December 17, 2020 
Social media marketing is integral to businesses. It is a cost-effective way for brands to develop huge awareness for themselves.
As small businesses usually have limited budgets, social media marketing is also a great way of being able to reach many people without spending too much money,
However, we often see small businesses going out of their way for their social media marketing.
The competition in the online marketing space has made it quite difficult for companies to use social media to market their products without parting away with some money.
Facebook alone has over 90 million small businesses using the platform; there is already a huge competition waiting, and you cannot have an ordinary social media marketing plan if you want to beat the rivalry.
Nevertheless, what most marketers fail to understand is that you do not have to stretch your budget thin to have an extraordinary social media marketing strategy.
There are several marketing tools like AI chatbots, for instance, that can be used to minimise costs significantly, but still boost sales and marketing to an all-time high.
How Much Money do Small Businesses Spend on Social Media Marketing?
According to a recent study, the average amount that small businesses spend on social media marketing monthly is between $4,000 and $7,000. For a small business, this can be considered to be excessive and could be trimmed down.
Suppose you feel it is not a bad budget for social media, there are marketing tools that cost significantly less and can achieve better results in lesser time.
Chatbot marketing has become the buzz word in online marketing today, and rightly so. Chatbots are worth the hype, and this is they are used in almost any industry you can ever think of.
In fact, well-known companies like Facebook and Google have adopted them while it has also become very common in other industries like food, clothing, and general online stores.
Why Do Small Businesses Spend A Lot of Money on Social Media Marketing?
This blog will now analyse in what aspects small businesses usually spend money on their social media marketing to make it cost that much.
For Social Media Management
One of the many reasons why small businesses spend a lot on social media marketing is because of the social media managers they hire.
Although their experience may be useful, in a time when chatbot marketing can fully automate social media marketing processes with greater efficiency, social media managers could be regarded as unnecessary costs.
Increasing your employee count will put a huge strain on your budget, and you no longer have to. Many marketing tools can be used to manage your social media accounts effectively without breaking the bank.
Tools like the Zebrabuzz social poster, for instance, can make organic posts to your social media pages consistently without supervision. This tool can make as many organic posts to as many social media platforms as possible.
Another social media management tool that can be used is the Zebrabuzz Facebook auto commenter and autoresponder tool.
This tool can automatically reply to comments and messages on your Facebook page. It can also comment and be used to answer customers queries with speed.
Costs like salaries, bonuses, and many more that new employees bring can be eliminated
For Advertising
Another reason why small businesses spend a lot of money on social media marketing is because of advertising.
Ads are very good and effective. If done well, it can reap massive benefits. However, small businesses who cannot afford it can have other marketing tools integrated into their social media page to help increase engagements on their page.
High engagements mean higher traffic which will lead to an increase in conversion rate. Tools like the Zebrabuzz Facebook auto liker and the social poster feature can also be used to raise engagements.
The latter is used to like comments and messages, and boost likes on your Facebook page, which will lead to increased reach.
As the purpose of ads is to increase awareness and draw traffic to your social media page, you can also achieve this with the high open rates of chatbots which can go up to 95%.
Omnichannel Experience
Also, small businesses spend a lot on social media marketing because of the multiple social media platforms they are on.
To effectively maintain a respectable social media presence in all the channels, they tend to spend a lot of money.
However, chatbots offer an Omnichannel experience in that they offer multiple marketing approaches.
Facebook Messenger chatbots like Zebrabuzz can be integrated into multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and the likes as well as emails, SMS, and many others.
What makes it impressive is that for all the extra features and tools, you can get most chatbots for the same price without extra costs.
There are many other reasons why small businesses spend a lot on their social media marketing. For example, some small businesses want more precise analytics of their activities, so they pay for tools that are specifically designed to give analytics.
You don’t have to do that because analytics is a feature that comes as part of most chatbot marketing toolset like that of Zebrabuzz.
Although many marketers may break the bank for their social media marketing, the risks attached to such are too much, and this is why most fold up within a few years. With chatbot marketing that can cost only a little fraction of what others spend, you can boost your business’ social media marketing significantly.
