For every business out there in the technology-driven world, you need to invest in Social Media Marketing. Marketing your services or products in front of a global audience of millions is just possible through social media. Social media platforms are the advertising and branding grounds of the new era! And if you are not building a social media presence, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities.
Social Media Marketing needs investment; both in terms of funds and time. Even if you start with organic marketing (without paid advertisements), you need to invest in the content and graphics team. Social Media Marketing can help you in various aspects such as building a community, finding prospects, and generating leads, brand building, etc. The more regular and creative you get with Social Media Marketing, the better results you can yield. Let’s discuss how much time and money you will need to invest in different aspects of Social Media Marketing.
Organic Social Media Investment
When talking about organic social media strategy, the external charges are none. But it’s difficult to keep up with the content game regularly without having dedicated individuals or team for it. So, the biggest investment you make for organic content is on in-house designers and content creators or you can outsource it. However, if you are serious about social media content and want to play a long-term game, you should hire someone full-time. Some other expenses may include paid tools and subscriptions such as photo or video editing apps. Organic content takes a lot of time and consistency to show up results in terms of lead generation and traffic.
Inorganic Social Media Investment
Inorganic content includes paid ads and promotions on every social media platform. Paid advertisements help you reach a wider audience in terms of numbers and niche audience for your brand. To run ads for your account, you need to pay an amount depending on the number of people you want to reach, location, etc. Every social media platform has its ad budget. For example, the lowest ad spend can be for Facebook: $/day, Instagram: $/day,
LinkedIn: $/day, Pinterest: $/click, YouTube: $/day, Twitter: No minimum. You need to learn about client targeting and retargeting before you run ads. You can increase the amount slowly based on your results. Furthermore, you can promote your brand on other popular pages by paying the decided amount. Inorganic strategy requires less time but high funds to execute effectively.
Deciding the Budget for Social Media Marketing
Well, the budget for your SMM is highly subjective depending on your current business scenario. But we will give you some figures according to the February 2021 CMO Survey.
The percentage of the total marketing budget you should spend on Social Media Marketing yearly is:
- For B2B Product Business: 14.7%
- For B2B Services Business: 18.3%
- For B2C Product Business: 21.8%
- For B2C Services Business: 18.7%
If we categorize businesses according to their industries, the percentage of the marketing budget is as follows:
- For Consumer services business: 28.5%
- For Communications and media business: 25.6%
- For Banking and finance business: 11.7%
In the next five years, the average Social Media Marketing budget is estimated to be 24.5%.
On an Ending Note,
However, these are the standard rates provided in the survey. You can always choose to modify the budget according to your requirement. You should do a competitor analysis to get an idea of what your competitors are doing and the results they are generating through it. Content, be it organic or inorganic, is the heart of any social media platform. Make sure you create engaging and value-adding content for your brand. Not just content creation but content distribution on various platforms is important too. Cold messaging to your prospects and following up with them also adds up in the social media game. Social Media Marketing is a skill, and, in any skill, you get better with practice and experience. The more you show up on social media, the more you can explore. Often the best social media profiles are not a result of extraordinary skills but just consistency!