How to Establish the Right Social Media Budget

A recent survey from BIA/Kelsey, a market research firm and consulting agency, finds that nearly 80% of small businesses employ social media marketing, up from 73% in 2015. BIA/Kelsey analysts report the percentage continues to inch ever upward—2016 marks the third consecutive year in which small- and medium-sized-business owners ranked social media as their favored marketing tactic. For these owners, social media offers a way to reach audiences with targeted messaging and advertising.

But success with social media isn’t a given. Small-business owners must regularly evaluate their social media budgets to remain competitive in the marketplace. Find out below how you can determine the right social media budget for your business and see your enterprise grow.

Look at the Numbers

The 2017 CMO Survey from Duke University and Deloitte offers a good starting point for figuring out your social media budget. The analysts note marketing budgets will increase by 11%, on average, of the total budget available, with social media comprising part of that percentage. The report delivers few details about specific social media marketing costs, which are covered in the next section.

To accurately build your social media marketing budget, examine general budgeting trends and benchmarks for similar companies, and decide if you can follow suit. These figures provide a sense of where small businesses as a whole exist today and where they could be headed tomorrow—and where your enterprise stands in relation to everything else.

Remember, exercise caution when comparing quantitative data; if your small business is in startup mode, study other startups rather than decades-successful companies to decide how much money to budget and how to use the funds effectively.

Consider Budget Essentials

Every business differs in terms of its social media marketing needs, but you can count on a few foundational elements to remain the same. You don’t have to use all seven items listed below, but you should consider them when accounting for costs and tracking your return on investment (ROI):

1. Define your target audience. Defining who your audience is gives aim to your social media budget and tactics.
2. Decide on primary social channels. You don’t have to be present on every social media platform, nor do you want to be. Instead, choose the channels where your target audience is. It’ll save you time, money, and energy.
3. Know you’ll pay to play. Social networks are flooded with content and people. If you want your content to get more views, spend little money to create converting content that social media can then advertise to your target audience.
4. Acknowledge day-to-day management costs. Social media may be free to join, but it isn’t free to effectively manage. If you lack the time to craft a social media strategy, draft and schedule social media posts, engage with audiences, analyze results, and avert potential communication crises, then budget for and hire someone who can oversee this aspect of your marketing campaign.
5. Account for related costs. Social media requires content—and a lot of it. You will want to account for content creation costs, which includes anything from a basic blog post to a video.
6. Invest in tools. Prevent social media from taking over your company’s life by investing in social media management tools. Many of these tools are free, but the paid options often offer rewards like in-depth analytics and training. A great tool that helps with social media management is Frontier’s digital marketing platform, powered by Vivial Media. The platform offers a variety of services to help automate your digital marketing process for as little as $99 a month.
7. Study the results. To be truly effective with social media marketing, you must measure your efforts. You or your social media manager may be able to study the results of your social media analytics, but you may be better off hiring someone with data analysis skills to do that work for you.

Once you look at the results, fine-tune your social media budget and tactics and start over from step one. Social media marketing isn’t a one-and-done business—it demands ongoing testing, analysis, and refinement if you hope to stay competitive in your line of business.

Start Your Social Media Budget with a Template

You could build your social media advertising budget from scratch, but you don’t have to. Several credible sites, such as those listed below, offer templates that can save you time and money:

1. Demand Metric provides a spreadsheet that not only helps build a budget but also tracks monthly progress.
2. Buffer offers you scenarios, like how you would spend $100 on social media, and then gives three hypothetical solutions to that situation.
3. Smartsheet offers another spreadsheet for social media marketing, along with eleven other marketing budget templates.

Social media marketing often seems nebulous, so make it concrete with a measurable budget and helpful tools. Giving it a solid form will allow you to connect with more customers and deliver a solid ROI month after month and year after year.