On under £2,000 a month, most B2B firms should put the bulk of their effort into organic social from one or two named people and spend a smaller, defined amount on paid social to test one offer.
The reverse can make sense when you need leads quickly and have a clear offer, but it is the rarer case. This guide shows the arithmetic, so you can see why, and sets out three budget splits for different situations.
Our figures come from published UK benchmarks and clearly labelled assumptions. Where a source has no method behind its numbers, we say so. The guide sits alongside our wider guide to hiring a social media marketing agency in the UK.
What each one does
Organic social builds familiarity with people who may buy later. Paid social puts a specific message in front of a defined audience now.
Marketing Week's 2021 piece on the 95:5 rule, by Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo of LinkedIn's B2B Institute, gives the reason both matter. Drawing on research by Professor John Dawes, it says only about 5% of B2B buyers are in the market at any time. The Marketing Week article argues that the brand remembered when the need arises is the one that gets bought.
Paid social can reach the 5% in the market, and, over time, the 95% who are not. Organic posting from a trusted person builds the memory. On a small budget you cannot do everything, so you choose.
What paid social costs on LinkedIn and Meta
Published UK figures for cost per click vary. Whito, a UK agency, gives typical B2B ranges of £3 to £12 on LinkedIn, £1 to £8 on Google Ads and £0.50 to £3 on Facebook, and suggests at least £500 a month for LinkedIn ads. It does not say where the figures come from, so take them as a rough guide.
A US vendor's July 2026 roundup puts LinkedIn Sponsored Content at $6 to $9 per click and reports that LinkedIn suggests new advertisers start with $10 to $20 a day. That article does not state its sample or method either.
The two sources agree on one thing: LinkedIn clicks are expensive. You pay more for a B2B audience than for a general one, which is why small budgets go less far there.
What £1,000 buys: worked arithmetic
The table shows what £1,000 of ad spend buys at three click prices from the range above. It assumes 2% of clicks become enquiries, a cautious working figure rather than a benchmark. Your landing page and offer will move it up or down.
| Cost per click | Clicks from £1,000 | Enquiries at 2% | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| £3 | 333 | 6.7 | £150 |
| £8 | 125 | 2.5 | £400 |
| £12 | 83 | 1.7 | £600 |
Whether £400 for an enquiry is good depends on what a customer is worth. If one in four enquiries becomes a customer, £400 per enquiry means about £1,600 to win one customer. That is fine for a service worth £10,000 a year and poor for one worth £500.
Work this out for your business before you spend, using your own conversion and close rates.
What organic costs
Organic social is not free. It costs the time of the person who posts and replies, plus any help you buy.
If a partner spends three hours a week on posts and comments, that is about 13 hours a month. At an internal cost of £50 an hour, (swap in your own rate), that is roughly £650 a month of time.
An agency will cost more or less depending on what you buy. Whito's June 2026 study of 26 published prices from 11 providers found a median of £358 a month for social media management, and its May 2026 benchmark puts strategy-led retainers at £800 to £2,500, with paid social extra.
On a budget under £2,000 in total, a full retainer plus ad spend simply does not fit. That is the main reason to choose.
Three budget splits
These are our view of sensible starting points, not tested formulas. Adjust them once you have your own data.
Long sales cycle, high-value work
If a customer is worth £10,000 or more and the cycle is six months or longer, put most of the effort into a partner's personal profile and daily commenting. Spend £300 to £500 a month on ads to promote your best document post to a defined list of target companies.
Law firms and consultancies often fit this pattern. The aim is to be the name people recognise when they need you.
Mid-value work, shorter cycle
If work is worth £2,000 to £10,000 and the cycle is one to three months, split the money about evenly. Spend £700 to £1,000 a month on ads promoting one offer or guide, and keep the rest for a freelancer or the founder's time.
Track cost per enquiry from month two. If it is well above what a customer is worth, change the offer or the audience before adding spend.
Need leads quickly, clear offer
If you need enquiries within weeks and have a tested offer, spend £1,200 to £1,500 on ads and £300 to £500 on organic support. Give the ads a landing page that matches the offer.
This is the highest-risk split, because it depends on the ad working. Run it for 60 days before judging, and stop if cost per enquiry is more than double your target.
A simple decision tree
flowchart TD
A[Is a customer worth over £10,000?] -->|Yes| B[Organic-led, £300 to £500 on ads]
A -->|No| C[Do you need enquiries within weeks?]
C -->|No| D[Even split, test one offer]
C -->|Yes| E[Ad-led, 60-day test, track cost per enquiry]
What to promote with a small paid budget
Promote something that asks for little. A useful guide, a checklist, a short webinar or a free review costs a cold reader less than a call to book a meeting. The click costs the same either way, but the conversion rate is higher when the ask is small.
Avoid promoting a general "about us" post. A paid click to a page that explains who you are rarely turns into an enquiry, and it is the commonest way a small budget disappears.
Use your best organic post as the creative. A document post or a text post that already drew good comments has shown it works for your audience, so you are not paying to test a guess. Our guide to making a LinkedIn document post in 20 minutes shows one way to produce one.
Why the main guides do not help much
The two big comparison guides for this search, from a social listening vendor and a scheduling-tool vendor, both conclude that you should use a mix. Neither gives a budget split, and their examples come mostly from consumer brands such as a film trailer or a limited-edition product.
That advice is hard to act on when you have £1,500 and a B2B service to sell. This guide exists to supply the numbers and the splits those guides leave out.
Meta ads for B2B
Meta's platforms cost less per click, with Whito putting typical UK B2B clicks at £0.50 to £3 on Facebook. They also offer less precise B2B targeting than LinkedIn, which lets you aim at job titles and company types.
For a business that sells to owner-managers of small firms, Meta can work, because those owners are also on Facebook and Instagram in their own time. For a business that sells to specialist roles in large organisations, LinkedIn's targeting usually justifies the higher click price.
Run a small test on whichever channel your buyers use, and compare cost per enquiry, not cost per click.
How to run a 90-day test
Month one is organic only. Post from one named profile, run the comment routine and record your baseline: profile views, conversations and enquiries. Our 90-day LinkedIn plan and the 15-minute comment routine show how.
Month two adds £500 of ads behind the best-performing post or a guide. Send clicks to a page with one clear action.
Month three compares: enquiries per £ and per hour from each source. Keep what works, cut what does not. Our paid media service can set up and track the paid part if you want help.
What to measure
Count enquiries, cost per enquiry, the share of enquiries that match your target market, and where each came from. Impressions and clicks only help to explain the others.
Use a "how did you hear about us" field and a note in your CRM. A prospect who saw your posts for two months and then clicked an ad will often credit the ad, so ask about both.
Followers up, sales flat explains the traps in reading these reports.
Where this advice does not apply
If you sell to a narrow list of named companies, account-based ads can work at low volume, because you pay to reach exactly the people you want. If your market is very small, the cost per click matters less than the audience size LinkedIn can deliver, so check the audience estimate before you commit.
If you are a start-up with no reputation, organic posts are slow to build. A short, tested ad campaign can speed up the first conversations, so long as you track cost carefully.
Accountants, consultancies and other professional services firms usually sit in the first split above. Their problem is trust and timing, and ads rarely fix either alone.
Edelman's reminder on long-term effect
Edelman and LinkedIn's 2024 research found that 86% of decision-makers are somewhat or very likely to invite creators of consistent, quality thought leadership to a tender. Ragan's summary has the detail. That favours steady organic work, even on a small budget, because it takes months to build.
Next steps
If you would like help choosing a split, setting up tracking or running a test month, get in touch.
