Video, social media and ads: what Irish businesses ask

Typical Irish market ranges in 2026: posting-only management for one or two platforms runs from around €175 to €500 a month; full-service management with content creation, community management and monthly reporting usually costs €500 to €2,000 a month; and packages that add professional video production and paid ads typically run €2,000 to €12,000 a month plus ad spend.

The price moves with the number of platforms, how often you post, and whether content is produced for you or supplied by you. These are market ranges, not a price list for any one agency. Our video production cost guide breaks the numbers down further.

Start with the one or two platforms your customers already use, not all of them. Facebook reaches about 4.1 million people in Ireland, 78.9% of the population, and Instagram about 2.9 million, or 55.8% (NapoleonCat, September 2026).

Facebook and Instagram suit most consumer businesses, from home improvement to clinics and hospitality. LinkedIn is the strongest for B2B, recruitment and professional services. TikTok and Instagram Reels reach younger audiences. YouTube works for considered purchases such as solar, cars and home renovations, where people watch to research before they buy.

Consistency matters more than volume. For most Irish small businesses, three to five posts a week on your main platform, with short-form video in the mix, is a realistic target you can keep up. A few strong posts beat daily filler.

The easiest way to stay consistent is to batch: plan and film a month or more of content in one day rather than scrambling every week. Here is how to turn one shoot day into three months of content.

A full social media service usually covers six things: strategy and a content calendar; content creation, meaning video, photos, graphics and captions; scheduling and posting; community management, which means replying to comments and messages; paid social advertising; and monthly reporting.

"Social media management" can mean anything from posting photos you supply to a complete content and ads service, so ask for the deliverables in writing: how many posts and videos a month, on which platforms, and what gets reported.

It depends on your budget and on what needs to be made. In-house is fastest and knows the business best, but needs someone with the time and the skills. A freelancer is cost-effective for posting and community management. An agency makes sense when you need professional video, paid ads and reporting under one roof.

Many Irish small businesses combine them: staff handle replies and day-to-day stories, while an agency produces the content and runs the ads.

For most businesses, organic posting alone will not reliably bring in enquiries, because platforms show each post to only a fraction of your followers. Organic content builds trust and gives people something to check when they look you up.

Paid ads put that content in front of new people, on a budget you control, and can be measured in cost per lead. The best results usually come from using the same videos for both.

Measure business results, not likes: enquiries, booked calls, sales and cost per lead. Set up conversion tracking first, using the Meta Pixel with the Conversions API, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4, so every lead can be traced back to the post or ad that produced it.

Reach, engagement and follower growth are useful early signals, but they are not the goal. Review the numbers monthly.

In Dublin and across Ireland, a short social or testimonial video typically costs €1,500 to €5,000 ex VAT, a corporate or brand film €5,000 to €25,000, and a high-production campaign or TV-grade commercial €10,000 to €100,000. Ongoing content and ads retainers usually run €2,000 to €12,000 a month, depending on deliverables.

These are Irish market ranges, not a price list for any one company. The full breakdown is in our cost guide.

A simple social or testimonial video usually takes one to three weeks from brief to delivery. A corporate or brand film takes two to six weeks, and a high-production commercial can take several months once concept, casting and post-production are included.

The shoot itself is often a single day; most of the time goes into planning and editing. At Blue Motion Media, finished videos are usually back within 7 to 10 days of the shoot.

Under Irish law, the person who creates a work is the first owner of its copyright, unless they made it as your employee in the course of their job (Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, section 23). Paying for a video does not, on its own, transfer the copyright to you: an assignment of copyright "is not effective unless it is in writing and signed" by the owner (section 120).

Before you commission a video, agree in writing who owns the raw footage and the final edits, and whether the music and graphics are licensed for paid ads. This is general information, not legal advice.

In practice, yes. A recognisable person's image and voice are personal data under GDPR, so you need a lawful basis to use them in marketing, and for promotional videos the clearest one is consent. Get a signed release that says what the video is for, where it will be used and for how long, and keep it on file, because people can withdraw consent later.

For children, get written consent from a parent or guardian and follow the school's or club's own process. Ireland's regulator is the Data Protection Commission. This is general information, not legal advice.

A videographer is usually one person who films and edits, which is good value for events, simple testimonials and social clips. A video production company brings a team, such as a producer, director, camera operators, a sound recordist, an editor and a colourist, plus the planning and project management that brand films, multi-location shoots and commercials need.

Whichever you hire, ask who will actually be on set and who will edit your video.

Five formats do most of the work: customer testimonials, short offer or explainer videos, behind-the-scenes and team videos, how-to videos that answer common objections, and case studies that show real results.

For considered purchases, such as trades, clinics, solar and home improvement, customer testimonials carry the most weight, because buyers trust other customers more than they trust brands. Here is how to get customers to say yes to a testimonial.

Plan it as a batch, not as a single video. Write every deliverable in advance, give each one a speaker, a location and a format (9:16 for Reels, 16:9 for YouTube and your website), and shoot them back to back so the crew never has to reset.

A well-planned day can produce ten to twenty short videos plus a longer piece: Plantech got sixteen assets from one day, and the AIMS Summit produced around forty from two. The full method is here.

Agree the goal and where each video will run, then list every deliverable and format. Book the people who will appear and get their consent forms signed in advance. Choose tidy, well-lit locations away from traffic and machinery noise.

Give non-actors talking points rather than a word-for-word script, because people sound more natural in their own words. Then plan the day so one setup covers several videos.

Meta's technical minimum is around €1 a day, which is too little to learn anything useful. Many Irish small businesses start a lead-generation campaign at roughly €10 to €30 a day, on one campaign with one clear goal, run it for two to four weeks, and judge it on cost per lead before scaling.

Work backwards from what a customer is worth to you. Ad spend is paid to Meta directly and is separate from any agency's management fee.

It depends on where your buyer is in the decision. Google Search reaches people who are actively looking for what you sell. Facebook and Instagram reach people who are not searching yet, which makes them strong for offers, testimonials and retargeting. YouTube suits considered purchases, where people watch longer videos to research before they buy.

Many Irish businesses start with Meta for lead generation, then add Search and YouTube. Here is a fuller comparison.

Short. On Facebook and Instagram, 15 to 30 seconds works well for Reels and Stories, and a cut of between 5 and 15 seconds qualifies for almost every placement. The first three seconds decide whether anyone keeps watching, so open with the hook, not your logo.

On YouTube, skippable ads can be skipped after five seconds, so the brand and the hook need to land inside them. After that, longer testimonials of one to three minutes can work well for considered purchases.

Film vertically and export three versions: 9:16 (1080×1920) for Reels, Stories, TikTok and YouTube Shorts; 4:5 (1080×1350) for Facebook and Instagram feeds; and 16:9 (1920×1080) for YouTube and your website.

Add burned-in captions, because a lot of feed video is watched without sound, and keep text and logos away from the top and bottom of vertical frames, where the app's buttons sit.

The usual causes, roughly in order: no conversion tracking, so Meta optimises blind; weak creative, with no hook in the first seconds and no clear offer; a small budget split across too many ad sets; a landing page or form that asks too much; and editing ads before the campaign has finished learning.

Fix tracking first, with the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API, then test three to five creative angles inside one campaign.

The Conversions API sends events such as leads and purchases from your server or CRM straight to Meta, alongside the browser Pixel. Browsers and ad blockers stop some Pixel events from arriving, so the Conversions API recovers lost data, which improves both ad optimisation and reporting.

If you run lead-generation ads, it is worth having. Set it up with deduplication, so each lead is counted once rather than twice.

Yes, especially for high-value, considered purchases such as solar, roofing, extensions and home energy upgrades. Video featuring real customers, and the people who will actually do the job, tends to beat generic graphics, because it answers the buyer's real question: can I trust them?

Evolve Eco Solutions, a solar installer, generated 12,000+ leads over 18 months from video ads run by Blue Motion Media. Read how it worked.

We are a Dublin studio that does two things under one roof. We produce video content, from brand films and social reels to testimonials and ads, and we run the paid campaigns on Meta and Google that turn that content into leads. Most agencies do one or the other. We do both.

Both, and that is the whole point. The team that shoots and edits your videos is the same team that runs and optimises the ads, so nothing gets lost between the creative and the marketing.

We are based in Dublin and work all over Ireland. We also travel for the right project. We have filmed conferences in Chicago and shoots across the country, so location is rarely a problem.

We do not publish a price list. Every project is scoped around what it needs to achieve, so we give you a real number after a free 30-minute strategy call rather than a menu price. For typical Irish market ranges, see our video production cost guide; those are market figures, not our rates.

A typical production starts with a strategy call, then a shoot day, and the finished videos are usually back with you within 7 to 10 days. Ad campaigns are ongoing, with fresh content and reporting every month.

Both. Some clients come to us for a single shoot, but most move to a monthly retainer so there is always fresh content going out and the ads keep improving over time.

You do. We hand everything over in a shared Google Drive, in high resolution and in every format you need, ready to post.

A wide range. We have worked with solar installers, retailers, clinics, schools, trailer builders and medical summits, across both B2C and B2B. If video and ads can grow it, we can help. See the industries we work with.

Documentary-grade craft on the production side and hard, measurable performance on the marketing side, from one team. For a lot of clients that means we work like their in-house marketing department, at a fraction of the cost.

Brand films, customer testimonials, case-study videos, short social reels, product and offer-led video ads, event and conference coverage, and drone footage. Everything is shot and edited by our own crew, finished with sound design, motion graphics and colour grade.

Meta, which covers Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which covers Search and YouTube. We set up the ad accounts, install conversion tracking through Google Tag Manager, run testimonial and offer-led video ads, A/B test them and scale the ones that bring in enquiries.

Two co-founders. Joel Zeiser is a documentary-trained director and cinematographer who leads production. Stefan Twomey leads performance marketing and runs the ad campaigns. The company started in Dublin in 2024.

Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We will map out a plan that fits your business, with no pressure and no obligation.