You are considering entrusting the management of your Facebook Page to a communication agency, or you have already identified 2-3 and, with the same skills and work philosophy, you just have to evaluate the price factor. Good! This is an absolutely normal situation, crucial in the process of selection and assignment of the assignment.
In this article you will be able to find some answers regarding budgeting and management methods for a Facebook Page, so that you can evaluate your new partner agency with maximum awareness and serenity.
The real answer is “it depends”
You must have heard it from many, probably you have also responded in this way to a potential customer, but the management of a Facebook Page includes various activities that are the responsibility of various departments (creative, marketing, development); therefore, it would be really naive to give it a fixed economic evaluation: we are not talking about a mass-produced product or a one-off service, but a set of continuous and coordinated activities over time.
The answer to how much it costs to have a Facebook Page managed by an agency is certainly “it depends”, or rather, it is the wisest answer you could receive. In these cases, the rush to receive an estimate could be costly: if you don’t discuss the budgeting with the tendering agency, what you will get is nothing more than a flat-rate fee pushed upwards.
Allow time for the analysis: you and the agency will be more aware and your portfolio will thank you.
The terms of budgeting in managing a Facebook Page
The next step is to understand what are the factors on which the price factor in managing a Facebook Page depends. Many answers are obtained during the briefing with the agency in the tender: it is usually the moment in which one’s reality, ambitions for the future and the objectives one intends to set are presented. It may seem like an obvious phase, sometimes made up of pleasantries, but which actually defines who you are in the eyes of the agency: for example, the classic attitude of “I’ve been doing this job for 20 years, it’s always been done this way” will let us understand that you are not inclined to the analysis phase (practically vital for the agency) and your management will be labeled as risky –> greater margin of error + less strategic choices = higher cost.
On the contrary, if you are open to analysis, listening and comparison, this will lead you to establish a more direct and understanding relationship with the agency in the tender, as well as a certainly better estimate in economic terms.
But let’s go back to the factors on which the price of a Facebook management depends.
Assessment of the level of competitiveness
If your business is placed in a very competitive market, perhaps dominated by large competitors, it is clear that the difficulty in emerging will be much higher, involving, for example, a higher cost in sponsorship campaigns. However, in the analysis phases the level of communication of the competitors is also evaluated: they can also be much more structured, but if they present themselves in an unprofessional or banal way then there could be more room for intervention.
Goals to achieve
The two main purposes of managing a Facebook Page are to increase awareness and to increase sales.
The first is related to metrics such as reach, impressions, recall rate and many others. These are discrete variables which, however, measure a non-discrete component, brand awareness. Thanks to interviews or online surveys, it is still possible to measure the effectiveness of brand awareness campaigns, but in general it will be estimated by evaluating only the metrics listed above: cheaper approach, easier result to obtain, reduced monthly fee.
The increase in sales, on the other hand, involves surgical budget management, linked to metrics such as the e-commerce conversion rate, cost per lead, target turnover and many others. As you can imagine, the fee can only be higher.
Number of monthly/weekly issues
In practice, the communication agency will manage your Facebook Page, publishing the contents according to an editorial plan shared with you. The publishing activity (posting) is only the tip of the iceberg: before this “final act”, the caption of the post must be drafted by a copywriter and the graphics designed thanks to a graphic designer. Each post is therefore the result of the synergistic work between several figures within the agency, which will be more or less onerous based on the depth of the analysis carried out and the chosen strategy.
This process is repeated for each piece of content shared on the Page: in general, the more posts to be published, the higher the monthly fee required by the agency, as well as the budget to promote them. However, if the quality and creativity required by the posts is very high, managing 4 posts per month could cost you as much as 12.
If you’re wondering how many times a month you should publish a post on your Facebook Page, relax: there is no a priori answer. The ideal number of monthly/weekly issues is determined by many factors, including the two mentioned above.
Content availability
It’s true, the communication agency will produce the content for you, but it won’t be able to make it emerge from the magic cylinder. In particular if you offer a physical product, it is essential to have high quality photos and videos of the same. Furthermore, on Facebook but also on other social networks, it is effective to tell how the product relates to the user and the surrounding space: therefore, the classic still life with a solid color background will not be sufficient, but shots of worn moments of use of the product, reports, etc.
Inserting periodic shootings into an estimate is an extremely recommended choice: the quality of the contents will increase.
Sponsorship budget
Sharing content on Facebook is free, but making it visible to specific targets comes at a cost. If you exclude the sponsorship budget from the outset, please close this article: you are not ready to manage your Facebook Page in the agency, forgive my frankness! A Facebook management without sponsorship campaigns is the ideal situation only for the agency: you would pay for the production of the contents and the posting (and with this the agency has done its job) leaving the responsibility of achieving the goals you set to fate in charge. Simply put, you would be wasting your money.
In general, every post on your Page should be sponsored: organic reach on Facebook is getting lower, while the competitiveness and number of advertisers is getting higher and higher. Unfortunately, this means that sponsorship costs are always higher. However, it will be up to the agency to structure the best campaigns with the right objectives and optimization activities.
In the estimate definition phase, therefore, expect a more or less substantial voice regarding the sponsorship budget: it is a determining factor, mandatory in the business-oriented management of a Facebook Page. In some cases, the agency may retain a percentage of this budget as a management fee, most often billed directly by Facebook Inc.
This doesn’t want to be the definitive list of factors that influence the estimate of a Facebook management by an agency, but it will certainly make you more aware in the moments of treatment. Keep in mind that the more ambitious the goals set, even if they are achievable, the higher the fee that the agency will ask you: make yourself available for analysis, be patient and cooperative and your Facebook Page will perform.