How To Budget For Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a brilliant way of getting in front of the right people, but knowing how to budget for social media marketing can be confusing – especially for those new to paid advertising. With this in mind, we’ve put together a helpful guide to help those starting off in social media marketing.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Before we get to splashing the cash, let’s look at what social media marketing actually is. In simple terms, it’s the use of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others to connect with both new and existing audiences. It helps build brand awareness, drive traffic, and/or boost sales through strategic content and paid promotion.
It’s important to note that social media marketing can encompass both organic activity (posting for free on your company accounts) and paid activity (running ads and boosting/sponsoring content). For the purposes of this guide and understanding how to budget for social media marketing, we will consider the paid side of things. Just be aware that you might also want to factor in other costs, such as paying for organic content creation or photo/video shoots.
Why Include Social Media Marketing In Your Advertising Strategy?
Social media is an incredibly powerful tool when used in the right way. The main benefit of advertising on social media is that you can reach your exact target audience. Each social network extracts clear demographic information at the sign-up stage, allowing for the tailored collation of content for users and strong targeting capabilities for those running advertisements.
Building brand awareness and increasing recognition of your company’s offerings is another huge benefit of including social media advertising in your marketing strategy. With significant numbers of users on each platform, social media naturally comes with a huge and impressionable audience for prospective advertisers.
It’s also important to remember that social media platforms are inherently very visual and this characteristic helps you to differentiate your brand from its competitors. By using video, still images, and carousel graphics, you can convey your branding, company values, and tone of voice in unique ways.
Each social media channel also offers comprehensive but easy-to-digest reporting capabilities, helping you to seamlessly monitor how well your paid campaigns are doing. This data helps you quickly and easily optimise the campaign for better results and engagement – another reason why including social media in your marketing is a no-brainer.
How Much Should I Budget For Social Media Advertising?
If you’re keen to start enjoying the benefits we’ve just outlined, understanding how to budget for social media marketing will be your next step in making the channel work for you. It’s always good to know that social media advertising is typically a very cost-effective way to promote your business, no matter what your budget is. However, before determining your budget, make sure you know your KPI’s and what your goals and objectives are, as this will make a difference to how much budget will be required for the ads. For example, more budget is required for a sales campaign than for a traffic campaign.
Once you have determined your objectives and KPIs, it’s time to understand your overall marketing budget. If you’re new to social media marketing, it’s always best to start with a smaller budget and then increase gradually as you obtain more campaign learnings. Each social media platform requires different budgets; for example, LinkedIn will require you to spend around £8 a day. In contrast, Meta only requires a minimum budget of £1 a day for advertising. However, this tiny level of spend does not guarantee results, so it’s always recommended to put a reasonable budget aside for Meta ads if you want your campaigns to yield good results
You may also need to consider how much of your overall marketing budget you are willing to dedicate to social media. In a 2024 CMO survey of marketing leaders, it was found that businesses were spending 11% of the overall marketing budget on social media advertising. This figure was expected to rise to 12.2% in the following 12 months and to 16.3% in the next 5 years. So, going between 10 and 15% of your overall marketing budget is a great place to start.
Once you’ve set your budgets and your campaigns are live, now is the time to measure your return on investment (ROI), as this will help you to understand how successful the campaigns you are running are performing. If you’re getting a strong return on your investment, then this would suggest that your campaign is running well and is worth it to keep running. However, a low return on investment would require you to look into why this might not be performing well and what changes can be made to optimise your efforts and gain better results.
Finally, when looking at budgets for social advertising, remember to consider agency fees if you’re considering working with a specialist team, as this will be in addition to your ad spend. So, it’s important to ensure that your social media marketing budget covers both of these.
Get Your Social Media Marketing Underway
With lots to consider when putting together a suitable social media marketing campaign and budget, we’d highly recommend seeking some tailored advice before you dive in. Whether you think you would benefit from complete campaign management or would like to sound out your wider strategy and creative ideas, we’re happy to have a chat and give you some help.
Fuel is a Meta partner agency, and our experienced team works with our clients on social media campaigns ranging from global e-commerce to local service. So, if you’re looking at including social media advertising in your marketing strategy but don’t know how to go about doing this or what your budget should be, contact us today to discuss how we can help you.
