
Social ads do more than drive immediate sales. They bring new audiences into the top of your funnel, where organic and paid content work together to convert them into customers over time.
To get started, here’s the minimum daily spend required to run an ad campaign on each major social media platform in 2026:
Here are a few tips for budgeting social media ads:
- Don’t over-commit early. Start small, test, and scale what works. Locking thousands into a campaign before you know what converts is the fastest way to waste your advertising budget.
- Plan for the full funnel. Social ads aren’t just for direct conversion. Brand awareness and retargeting ads are usually a bigger budget driver than people expect.
- Track cost per click (CPC) and click-through rate (CTR). These two metrics tell you whether your ads are reaching the right audience at the right price.
- Run A/B tests. Test creative, copy, and audience targeting against each other before scaling spend on a winner.
- Use a calculator. Try Hootsuite’s free Facebook Ads budget calculator to plan campaign spend based on your revenue goals.
For more tips and insights on combining paid and organic marketing activities, check out this guide on how to integrate both into your content strategy.
Software and tools
Software is one line item that’s actually growing. 79% of marketers plan to invest more in software in 2026.
A social media management tool is a must for anyone running campaigns on more than one channel (Hootsuite plans start at $99/month), with most teams layering on additional tools from there.
Here are some essential tools for modern social teams:
More advanced tools (think: sentiment analysis tools, social media automation tools, or social media security tools) make sense once your team scales or your goals get more specific.
Before adding a new paid tool, do a quick cost analysis to confirm it’ll save enough time or drive enough results to pay for itself.
Agencies and contractors
Companies now outsource roughly one-third of their digital marketing efforts to agencies and freelancers.
The decision usually comes down to flexibility versus full-time commitment, and the cost difference is significant.
Freelancer rates depend on the specialty. For example:
Agency retainers typically run $3,000 to $20,000+ per month, depending on scope and team size. For example, smaller boutique agencies handle one or two platforms with a lean team. Full-service agencies manage strategy, content, paid ads, influencer partnerships, and reporting.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing costs range from $20 per post for nano-influencers to $50,000+ per post for mega-influencers. However, the exact rate depends on the platform, audience size, content format, and more.
Psst: Some nano- or micro-influencers might also be willing to use an affiliate commission structure.
Here’s how rates break down by influencer tier (averaged across major platforms):
| Influencer tier | Follower count | Typical rate per post |
| Nano | 1K–10K | $20–$500 |
| Micro | 10K–50K | $200–$2,000 |
| Mid-tier | 50K–500K | $2,000–$5,000 |
| Macro | 500K–1M | $5,000–$20,000 |
| Mega | 1M+ | $15,000–$50,000+ |
When budgeting for influencer marketing, also plan for:
- Boosting influencer posts as paid social ads to extend reach
- Usage rights if you want to repurpose the content for ads or your website
- Exclusivity clauses if you want to prevent the influencer from working with competitors
For a full platform-by-platform breakdown (and popular pricing models), see our complete guide to influencer rates.
Contests and giveaways
Social media contests and giveaways can be an effective way to build brand awareness, increase engagement, and grow your following. They can also help you bring in a library of user-generated content.
But you need to dedicate some budget to the rewards you’ll offer for participation. The best-case scenario is to offer your own products or services as a prize. It limits your budget commitments while also exposing people to your offering and potentially getting additional social content after the prize is rewarded.
Partnering with another brand can provide a way to offer a larger prize without a larger budget expense, like Porter Airlines and Visit the USA did here:
When budgeting for giveaways, don’t forget to include rewards for internal contests and rewards. Employee advocacy is a cost-effective way to dramatically increase your social media reach. A little healthy competition (or random giveaways) can help increase uptake in your advocacy program.
Training and development
Social media changes fast. Investing in training keeps your team current on platform changes, AI tools, and new content formats.
Most companies allocate 3.8% of their marketing budget to training and development. For a $50,000 social media budget, that works out to roughly $1,900 per year for courses, certifications, and skill-building.
Here are a few training options worth budgeting for:
- Hootsuite Academy: A catalog of certification courses taught by industry pros and tailored for businesses. (Cost: $99 to $999)
- LinkedIn Learning: 18,000+ expert-led courses with custom learning paths. (Cost: $379.88 per seat/year for small teams)
- Industry conferences: Like Adobe Summit or Content Marketing World. ($1,000–$3,000 per ticket, plus travel)
Or, a simple approach: allocate a per-employee education budget each year and let team members choose the training that makes sense for them.
Most businesses allocate 10% to 25% of their total marketing budget to social media, which works out to roughly $500 to $25,000+ per month, depending on company size.
Social media now accounts for 14% of marketing budgets on average — up from 11% in 2024 — and marketers expect that share to reach 23% within five years, according to the 2026 CMO Survey.
Here’s what businesses typically spend on social media marketing in 2026, by company size:
| Company size | Monthly social media budget | What it covers |
| Startup / solopreneur | $500–$2,500 | 1–2 platforms, minimal ad spend |
| Small business | $2,500–$5,000 | 2–3 platforms, regular posting, modest ads |
| Mid-sized company | $5,000–$10,000 | Multi-platform strategy, paid amplification, analytics |
| Enterprise | $10,000–$25,000+ | Full-funnel marketing campaigns, influencer partnerships, dedicated team |
Once you know your total social media budget, the next question is budget allocation — how to split it across content, ads, tools, and team.
Here’s how to think it through in five steps:
- Start with your goals
- Audit what’s already working
- Decide how you’ll get the work done
- Balance content, paid, and amplification
- Leave room to pivot
1. Start with your goals
Before you touch a spreadsheet, figure out what you actually need social media to do this year.
For example, a brand awareness goal will push more budget toward content and influencers, while a lead generation goal will move things toward paid ads and conversion tools.
If you’re juggling multiple goals (which most teams are), rank them in order of priority so you know where to put the bigger chunks of budget.
2. Audit what’s already working
Look at last year’s performance data before deciding where to invest. Which platforms drove the most engagement, conversions, or revenue? Which content formats outperformed?
Pour more budget into what’s already working, and don’t keep funding the platforms and formats that aren’t moving the needle just because you always have.
3. Decide how you’ll get the work done
Your social team setup drives a huge portion of your budget.
An in-house team is best for hands-on brand control, but comes with salary and overhead. Freelancers offer flexibility and specialized skills (usually around $65 to $150/hour). Agencies handle full-service strategy and execution but typically require a monthly retainer.
Most brands use a hybrid setup. For example, an in-house manager plus freelance video editors.
4. Balance content, paid, and amplification
Even without a strict rule, most social budgets split across three buckets:
- Content creation: The posts, videos, and graphics your audience sees
- Paid amplification: The ads and boosted posts that get your content in front of more people
- Tools and tech: The platforms that make everything run
Your perfect mix should depend on which bucket has the biggest impact on the goals you set in step 1.
5. Leave room to pivot
Social media moves fast, and the platforms or formats that worked in the beginning of the year may lose steam by summer.
Build a flexible reserve into your budget so you can jump on a trend, test a new platform, or double down on a campaign that’s overperforming. Locking 100% of your budget into pre-planned line items is the fastest way to get stuck.
Getting your social media budget approved comes down to making the case in a language stakeholders already speak: business outcomes, ROI, and competitive pressure.
Here are five tips to help your budget request land:
- Align your social KPIs with business goals
- Understand your performance and ROI
- Share case studies and success stories
- Include a competitor analysis
- Be specific, but leave room for unexpected expenses
1. Align your social KPIs with business goals
Stakeholders are far more likely to approve your budget when your social goals clearly map to business objectives (think: revenue, customer acquisition, retention, or brand awareness).
Vague goals like “grow our follower count” or “increase engagement” rarely land on their own, especially since your stakeholders might not have a great understanding of how social works.
To make the connection clear, frame your goals using the SMART goal-setting framework. This ensures goals are both relevant and achievable – important factors in any budget negotiation.
Make sure to also include relevant KPIs in your budget request. These show that you’ve intentionally aligned your social goals to the overall business plan.
2. Understand your performance and ROI
The strongest budget case is one where you can show your social team is a profit center, not a cost center.
That means coming to the conversation with hard performance data: revenue attributed to social, customer acquisition cost (CAC) for new customers, customer lifetime value (CLV), and conversion rates from social campaigns.
And remember: social ROI goes beyond direct sales conversions, too.
Brand awareness, audience growth, and community building all increase lifetime customer value over time, even when they don’t show up in this quarter’s revenue numbers. The trick is connecting those longer-term metrics back to business outcomes stakeholders care about, like retention rate or repeat purchase rate.
If you’re struggling to measure ROI, Hootsuite Analytics consolidates organic, paid, and web performance data in one report. For a deeper explainer, see our guide to performance marketing strategy.
3. Share case studies and success stories
Stakeholders want proof that your team can deliver results, and a persuasive case study can turn abstract budget requests into a track record they can trust.
Look for social media campaigns that exceed expectations. Strong case studies include the goal, the spend, the strategy, and the outcome (revenue, conversions, engagement lift, share of voice, etc.). The more you can connect a past win to a business outcome, the easier it is to justify funding more of the same.
Think creatively here. Wins could also include new brand partnerships, new influencer relationships, or shares from major social media profiles.
4. Include a competitor analysis
A competitor analysis gives stakeholders a clear picture of what your brand is up against and what level of investment it’ll take to compete. It’s one of the most effective ways to move a budget conversation from “this is what I want” to “this is what the market requires.”
For example, if a competitor is posting content at levels or standards you just can’t match, you may be able to justify greater budget for content and campaign creation.
A good competitor analysis also includes the results your competitors are seeing from their social efforts. This can help rationalize any additional resource requests.
All of this also shows decision-makers that you’ve done your homework. You’re not just pulling numbers out of thin air — you’ve studied the competition and understand what it takes to compete in your field.
5. Be specific, but leave some room for unexpected expenses
An effective social team is nimble. Leave some room in your budget to respond to social trends.
For example, it’s a good idea to ask for an overall social ads budget rather than to lock budget into specific platforms. You can include amounts per platform as a guideline, but ensure your team has the ability to reallocate budget on the fly based on real-time performance.
Social media spending is rebounding after a dip in 2024 and 2025, and it’s growing faster than almost any other marketing category. Here’s how budgets actually break down across business types and industries.
Social media budget by business type
If you work for a B2C product brand, your peers are spending big. B2C companies now dedicate 19% of their marketing budget to social media, with plans to push that to 29% by 2031. That’s the most aggressive investment of any sector.
On the flip side, B2B brands spend less on social on average, but the gap is shrinking fast. Turns out, your B2B buyers are scrolling LinkedIn (and TikTok, honestly) just like everyone else.
Social media budget by industry
Consumer-facing industries are pouring money into social, while regulated or relationship-heavy industries are barely showing up.
Here are the biggest and smallest social spenders, according to the 2026 CMO Survey:
Biggest social spenders:
- Consumer Services: 26% of marketing budget
- Retail / Wholesale: 23%
- Consumer Packaged Goods: 20%
Smallest social spenders:
- Energy: 6%
- Pharma / Biotech: 8%
- Real Estate: 9%
If you’re in a low-spend industry, there’s a real opportunity here: most of your competitors aren’t showing up on social, which means the brands that do show up get a huge share of attention.
A good budget is only useful if you can track it. Here are three tools to help you plan, monitor, and measure your social media spend.
1. Hootsuite’s free social media ROI calculator
Calculating ROI is a critical part of budget negotiations. It can also eat up too much of your time doing math. Hootsuite’s free social media ROI calculator does the work for you. If you’d like to take a different approach to ROI, check out our post on how to calculate ROI.
2. YNAB
Originally developed as a personal budgeting tool, YNAB can also work well for small teams that need a simple way to plan and track social media expenses. It allows you to create your own categories and track expenses as you go.
Source: YNAB
3. Hootsuite Analytics
Hootsuite Analytics provides organic, paid, and web metrics in one dashboard – including ROI and conversion reports.
You’ll always have access to total spend and total return, broken down by network and even day of the week. This makes it easy to understand which strategies are working and where you should adjust your budget.
It also includes robust competitor analysis features so you can understand how your results compare to the industry average and specific brands.
FAQ: Social media budgets
How do businesses create a social media budget?
Most businesses build a social media budget by starting with their total marketing budget and allocating 10% to 25% of it to social media, then breaking that figure down across four core categories: content, paid ads, tools, and team. The exact split depends on company size, goals, and whether social work is handled in-house, by freelancers, or through an agency.
What should be included in a social media budget for enterprises?
An enterprise social media budget should cover content production (video, photo, design), paid advertising across multiple platforms, influencer and creator partnerships, a social media management platform like Hootsuite, social listening and analytics tools, and dedicated team salaries or agency retainers. Enterprises typically spend $10,000 to $25,000+ per month to fund a full-funnel, multi-platform strategy.
How much should companies spend on social media marketing?
How do brands allocate social media budget across platforms and campaigns?
Brands typically concentrate spend on two or three platforms where their audience is most active, rather than spreading budget thinly across every network. Within campaigns, a common approach is to allocate the majority of budget to proven, high-performing channels and reserve a smaller portion for testing new platforms, formats, or audiences.
How do businesses measure ROI from social media budget investments?
Save time managing your social media strategy with Hootsuite. Publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversations, engage your target audience, optimize your posting schedule, measure results, and more — all from one dashboard. Try it free today.
