If you’re thinking about advertising your company’s products or services on various social media platforms, keep reading to learn how much social media marketing costs and how to develop a successful and accurate budget for your company’s marketing campaigns.
Social media marketing can be small in scale or quite expansive depending on the goals and available budgets of the companies involved. It’s difficult to throw a ballpark cost estimate out without any details provided for context. Several factors come into play for marketers who are in charge of determining how much a social media campaign is going to cost their company.
Advertising a company’s products or services through social media can be very flexible when it comes to the steps that marketers need to take. This is part of what makes social media marketing such an important part of any company’s growth strategy. Marketing one’s company via social media can include or exclude a myriad of strategic techniques, so companies of practically any size can take advantage of marketing tactics they can afford.
Let’s explore two of the main social media marketing approaches, Organic Marketing and Paid Marketing, as well as the budget-influencing factors to consider when embracing each approach.
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Organic marketing is an approach that focuses on the customer’s entire journey from learning about the company to becoming a customer. This type of marketing aims to guide customers throughout each potential stop they make along the sales funnel.
Many smaller businesses embrace organic social media marketing because it’s affordable, yet effective. Marketers can make use of the different components available through organic marketing without having to sink the company’s marketing budget into these endeavors.
These cost-effective marketing venues are worth exploring for marketers who are looking for affordable ways to improve brand awareness, customer engagement, and lead generation.
Organic Social Media Marketing should include:
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Paid marketing is usually what comes to mind when business owners think about advertising their products and services. With this type of marketing, businesses pay for ad placement on different social media platforms. It’s an effective way to generate leads and improve brand awareness, even for smaller companies with limited marketing budgets.
These are common paid marketing tactics:
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When evaluating your social media marketing costs, you’ll likely come across these metrics as well. Be aware of what they mean, your company’s past experiences with these metrics, and how to accurately factor them into your current plans.
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Social media marketing costs can depend on the specific campaign in the works and budgets can fluctuate for a single business from one campaign to the next.
Generally, though, smaller-scale social media marketing campaigns can range from costing a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars from the date of the launch to the day the campaign closes.
For marketers who mostly utilize organic social media marketing efforts, the budgeting constraints tend to be much looser than they are for business owners who use mostly paid advertising.
Companies with very limited social media marketing budgets can potentially keep monthly costs as low as a few hundred dollars per month if their marketing is conducted in house.
Though this method is quite affordable in terms of monetary investments, it’s more time and research-intensive. Marketers who want to stretch their marketing budgets will typically find that, if they can overcome the tedium of handling every aspect of social media marketing alone, their investments go a long way.
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Marketers who have neither the budget nor time to invest in large-scale marketing endeavors may find that outsourcing their marketing works best. Working with a marketing agency, or a small team of marketing professionals, can help business owners ensure that their advertising campaigns are developed by people with digital marketing expertise. Paying professionals to manage marketing campaigns will cost more money, but it saves time for in-house marketers and business owners who have very little to spare.
Shopping around for affordable marketing packages is worth the time and effort. Although costs vary depending on the breadth and depth of services needed, business owners can expect quality outsourced, mid-range marketing contracts to cost as low as a couple thousand dollars monthly.
Larger companies or organizations tend to have the marketing budget available to pay professional marketing teams to manage all of their campaigns. On the low end of an expansive marketing plan, business owners can expect to invest at least several thousand dollars monthly between digital advertising investments and agency fees.
However, marketing costs can climb significantly higher depending on the depth and scope of the campaign.
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To accurately determine your social media marketing costs, you’ll need to create a thorough marketing plan. While you may already have some form of marketing outline, it’s essential to make sure you fill in as many relevant, accurate details as possible. By following these tips, you’ll be able to develop a reliable budget for your marketing campaigns.
Remember, when planning a social media marketing campaign, the costs associated with each element should be used to help marketing teams determine how much of the budget can be invested into each segment of the campaign.
For example, you may find that your budget can effectively cover three social media platforms. Campaigns for each platform include the cost of tools you’ll use, the cost of training your marketing team, and the coverage of PPC ads, blog post shares, and occasional polls. Your team may find that eliminating video creation from the budget frees up more funds to invest in other marketing endeavors. This is part of what makes in-depth planning and budgeting so crucial.
Successful, well-developed social media marketing campaigns take time to produce. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the challenges you’re facing, you’re not at all alone. Plenty of business owners find that they don’t have time to research the finer details of social media marketing when they’re trying to grow a business. That’s why help is available. To create effective marketing campaigns that’ll increase your brand awareness, convert new leads, and keep your audience engaged, reach out to us right away. We’d love to help.