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Hiring a social media marketing agency for small business? What it includes, what it costs, and how Kihan Marketing prices month to month.
QUICK ANSWER
A social media marketing agency for small business handles strategy, content creation, posting, and community management for roughly $500 to $5,000 per month, with most small business retainers landing near the middle. Prioritize an agency that builds a consistent local audience over one chasing viral reach. Kihan Marketing includes social media in growth packages scoped to your goals, month to month, with no long term contract.
Most small business owners search for a social media marketing agency at the same moment: posting has been falling to whoever had a spare hour, the account has gone quiet for three weeks, and a competitor’s feed suddenly looks professional. What you are buying from an agency is not creativity on tap. It is a system that ships good content on schedule whether or not your week went sideways.
None of this is secret. Google's own SEO starter guide covers the same fundamentals, from the source.
A real engagement covers strategy and account setup, a monthly content calendar you approve in advance, post design and copywriting, scheduling and publishing, community management, and a monthly report tied to business outcomes. Many agencies, Kihan Marketing included, also handle light paid boosting so your best posts reach beyond your existing followers.
Social media pricing follows a few standard structures: hourly freelancers, flat monthly retainers, per-platform pricing, and project fees for one-off campaigns. For ongoing management, the monthly retainer is the norm, because consistency is the whole product.
Industry surveys have long placed small business social media retainers somewhere in the range of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. The spread reflects scope: how many platforms, how many posts per week, whether the agency writes and designs original content or recycles templates, and whether anyone actually answers your comments and messages.
| Option | Typical monthly cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $0 to $100 in tools | Owners with real time and design comfort |
| Freelancer or VA | Roughly $500 to $1,500 | One platform, basic posting cadence |
| Boutique agency | Roughly $1,000 to $5,000 | Strategy plus execution on 2 to 3 platforms |
| Larger agency or in-house hire | $5,000 and up | Multi-channel brands with paid ad budgets |
Watch the floor
Retainers far below the market range usually mean templated stock content, no community management, and no reporting. You save money and still end up doing the real work yourself.
A viral post reaches a hundred thousand strangers, most of whom could never buy from you. A consistent local presence reaches the few thousand people in your service area again and again until your name is the one they think of first. For a small business, the second outcome pays the bills, and it is the one an agency can actually engineer.
In practice that means a steady cadence of 3 to 5 posts per week, content built around your city and your customers rather than trends, geo-tagged posts and local hashtags, engagement with nearby businesses and community groups, and reviews and Google Business Profile activity treated as part of the same system. None of it is glamorous. All of it compounds.
The math that matters
A thousand followers who live within driving distance are worth more than a hundred thousand views from people who will never walk through your door.
Most agencies sell the same list of deliverables, so the real differences live in terms, process, and honesty. Run this list on every sales call, including ours.
Kihan Marketing is a Seattle web development and SEO agency serving small businesses across the US. Our strongest work is web design and SEO together, and that is why our social media work is structured the way it is: every post points to a website built to convert and a search presence that captures the demand social creates. Social media that dead-ends at a weak website wastes most of what you pay for it.
Pricing is published and simple. Website design is scoped to your project. SEO is scoped to your goals, with early movement in weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days. Growth packages, which combine SEO, content, and social media management, are scoped to your goals. Everything is month to month with no long term contract, so the work has to stay worth paying for every single month.
The honest caveat: if all you want is someone to post memes and chase trends, a social-only shop may suit you better. If you want social media working as one part of a system that produces customers, that is the work we are built for.
Transparent pricing
Growth packages from $3,000 per month, SEO from $1,500 per month, websites from $5,000. Month to month, no long term contract.
Call (425) 954-3452 or request a free proposal. Within one business day you will have platform recommendations, a posting cadence, exactly what is included, and the monthly price. Because everything is month to month, the decision is not a leap. It is a first month.
Most small businesses that hire outside help spend roughly $500 to $5,000 per month depending on platforms, posting frequency, and whether paid boosting is included. Below the low end of that range you are usually buying scheduling, not marketing. Kihan Marketing includes social media management in growth packages scoped to your goals, billed month to month.
The one or two where your customers already spend time. For most local businesses that means Facebook and Instagram plus an active Google Business Profile. B2B businesses usually add LinkedIn. Two platforms handled consistently will outperform five handled sporadically, so a good agency will talk you out of platforms, not into them.
Expect visible audience growth and engagement within the first month or two, and a steadier flow of inquiries as your local audience compounds over the following months. Social builds the familiarity that makes every other channel work better, which is why it performs best pointed at a website and search presence that can capture the demand it creates.
Yes, if you can hold a consistent schedule. Most owners can, for about six weeks, and then posting slips behind everything else in the business. The value of an agency is not secret tactics. It is professional content shipped on schedule every week while you run the company. Start yourself if budget is tight, and hand it off once consistency breaks.
They cover different moments. SEO captures people already searching for what you sell, while social builds the audience that later searches for you by name. If you can only fund one, SEO usually wins for service businesses because intent is higher. Kihan Marketing scopes SEO to your goals, with early movement in weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days, and growth packages combine both scoped to your goals.
Leads, calls, and website visits driven by social, follower growth within your service area, engagement on each platform, your best-performing posts, and the plan for next month. Judge the trend over about 90 days rather than any single week, and be wary of reports that lead with likes and impressions alone.
No. Everything is month to month with no long term contract. Website design is scoped to your project, SEO is scoped to your goals, and growth packages that include social media management are scoped to your goals. Call (425) 954-3452 or request a free proposal and you will have scope and exact pricing within one business day.
Kihan Marketing gives you a written scope and price within one business day. No pressure, and nothing to sign to see it.
Or call (425) 954-3452
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