Well, the short of the long of it is this: A minimum of $2,500-$5,000 on average per month, depending on where your target audience is and what you want to achieve. Don’t be alarmed, I will tell you why the costs are as such

(P.S. If you are a Digital Marketer, please feel free to share this with potential employers who aren’t ‘getting’ the cost of your rates.)

Sometimes, you have to pay extra for PR or blog content writing. A lot of those $2,500K-$5K prices may or may not be all-inclusive deals.  And it’s not unusual to find many agencies who charge $10,000 per month for social media marketing & management.

According to some data findings, the cost to create and establish just a new Twitter account with targeted Followers and a little bit of content is anywhere from $2K-$7,500.

So I guess the average $2,500-$5,000 isn’t so bad when you consider the fact that some agencies charge $5,000 – just to manage your Facebook account. Nothing else —just Facebook. Add on Instagram and/or Pinterest and you can double that fee.

$5,000 per month for a Social Media Marketer seems “high” because we spend so much time online, doing just that: interacting socially and participating in social media.  Our perception of social media is “fun time”,  it hasn’t registered to us that this is THE advertising platform for all businesses, it is something to take seriously and no, not everyone or an intern can just do it. Not effectively, of course.

A great social media and digital marketer is worth his/her weight in GOLD.

Wherever the audience is, advertising follows. Once it was Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, TV.  Now, it’s online through our news and blogger channels and our Social Media feeds.

If we can look at it from a media platform we are used to, such as Magazines, we can truly see the value and the difference: We have magazine readers, and we have magazine creators.

We don’t see all of the behind-the-scenes magic that happens to make that content available and in our face. That is what advertising is, and what Social Media Marketing is all about.

Ok. But “Why so much?” you ask

Let’s break it down:

• Graphics and Social Media Ad Creatives  The cost of social media graphics and ad creatives – this includes a professional graphic designer with marketing knowledge to create visual ads that deliver results.  There is a psychology behind an ad creative that works. This isn’t the job for just any Joe Schmo Photoshop Pro when it comes to creating a fine-tuned ad creative. The average salary of a Graphic Designer is anywhere from $45-$60K per year, with some earning as much as $75K.
• Video Creative. A business online without video is missing a huge opportunity. If you aren’t on YouYube or have great video collections on Facebook, you might as well be invisible. Video consumption is the #1 way to reach your audience, and creators who plan, write, shoot and edit your videos are not cheap. Sorry to say this but a quality video is important. Sure, you can shoot something with an iPhone, but make sure the content is valuable and sound is 100%. A simple video can cost around $500 per video to start. If you’re super creative or resourceful, you can find options in the $100 range.
• Market research  This is a very important aspect of advertising.  You have to zero in on your target audience. It makes no sense to shoot your product out into the universe if it’s not aimed at the right audience.  Market research answers: Who is your audience, what do they want, what are they buying, what do they respond to, where do they hang out and who are your competitors?
• Ad rates The costs of promoting you or your business. Ad rates are generally included in a market budget, and an average and conservative cost can be anywhere from $250-$500 a month for Twitter and Facebook Ads alone.
• PR Writing and crafting the perfect pitches, reaching out to Bloggers, Editors, Magazines, Influencers, and even celebrities.  This aspect is HARD WORK. A lot of PR agents I know charge $5K per month, just for PR.  Nothing else.
• Creating Marketing Campaigns, Calendars + Strategies. Sometimes creating a marketing campaign can take days (or even weeks) to not only research and plan but to write it out. (One simple 3-month marketing campaign I created a few weeks ago took me over 16 hours to research, create and write.) This takes a lot of time, but executed well, it pays off.
• Writing Press Releases – GOOD Copywriters can charge anywhere from $350-$1500 per article.
• Writing Blog Posts – Rich content blog posts are worth their weight in gold to the tune of saving you about $250,000 in Google Adwords costs. A well-written blog post with organic traffic can harness as much, if not more traffic, as an expensive Google Adwords campaign. One single blog post I wrote in 2011 has generated 256,000 hits for my blog so far.  If I would have paid the average $1 CPC (Cost-per-Click) with Google Adwords, it would have cost me $256,000! ?
  Blog writers know their stuff when it comes to SEO, and they craft their posts to maximize search results.  According to ClicktoTweet and HubSpot, “Articles with a word count between 2,250 and 2,500 earn the most organic traffic”.  A good blog writer will charge around .45 cents per word on average, so a 1,000-word post is $450. For example, this post you’re reading right now is 1,326 words (or about $600).
• Social Media Manager A full time (daily) social media manager to monitor your accounts, create engaging posts, interact, respond to positive (and negative) feedback across all channels.  I’m talking about a dedicated person who not only knows the ins and outs of social media, but one who works on all your social media accounts all day (Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), and knows how to track and analyze the data.  This is a full-time job and if you were to pay him or her a salary, it would probably cost you a minimum of $45K/yr. ($3,750/mo) with most being in the $55K to $65K per year bracket.

Don’t be bummed.

If you already have an established Twitter or Facebook account, it could be a little more cost effective, because you won’t have to start from scratch and what you’ll need is a social media manager to maintain and manage your accounts: (i.e. keep them flowing, interact, grow your followers, establish relationships, and build brand awareness).  So, If you were to hire someone full time to manage your one account, not create contests, promotions or ads, it would most likely cost a minimum of $40K per year, which is a salary of $3,300/mo.

$750,000  = This is how much Snapchat costs were per ‘Brand Story’ ad, which is a branded post that appears within the app’s ‘Stories’ feed.

(update: 12/2015 The minimum budget for advertising on Snapchat recently dropped from $700,000+ to $100,000)

Advertising has always been costly but it’s vital to business growth.
And sometimes, businesses just aren’t ready yet.

People scratch their heads in confusion when things aren’t selling, or when customers aren’t responding.  I’ve been there before.  I’d think, “I’m doing everything right!” when the truth is, I was just not giving enough to my marketing budget or plan.

We all want to see fantastic results, but what we don’t see is the costs associated with the results we want.  And it can be overwhelming at first, but once the momentum starts, it all starts working pretty harmoniously.  Better budget for advertising = more sales = more advertising budget = even more sales, etc.

“It’s nearly impossible to do PR and Social Media Marketing on your own, unless you have tons of time, are super-savvy (creatively), and have a team to help out. Make sure you budget anywhere from 15-20% of your annual income for marketing, because a funny thing happens when you don’t do it: Nothing.   Meanwhile, you see competitors with the same products as you doing it and going global.  If you want to succeed, there is no other choice. It needs to be a financial priority in your business plan and must be factored in as a cost to doing business”.

In the quick moving digital world we now live in, we simply can’t wait for our audience and business to come to us. Digital and social media is where all of the attention is these days. We stream Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon. We are plugged into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This is where the audience of the world is today, and if you aren’t finding a way to reach them through these channels, you’re kind of on another planet.  If you take your business seriously, find a way to either amp up your social media marketing time per day or hire a professional to help you grow your business.  You honestly can’t afford not to.