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Strategy4 Jun 20265 min readBy the BEST. team

How Much Should a Small Business in India Spend on Social Media Marketing?

Most small businesses set their social budget by asking what an agency charges. Set it by asking what a customer is worth instead — the number gets easier to defend and easier to grow.

Start from customer value, not agency quotes

Work out the gross profit an average customer creates over a year, then multiply it by the number of new customers you want. A marketing budget should be a sensible fraction of that opportunity, not a random amount chosen because it feels affordable.

Split the budget three ways

Making content, distributing content, and measuring it. A common healthy split for a small Indian business is roughly half on production and strategy, most of the rest on paid amplification, and a small slice on tools.

Respect your sales cycle

A café sees results in weeks. A clinic in a month or two. A B2B service in two quarters. Set the budget for the length of the cycle and commit to it; stopping at month two of a four-month cycle wastes everything spent in months one and two.

The floor below which it is not worth starting

If you cannot fund consistent production — roughly one filming session a week and someone editing properly — you are better off spending less and doing it yourself with a strategist guiding you, than paying for a scheduling service that posts templates.

When to increase it

Increase spend when a format is repeatably working, not when a single post does well. Two months of consistent performance on a format is the signal to put money behind it.

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