It’s pretty simple.
Price is the major (sometimes the only) factor that drives the decision of small business owners in Nigeria to work with a digital marketing freelancer or a social media marketing company.
How much does social media marketing cost in Nigeria?
To get your social media accounts managed by a social media expert in Nigeria, you can expect to pay between ₦50,000 and ₦500,000 per month depending on several factors from how many accounts you have to how much work you want done.
Yes, the first question I usually get is;
“How much?”
I am of the ‘value first’ school of thought. However, I have learnt my lesson from my conversation with Nigerian business owners. Most people don’t care about the value or long term.
How much does your social media marketing service cost?
Followed by; what results should I expect?
To be honest, if you are looking to spend below Fifty Thousand Naira (₦50,000) per month, it is better you just learn and do it yourself.
What drives results in online marketing is exposure. The more people who see your products the better. This exposure is usually both with social media adverts which costs a minimum of ₦15,000 per month. Oh and ₦15,000 does not guarantee you results. It just a case of;
“Let’s just run ads”
The ugly truth is most social media manager in Lagos won’t run ads for you from your ₦50,000 pricing package. There are a lot of other things involved in social media marketing. Some social media marketing experts even have separate online paid ads package.
Yes, I am among these. I don’t work on your social media or your content. I create your ads and target them to reach the best people, that’s all.
Tools like Canva will help you create designs and you can spend your ₦50,000 on social media adverts. A ₦50,000 advert on Facebook will show your business to at least 50 thousand people. That’s me being pessimistic.
You can even reach up to 300 thousand people with ₦50,000.
Yes, a professional digital marketer in Lagos does the dirty work for you, saves you time and understands it better.
Using myself as an example, I have a ₦50,000 package out of which I’ll dedicate ₦15,000 to Facebook Adverts for you. That’s a reach between 15 thousand (bad month) – 150 thousand (good month).
Factors that determine the cost of social media management.
To be able to understand a price, you need to know the value inherent in it. It is free to sign up on social media platforms. However, here are some factors that determine the price of social media marketing for your business.
Platform(s) You Use
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Snapchat
The most important thing is the demographics. The people you target need to be active on your chosen platforms. Then, you need to create content appealing to your audience and suitable for said platforms.
On Facebook, anything goes. Twitter has a preference for text. YouTube champions long videos, hence, you can promote your brand with DIY and HowTos.
Content is useless when nobody sees it. Therefore, your chosen social media platform should offer cost-effective means of increasing your reach.
The platform(s) you choose therefore affects the cost of your social media marketing.
Who Works On It
There are two ways when it comes to personnel;
- Do It Yourself (DIY)
- Hire a social media expert
In truth, you understand your business better. So doing it yourself could serve you a lot as whatever you put out will be ‘ok’ by you. However, this works if you are not busy with other parts of the business. You can plan, create and schedule content with some social media management tools.
There are other aspects of your business you need to take charge of apart from marketing. Therefore, doing it yourself works only if you are thinking small-scale or when you are starting out. As you grow, you need to hand over aspects of your business to people experienced in handling such things.
Doing it yourself reduces the cost greatly but your little experience in a lot of ‘things social media’ limits your growth. Although hiring an expert costs more, the results justify the cost.
Ad budget
Organic reach on social media platforms has decreased significantly due to the influx of users and oversaturation of content. In simple terms, too many people are posting too many content.
The effect of this on small business is that they reach fewer people with their content.
Oh, there’s great news!
You can buy reach on social media. You can pay Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms to put more eyes on your offers, products and posts.
The more money you pay, the more people you reach. The minimum you can spend differs across platforms.
Therefore, the amount you wish to spend on adverts has a part to play in the social media marketing pricing package you choose.
What You Sell
There are two basic division of what people sell;
- Product
- Services
Generally, services are more difficult to sell than products. This is why most service providers productize their services with different packages. People can subscribe to different packages based on their pockets.
Anything you sell fits into one of these two categories. The social marketing package that works for you depends on how much people need what you sell as well as the prices of what you sell.
The best thing to sell is something the average guy needs every day and is quite affordable. With a little ad budget, you can expose your products or services to a lot of people and get customers (since they need it). Therefore, you don’t need a pricey social media package.
On the other end are luxury products or services the average guy don’t need and can’t afford. You’ll need more than social media marketing to sell a unit of these kinds of products.
Perhaps, you are privy to arguments like;
“You can’t sell real estate online …”
Here’s the thing, whatever it is you sell, you need to be active on social media. People buy from people they trust and having a trustworthy social media presence could go a long way.
Now you know what determines the prices of social media marketing in Nigeria. Pricing plans and packages differ from social media expert to social media expert. This is because experts have differing years of experience and specialities.
To be successful with Social Media marketing, you need to get your message across to your target audience. In order to do this, a lot of people need to be exposed to your business, then the right people follow and engage.
In 2022, organic reach (exposure without payment) has depleted. Therefore, any social media package that does not include paid ads is an exercise in failure.
Here’s how much I charge for social media marketing in 2022 including details about what each price buys you.
Prices are subject to change and you can get a customized price if your needs are unique.
|
Bronze |
Silver |
Gold |
|
|
Platforms |
FB, IG |
FB, IG, TW |
FB, IG, TW, LI |
|
Ad Budget |
₦10-15K |
₦20-30K |
₦30-50K |
|
Number of Posts |
30 |
30 |
60 |
|
Promoted Posts |
4 |
8 |
10 |
|
Reports |
Monthly |
Monthly |
Weekly |
|
₦80K |
₦150K |
₦200K |
Frequently Asked Questions About Social Media Marketing in Nigeria
How much returns you get from social media marketing depends on how much you spend in efforts, time and money.
The more you spend, the bigger the returns.
However, you need to be careful in the efforts you make so you don’t waste time on things that won’t yield results.
Also, results don’t always mean revenue in social media marketing.
Brand engagement like profile visits, DMs, Email subscriptions count as results.
It is left to you to convert these to revenue by showing up for your audience consistently.
The one(s) your target audience spend time, simple.
Your efforts on social media should be concentrated on the platforms your target audience uses.
Not only should you focus on these platforms, you need to adapt your content marketing to them.
For instance, if your audience prefers engaging videos on platforms like TikTok, you won’t want to bore them, right?
Doing this helps you audience relate with you and makes them more likely to share you content with others.
Hence, you reach more people.
If you are planning on organic (content) marketing alone, you don’t.
However, if you wish to set up Instagram ads that work, you need a Facebook page.
Sure, you can create Instagram ads directly from your smartphone but these ads are post engagement ads.
They are meant to get you likes, comments and profile visits, all within Instagram.
Long term paid ad strategies involve showing you adverts to the same people over and over again (retargeting campaigns).
You can’t set up retargeting ad campaigns on the Instagram app on your smartphone.
You need your Facebook ad account to set up adverts that work.
You can’t launch a campaign on your Facebook ad account without tying it to a Facebook page.
You don’t have to actively manage said Facebook page, you just need to connect it to your Instagram account, that’s all!
Simple, the type of content your audience likes.
In addition to adapting this content to the platforms you use, you need to test several types of deliveries for you content.
You need to view your social media insights and check for the best time to post i.e. when most of your target audience are available to engage.
First you need to answer questions like;
Do you want a fulltime employee, or a freelance social media marketer?
How much work do you want done on your social media platforms?
Is your social media marketer serving as your content creator?
Social media marketer work to free up more time for you to work on other parts of your business.
How much you pay them depends on how much time they free up for you.
Competent marketers make sure you don’t have to spend much time worrying about your social media, they take it off your hands and give you a monthly report.
In addition to this, you also see clear return on your investment in working with them.
