The High Cost of a Low-Priced Social Media Manager

In the digital age, where an online presence is a must for businesses of all types and sizes, a social media manager (SMM) is not a luxury—it's a necessity.

Businesses, especially small ones, often balk at the idea of paying for an SMM.

They would rather assign this role to an existing employee or hire an inexperienced intern with a low fee to decrease monthly expenses. But here's the cold, hard truth: refusing to invest in an experienced social media manager could cost your business far more than you realize.

A low price tag with a high cost or a higher price tag with a high return?

"I'm looking for affordable help," a business owner informed me during a networking event. He peered at me over the top of his glasses with an appalled look just after I informed him that he could expect to spend about $2000 each month to work with my company with the level of hands-on help he was seeking.

"Are you looking for affordability in price or cost?" I asked, and he raised his eyebrows, wondering if I was crazy for calling those terms different. I used his silent confusion as my cue to continue. "What may seem like a low price now will almost certainly cost you more in the long run. How much is each customer worth to your business when they purchase your product?"

"I would say each customer who is ready to buy spends an average of $500 on their purchase," he said.

I nodded and continued. "For you, if every customer is worth about $500 within a single visit, that means that every ready-to-purchase customer who chooses your competitor, who built a dedicated community through social media strategy, costs you $500 that easily could've been yours."

He rubbed the whiskers on his chin and scrunched his thick brow thoughtfully.

"Let's say you take the risk of choosing an inexperienced intern or employee to manage the success of your social media for $15 per hour for 20 hours per week. You're still investing $1,200 per month, and they don't understand the building blocks of social media content strategy, brand development, strategic communication, or the fundamentals of reputation management with your social media audience. If that intern or employee fails to attract even as few as five ready-to-buy customers per week, your $15-per-hour part-time hire, whom you pay $300 per week, is actually costing you $2500 plus their $300 per week fee. That's $2800 out of your pocket every week and an $11,200 loss each month.

But when you invest a little more to hire a $2,000-per-month trained, educated, and experienced social media manager, they can actually provide a return on investment far greater than the cost of hiring them. If they reach even just those same five customers in one week, that social media manager has already paid for their monthly fee and earned you an additional $500 return on your investment within that week. And with as few as five more customers per week, for one month, you'll be earning $10,000 per month, of which $8,000 would purely be a return on your investment."

The business owner's eyes widened as he absorbed the information for a few seconds before he sighed and said, "Wow, nobody's ever explained it to me like that before. I'll take a look at my books over the weekend, and I'll be in touch by Monday."

Social media is the face and first impression of your business.

Social media is a powerful marketing tool. It connects businesses directly with thousands of potential customers, builds brand awareness, and drives sales. Essentially, it is the face and first impression of your business.

However, effective social media marketing requires skill, experience, and a deep understanding of online community behavior. It's not something that an intern or an already overworked employee can effectively manage on top of their existing duties.

When you assign social media tasks to untrained staff, you pay for their learning curve. They will make mistakes, which could damage your business's reputation. Even if you take the time to approve these posts, because these employees were hired for a specific role in your organization and are not professional writers, you then must invest time in editing their work, correcting verbiage as the word choice fails to capture your brand's voice, and reworking paragraphs littered with grammatical errors. After all this time to avoid a lower price tag each month, you're still not making waves on social media.

On the other hand, an experienced social media manager knows the ins and outs of different platforms. Though learning never stops, experienced social media managers often have years of college education focused on social media (I graduated with a bachelor's degree in communication and public relations, which heavily focused on professional writing, strategy, and social media). They live and breathe social media, know trends and best practices across various platforms, understand how to create engaging content, respond appropriately to comments, match your brand's voice, use proper grammar, and use analytics tools to measure success and guide strategy. Essentially, a trained professional can hit the ground running, saving you time and money and earning results almost immediately.

Online communities turn to real-world customers.

While the initial cost of hiring a social media manager might seem high (expect to pay between $1,000 to $2,000 per month for a well-trained, talented SMM), it's an investment that pays for itself. A professional SMM can take your business's online performance from mediocre to magnificent, driving customer engagement, building online communities, and increasing sales.

So, before you delegate your social media tasks to an intern, minimum-wage hire, or an overworked employee, consider the true cost. Remember that every misstep on social media is a missed opportunity to connect with potential customers. Don't let your attempt to save money now cost you more in the long run.

If you’re ready to connect with social media managers who make a difference, contact us to learn how we can help.