In 2021, more than 4.26 billion people use social media worldwide. These platforms have gone from merely being social networks to effective advertising tools for businesses.
Whether you’re outsourcing your marketing or doing it in-house, social media advertising cost is a factor to consider when coming up with a strategy for your campaign. Knowing the estimated costs will help you create a suitable budget for the campaign to ensure its overall success.
In addition to the advertising cost on social media, we’ll also talk about the factors affecting them. Without further ado, let’s dive into it.
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What Is Social Media Advertising?
By now, this term is one that marketers are very familiar with. Social media advertising is a form of digital marketing, wherein marketers utilize social platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, to deliver paid ads to the brand’s target audience. Social media ads have proven to be an effective way to increase your online presence, engage with consumers, and enhance your marketing campaign.
One upside to social media advertising is that by using various sources of data, you can hyper-target and personalize your ads to appeal to your audience’s demographics, user behavior, and preferences. Additionally, the social media advertising cost is not too high yet offers potentially high rates of return.
How Much Is the Average Cost To Advertise on Social Media?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. However, in general, companies spend a minimum range of $300 to $900 for social media advertising; that’s about $10 to $30 daily.
Of course, factors like your business, which platform you want to use, your ads, and your goals can affect your average advertising cost on social media. If you wish to outsource your social media management, that’s another cost you’ll have to consider.
It’s also important to note that you shouldn’t rely solely on ads to increase your traffic, engagement, leads, or any desired outcome. Any effective social media marketing campaign should also be paired with creative, relevant, and organic content to optimize your budget and audience targeting.
Running too many ineffective ads will only eat at your budget quickly and not produce the desired outcome.
Factors Affecting Advertising Cost on Social Media
With so many businesses seeing the value of social media outside of social networking, the global market value of social media advertising is expected to reach $262.62 billion by 2028.
As we’ve previously mentioned, the cost to advertise on social media depends on various factors. In this next section, we’re here to discuss some of the most important factors you have to consider when setting a budget for your social media advertising campaign.
1. Complexity of Strategy
Your social media strategy includes determining your target audience, the platforms you’ll be using, and the objectives you want to achieve. You’ll also need to define how to measure the success of your campaign. All of these things will determine your overall social media advertising cost.
2. Number of Platforms
Your social media marketing cost will also depend on how many social media platforms you want to use. Aside from paying more for an additional marketer to work on the new platform you wish to utilize, you’ll also pay for putting up more ads.
Moreover, the platform you use is also a factor. For example, when comparing Facebook ads versus Google ads, the former is slightly cheaper than the latter.
3. Frequency of Posting
There isn’t a magical number for how many times you should post to ensure the success of your social media marketing campaign. However, this is a crucial part of your strategy. Your posting frequency will differ for each platform you use.
For example, the short lifespan of a tweet means you have to post more frequently on Twitter than any other platform, particularly up to five times per day. On the other hand, you only have to post three to seven times a week on Instagram; stories can be posted more often, though.
Your social media marketing team should help you in determining the optimal posting frequency for each platform. However, the time and effort it takes to create the posts will have an impact on your total cost to advertise on social media.
4. Quality of Posts
Let’s face it; not all posts are created equal. The best strategy for generating social media content is by creating a mix of blog posts, images, videos, and occasionally related content from other sites.
Aside from the timing of posting, the quality of your ads affects the overall success of your campaign. Your posts should be entertaining, varied, informative, compelling, and tailor-fitted to the platform you’re posting them on.
To achieve this, you may need to hire a graphic designer, a copywriter, and a video editor to join your team. Creating high-quality ads will impact your social media advertising cost—and hopefully, the effectiveness of your campaign!
5. Social Media Audit
You must know how your social media advertising strategy is doing. This is where social media audits come in. This step involves evaluating and measuring the results of your social media advertising efforts to identify areas for improvement and replicate successes.
Agencies also typically conduct an audit before coming up with a marketing strategy to see what they’re dealing with. The price of an audit depends on the industry you’re in and the number of accounts to be audited. Regardless, it adds up to your total cost to advertise on social media.
Social Media Advertising Cost by Platform
One of the things you need to figure out when starting a social media marketing campaign is what platforms you’re going to be using. Perhaps knowing the cost to advertise on the most popular platforms will help you make an informed decision.
The prices are very dynamic and typically undisclosed by the platforms themselves, which is quite typical in online marketing, so it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact numbers. However, we’ve provided some estimates below.
With 2.89 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the go-to social media platform that businesses use to advertise. It typically bills advertisers based on two metrics: cost-per-click (CPC), which is what you pay when a user clicks on your ad, and cost-per-mille (CPM), which is the cost for every 1,000 users that see your ad.
The cost of its advertising is always changing, but here are the costs we know so far:
- CPC: $0.94
- CPM: $12.07
- CPL: $5.83
With more than 1.21 billion monthly active users as of 2021, Instagram is a newer channel used by businesses for reaching potential consumers. Similar to Facebook, Instagram provides more control over your ads—who sees them and how they appear. However, Instagram may have slightly higher ad costs than Facebook.
- CPC: $.50 to $7.50
- CPM: $2.50 to $35
YouTube
In August 2021, a whopping 694 hours of YouTube videos were streamed per minute. It’s a figure that’s quite hard to wrap your head around. With its huge user base and the power of Google AdWords backing it, it should come as no surprise that YouTube is a favorite platform amongst advertisers worldwide.
Although the platform isn’t explicit in its advertising costs, we found out what the estimated costs are:
- CPC: $3.21
- CPM: $9.68
- CPV: $0.10 to $0.30
Compared to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter has a smaller user base, with 368 million active users per month as of December 2022. This number is projected to decrease in the coming years, but advertising on Twitter still has its merits.
For one, Twitter may not have a huge user base, but it makes up for it with higher engagement rates, which can be better for your marketing strategy in the longer term. Here is the estimated social media advertising cost on Twitter.
- Promoted ads: $0.25 to $2 per action
- Follower ads: $2 to $4 per follow
- Twitter takeover: about $200,000 per day
The Twitter Takeover is a great way to boost your reach. There are two types: Trend Takeover/Trend Takeover+, which allows you to place your ad among the trending items in the Explore tab, and Timeline Takeover, which allows you to put your ad at the top of the conversation as the first of the day.
LinkedIn has 875 million users in 200 countries around the world. The platform is a top networking platform for professionals, an effective lead generation tool for B2B companies, and a great recruitment tool for companies looking for rising talent. And it’s also an advertising tool businesses shouldn’t miss out on!
- CPC: $5.26
- CPM: $6.59
- CPS: $0.80 per send (of Sponsored InMail campaigns)
TikTok
Although the advertising option on TikTok is fairly new, it’s proving to be more expensive than Facebook and Instagram. The social media platform has more than 1 billion active users per month, with nearly half being under 30. If your brand’s target audience is the younger generation, then advertising on TikTok just might be a perfect choice.
- Required minimum spending: $500
- CPM: $10
- Brand takeover: $50,000 per day
Conclusion
Now that you have a clear idea of how much advertising is going to cost on these popular social media platforms, which one will you use for your brand? Think it through, and remember that a successful social media advertising effort is accompanied by great, organic content that resonates with your audience. The ads just help you get a wider reach.
