The cost of social media marketing

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Making the most of its potential means you can establish strong relationships with your customers, boost your organic SEO, increase sales and leads, and build your brand’s online awareness.

The benefits of social media are evident to everyone, which is why business owners eagerly manage their social media themselves. However, the overwhelming amount of work that comes with it means they often produce low-quality content that does not meet their marketing goals. Eventually, they turn to hiring a digital agency.

Hiring a digital agency for social media marketing means having a trusted professional team that knows social media inside out, understands the latest trends and can make the most of any budget. Naturally, though, it costs money to hire a team to manage a social media campaign. But how much?

The answer? It depends on several factors.

Factors that affect the cost of social media marketing

Your social media strategy

Before your digital agency can begin posting on your social media pages, they have to determine what your social media strategy should be. Based on the information you provide, they can focus on your desired audience and the right social media platforms to reach that audience, and establish KPIs for traffic, engagement and conversions. Some goals for your campaign can include:

• Increasing engagement and interactions with your audience through comments, likes, shares, re-pins and lists.
• Building a following with more likes or followers to help boost brand awareness and website traffic.
• Providing customer service by interacting with potential customers to keep your brand reputation positive.
• Generating leads and increasing online sales by getting followers to sign up, download or call your business.

The more detailed your strategy, the more effective your campaign will be. It will also affect the cost of your marketing campaign, because more work is required to reach your goals. It does, however, pay to be successful.

The number of advertisements

Advertising is a must-have addition to any social media marketing campaign. Without it, you will miss out on reaching millions of potential customers.

Look, for instance, at Instagram’s potential advertising reach. As of 2019, you could reach 849.3 million users through advertising. And if you think you’re the only one interested in advertising, you’re not. Facebook alone reported in the last quarter of 2019 that it had 6 million advertisers on its platform. The data shows how essential advertising is for online marketing and how much you have to invest in it.

The benefits, though, are substantial. You have the potential to reach new customers, expand your brand’s reach globally and carve out a spot in your market.

Of course, the amount of money you spend on advertising will affect your overall cost. Not only do you have to consider the money spent on the ads themselves, you also have to take into account the management of the ads, the targeting, the performance tracking and the management of your budget.

However, having an experienced digital agency working on your social media advertising can help you generate the results you want.

The number of social media platforms and the frequency of posting

Part of any strategy is how best to reach your audience and how often you should be providing them with content. You have to consider which social media platforms will connect with them. Is it Facebook or Twitter? Instagram or Pinterest? Or two of the four, or all of them? The more platforms you use, the more posting is required.

Keep in mind that if you use multiple social networks, your posting frequency may be different for each one.

Facebook doesn’t require a high volume of posts (especially if the posts are high quality) and relies more on engagement. Twitter, on the other hand, requires a higher frequency of posts, because a single tweet is short-lived in terms of engagement.

Your digital agency can help you determine the optimal number of posts for each platform so you get the results you want. The work that goes into each post, along with the level of engagement, will affect your costs.

Quality of content

Content is king, they say, and it’s true when it comes to social media posting. To have a truly effective campaign, the quality of your content must reflect your marketing goal.

The posts must be relevant to the audience and reach out to them in an engaging way that makes them want to interact. A quality post should be made specifically for your target audience and for the platform on which it will appear. Furthermore, the posts on each social media platform must take advantage of what makes it unique, such as Instagram’s ability to display several pictures at once.

Naturally, genuinely top-tier content costs more. The time and effort that go into creating an engaging post are greater than merely posting anything for the sake of it. It might affect your cost, but it will help you reach your marketing goals.

Additional creative services

Working with a social media agency opens you up to other services that can help your campaign. You can get graphic design, video creation, writing, branding and much more. By adding and combining these services, you’ll get content that is liked and shared across your platforms.

Naturally, these additional services cost more, but these assets can benefit your company and improve your return on investment.

The cost of social media marketing

The more you pay for your social media marketing package, the more you can expect to receive. It all depends on what you need and what you want from your social media campaign. Naturally, the costs of your campaign will go up and down as your social media needs change. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

As long as you have a firm marketing goal in mind, you can find a package and price that suits you.

So, what is the cost of social media marketing?

On average, social media packages range from $750 to $1,500 per month, depending, once again, on the number of posts, the number of ads, engagement and all the factors above.

You can also get packages individually. Basic posting can cost anywhere from $250 to $500 per month, while advertising can range from $350 to $750.

It should be said, though, that all packages come with performance tracking, account management and constant communication between you and your digital agency.

Overall, investing in social media marketing can make a significant difference to your business in reaching your marketing goals.