How Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Social Media?

If you’re thinking about running ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or another social media platform, one of the first questions you’ll probably ask is: how much does it cost to advertise on social media?

The short answer? There is no single fixed price. While some businesses spend a few hundred pounds a month to test the waters, others can spend thousands every month across several platforms. The right budget depends on your goals, your audience, your industry, your creative assets, and how competitive your market is.

The good news is that social media advertising can be flexible. You can start small, learn what works, and build from there. In this guide, we’ll explain what affects the cost of social media advertising, how much (on average) you can expect to spend, and how to make your budget work harder to gain better results.

Why Advertising on Social Media is Important

Social media is where people spend a large part of their time online. Whether they are scrolling through Instagram, watching videos on TikTok, browsing Facebook groups, or catching up on LinkedIn, your audience is likely using at least one social platform regularly.

Being active in the spaces where your customers are already engaging is a great way to gain exposure for your brand, promote your products or services, and grab people’s attention without feeling or looking too salesy. However, using organic social media (regular posting without paying) does not guarantee that people will see your content. Even your followers may miss your posts if the algorithm decides not to show them. That’s why paid social advertising gives you more control.

Rather than posting and hoping for the best, you can choose who sees your ads based on details such as:

• Location
• Age
• Interests
• Job title
• Online behaviour
• Previous website visits
• Engagement with your brand

This means your budget can be used to reach people who are more likely to care about what you offer.

For example, a local gym could target people within a few miles of its location, or the demographic best fit for its classes, such as women over 30, etc. This level of targeting is what makes paid social so useful for businesses that want more visibility, traffic, leads, or sales, as it helps reach the exact audience you want to attract.

How Much Does Social Media Advertising Cost?

As a rough guide, many small businesses may start with a monthly ad spend of around £500 to £1,500. This can be enough to test different audiences, messages, and creative assets, especially on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

For more competitive campaigns, larger audiences, or stronger lead generation goals, budgets can often move into the £2,000 to £5,000+ per month range. 

However, the total cost of advertising on social media is not just the money you put into the platform. Your overall cost may include:

1. Ad Spend

This is the money paid directly to the social media platform. For example, your daily or monthly budget on Meta, TikTok, or LinkedIn.

This budget controls how often your ads can be shown and how many people you can reach. For more information on how your ad spend is used, take a look at our blog, “What is Paid Social Advertising?”

2. Creative Production

Your ads need something visual. This might include images, videos, graphics, product shots, landing page content, or written ad copy. Strong creatives can make a huge difference, especially if they resonate with your target audience. A simple, clear ad that speaks to the right audience will usually perform better than something that’s rushed, posted for the sake of it, or trying to appease multiple demographics at once.

3. Campaign Management

Someone needs to set up the campaign, choose the targeting, write the ads, monitor performance, and make improvements. This can be handled in-house, but many businesses work with a paid social agency to manage this properly. Poor setup can waste budget quickly, especially if your targeting or tracking is not right.

4. Landing Page or Website Improvements

Getting clicks is only part of the job. Once people land on your website, they need to understand what you offer and what to do next. If your website is slow, unclear or difficult to use, you may pay for traffic that does not convert. In some cases, improving the landing page can have a bigger impact than simply increasing the ad budget.

Ensuring that the landing pages you drive traffic to are as well presented as your paid social posts, with accurate information, a clear Call to Action (CTA), and represents your brand will reduce the chances of visitors not converting to a sale or whatever your goal is.

What Affects the Cost of Advertising on Social Media?

The cost of social media advertising changes from campaign to campaign. Two businesses can spend the same amount and get completely different results. Below are some of the biggest factors that affect cost.

Your Chosen Platform

Different platforms have different strengths.

• Facebook and Instagram: Often good for visual campaigns, local businesses, ecommerce brands, and retargeting
• TikTok: Strong for video-led campaigns and brand awareness
• LinkedIn: Usually more expensive, but can be useful for B2B campaigns where you need to reach specific job titles or industries
• YouTube: Similar to TikTok, strong for video-led campaigns

The best platform is not always the cheapest one; it’s the one where your audience is most likely to be.

Your Campaign Goal

A campaign focused on reach or awareness will usually cost less than a campaign focused on leads or sales. This is because it is easier to show your ad to people than it is to get them to take action.

Common campaign goals include:

• Brand awareness
• Website traffic
• Engagement
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Online sales
• Event sign-ups
• App downloads

If you want higher-value actions, you should expect to invest more time and budget into testing and optimisation.

Your Audience

Broad audiences can sometimes be cheaper to reach, but they may not always convert well. More specific audiences can cost more because you are narrowing the pool of people the platform can show your ads to. 

For example, targeting business owners in a certain industry may cost more than targeting a general local audience.

The key is to avoid going too broad or too narrow. You need enough people for the platform to work with, but not so many that your ads are shown to people who are unlikely to become customers. This is where it is essential to test and monitor your ads.

Your Industry

Some industries are naturally more competitive than others. If lots of businesses are targeting the same audience, costs can rise. For example, legal services, finance, recruitment, property, education, and some healthcare campaigns can be more competitive than lower-value consumer products.

This does not mean a paid social campaign won’t work. It just means the strategy needs to be realistic from the start, and you need to understand that a competitive industry will be harder to gain instant results.

Your Ad Quality

Social platforms want to show users content they are likely to engage with. If your ads are relevant, eye-catching, and clear, they are more likely to perform well. Weak, low-quality ads can increase costs because people ignore them.

Good ads usually have:

• A clear message
• Strong, high-quality visuals (images/graphics/videos)
• A simple call to action
• A reason for people to care
• Copy that matches the audience
• A landing page that continues the same message

Your Tracking

Without tracking, it’s very difficult to know what is working. You may get clicks, but do you know how many of those clicks became enquiries, purchases, or sign-ups?

Tracking helps you understand which campaigns are delivering value and which ones need changing. This is especially important if your goal is to generate leads or sales, not just views.

Meta Location Fees

This is a relatively new thing, but it’s worth noting that Meta has introduced a 2% fee on ad spend (called Location Fees) in the UK. For every 1k spent on Meta, you should expect to see £20 on the invoice. This is a sort of tax.

For more information, please take a look at Meta’s official page and explanation.

How to advertise on social media

If you’re new to paid social, getting started can feel overwhelming. There are different platforms, campaign types, budgets, audiences, and creative formats to think about.

1. Choose your goal

Start by deciding what you want the campaign to achieve.

Do you want more people to know about your brand? More visitors to your website? More online sales? Choosing your goal will help shape the rest of the campaign and give you a solid result to aim towards.

2. Choose the right platform

You don’t need to advertise everywhere, on every platform. You should think about where your audience spends the most time and focus on that platform(s) as the main one. For example, a local trades business may see strong results from Facebook and Instagram, whereas a fashion brand may benefit from Instagram and TikTok. 

It’s better to run one or two platforms properly than spread your budget too thinly across everything.

3. Set a sensible budget

Start with a budget you are comfortable testing with, but make sure it is large enough to collect useful data. A very low budget may not give the platform enough room to learn and may also take too long to understand what is working.

For many businesses, the first stage is about testing. Once you know which audiences, ads, and offers perform best, you can increase the budget more confidently to improve your ROI.

4. Create strong ads

Your creatives matter more than you might think. People scroll quickly, so your ad needs to grab attention and explain the benefit clearly. This does not always mean a polished, expensive video; sometimes a simple image, clear headline, and direct message can work well.

It’s best to test different versions where possible, too. You may find that one image, video, or message performs much better than another, so it makes more sense to place more budget behind it.

5. Send people to the right page

It’s best not to send everyone to your homepage by default. If your ad is about a specific service, send people to a page about that service. Similarly, if your ad promotes a product, send people to the product page. 

The journey from your ad to the website should feel natural and make sense. This way people will be more likely to take the next step as you’ve made the process easy.

6. Review and improve

Don’t leave your paid social ads alone when they’re live. Make sure you keep monitoring them and make changes accordingly. This might include pausing poor-performing ads, increasing budget on stronger campaigns, changing the audience, updating the creative, or improving the landing page. Ongoing maintenance can make a huge difference to the results you drive.

Why is social media good for advertising?

Social media is good for advertising because it combines reach, targeting, and flexibility. You can reach large audiences, but you can also narrow your targeting to focus on the people who matter most to your business. This makes it useful for both small local companies and larger national brands.

Another benefit is that social media advertising can support different parts of the customer journey. For example:

• Awareness ads can introduce your brand to new people
• Traffic ads can bring users to your website
• Retargeting ads can remind previous visitors to come back
• Lead generation ads can collect enquiries
• Sales campaigns can promote products directly

This means paid social advertising doesn’t have to work in one single way. It can be shaped around your business and your goals.

You can also view the data the ads provide. You can see how many people saw your ad, clicked it, watched your video, filled in a form, or bought from your website. This makes it easier to make informed decisions instead of guessing.

Does advertising on social media work?

The businesses that usually see the best results are the ones that have a clear goal, a strong offer, good creative, accurate tracking, and a website that is ready to convert visitors. Plus, they constantly monitor and improve the ads to drive better results.

Putting money behind a post does not automatically guarantee sales. If the message is weak, the audience is wrong, or the website is confusing, the campaign may struggle.

However, when everything works together, paid social can be a powerful way to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Drive more website traffic
• Generate enquiries
• Promote products
• Retarget warm audiences
• Support wider marketing campaigns
• Reach people who may not find you through Google

It can also work well alongside SEO and PPC. SEO helps people find you when they are searching, and paid social helps you reach people before, during, and after they are actively looking. Utilising all channels can be especially useful if you want to stay visible across more of the customer journey.

Start advertising on social media with Wildcat Digital

Advertising on social media can be a brilliant way to get your business in front of the right people, but it needs a proper plan behind it.

Budgets need to be managed, ads need to be tested, audiences need to be reviewed,  and tracking needs to be set up correctly. If not, it can become very easy to spend money without knowing what you’re getting back.

At Wildcat Digital, we help businesses build paid social campaigns that are shaped around real goals, not vanity metrics. Whether you want to increase awareness, generate leads, or support online sales, our team can help you create a campaign that makes sense for your business and your budget.

For more information, take a look at our paid social advertising services or get in touch with our team to start the conversation.