Setting Your Social Media Budget In 2023: A Guide

Your social media strategy should always be backed by a robust social media budget. Most businesses these days utilize social media in marketing their business. Without a social media budget, you run the risk of spending more on social media marketing than you need to, or can afford to. This is why you need to set a social media budget before you finalize your social media marketing plan. But what exactly is a social media budget?

Social Media Marketing Budget: What Is It?

A social media budget details what your limits for spending are, on social media marketing, within a set period of time. You could choose to create an annual budget, a quarterly budget or even a monthly budget. Often, a social media budget is a simple spreadsheet. It helps in building clarity on how much your business should be spending on social media marketing. Your social media budget can also help you measure your ROI through social media marketing. Simply look at how much you spent on marketing versus how much you made due to your marketing.

There are no set rules on what your social media budget should be. What you set as your budget will depend on how large your business is, as well as what your marketing goals are. You should also consider whether you’re marketing to consumers or other businesses. If you aim to market to other businesses, then up to 5% of your revenue should go towards your social media budget. If you want to market to consumers instead, then designate around 10% of your revenue as your social media budget.

Small businesses can find themselves spending around $30,000 on social media marketing. The social media budget for large businesses can go up to $100,000 if not more.

How Do You Plan Your Social Media Marketing Budget?

As you start creating your social media budget, you’ll need to build your marketing plan alongside it. Your social media budget should take into account content creation, software and tools, social media campaigns, influencer marketing, and more.

Begin by thinking about what kind of content you need for your business. You’ll need:

• Photographs, stock images
• Videos and video production tools
• Narrators, actors and other talent
• Graphic designers
• Copywriters and translators

There are free resources you can take advantage of, to build your social media plan as well. You could use stock photos, videos and even music – which allows you to utilize content for free. You’ll also need to spend money on various software and tools. You would need designing and editing tools, social media management and monitoring tools, project management tools, and more. If you choose to market your business through paid ad campaigns, then you’ll need to factor in those costs as well. You could, for example, run Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Twitter ads, and more.

Now that you know what goes into your social media budget, how do you exactly make it?

Creating Your Social Media Marketing Budget: How Do You Do It?

You can make use of a social media budget template or you can create it yourself. If you want to start from scratch, this is how you do it:

1. Set Your Goals

It’s important that you know what your marketing goals are ahead of time. You should set goals that are specific, that can be measured, that are relevant and attainable. If your goals are measurable you’ll also be able to monitor your progress. Over time, you can better adjust your social media budget to meet your business needs.

2. Analyze What You Spent Previously

For businesses that produce social media reports, this step is easy. Otherwise, you’ll need to conduct a social media audit to find out how much you’re currently spending on it. List down how much you’ve spent in the last few months. This helps you understand how much you can reasonably expect your social media budget to be.

3. Creating A Social Media Marketing Strategy

First, summarize what your social media marketing strategy is. Look at how much was spent on social media marketing over the past few months, to understand how much you can expect to spend in the future. Use this information to create a budget proposal. To do this, you’ll need the help of Excel Spreadsheet or similar software.

Then, create the following categories for your social media budget plan. Each category should take up one block of your spreadsheet.

Category

This is where you right down what you’re spending money on, such as content creation, purchasing software, and more. For individual expenses, create separate lines.

Expenses Outsourced vs In-house

You can have an in-house staff dedicated to social media marketing. Some businesses prefer to outsource this work. If you’re outsourcing it, then you’ll need to pay the external company for their services. You could also need to pay consultation fees as well. Add ‘outsourced’ or ‘in-house’ to the content you added in the previous block.

Amount Spent

Add up all the costs associated with a certain piece of content, and add it under this block. Mention how much was spent and what percentage of your social media budget that was. This will help you better understand how your financial resources are being allocated.
Also consider whether the expense is ongoing, or a one-time spend.

If you have several one-off or ongoing costs, then you can make use of separate columns to show that.

Total Amount

This is where you write down how much you’re spending on that marketing material.

Conclusion

Having a social media budget is essential for businesses. This guide takes you through what a social media budget is and how you can create one for your business. From why you need a social media budget to how to make one yourself, find out everything you need to know about making a social media budget plan in this blog.