Social media marketing provides enormous growth potential to businesses, yet many companies leave their social presence untapped. If you’re planning to hire social media marketing services but want to understand the potential return on your investment, you need to consider the expenses.

The more aware you are of the costs, the better you can budget for your strategy. There are four general services that make up social media marketing and affect the potential figure:

  1. Content Creation: Active presence and publishing on social media is the first step for any social media strategy – every marketing strategy should offer this.
  2. Follower Growth: For your posts to be seen, you need to have followers on social media.
  3. Social Advertising: Truly tapping into the power of social media marketing involves ads. You pay to reach millions of people who use social media each day.
  4. Strategy and Employees: Social media management can require strategists, graphic designers, content writers, website developers, SEO specialists, account managers and more.

It’s important to note that what you invest in and how much you invest directly affects the results you’re going to achieve. The cost of social media marketing can be as little or as much as you want. For example, if you’re only hoping to set up a basic network to build social visibility, you don’t need to invest too much. But if you’re interested in building up a wide audience to drive traffic, you will need to invest significantly more.

There are two key variables that influence how much you need to spend to be successful in your social media marketing strategy: Niche and scale.

Niche – Your audience type, competitors, product, and primary goals will all influence how effective your social media can be, as well as the tactics you’ll need to adopt.

Scale – Your scale depends on your goals. Simply put, the more people you want to reach, the more you will need to invest.

As you take a look at these variables, consider how they will influence your overall budget. Ultimately, the cost of social media marketing depends on your goals and your niche. Prices vary for everything, social media services included. But with the right strategy and commitment, increasing your spend will correlate with an increase in eventual return – meaning if you want the best results, don’t skimp. To pick the option that works best for your business, start by doing your research.