In August, I expected a clinic’s organic Facebook programme to need 20 to 30 creative pieces a month and cost up to €500 a month to produce. By late October, my estimate of the monthly production cost was around €1,500. The biggest change was the work inside each post. More of the calendar had become video, and the videos took more time and money than the original plan allowed.
Why the production estimate changed twice
At launch, the plan had already moved to around 30 to 40 pieces a month. Around 26–27 October, we saw other accounts in the market publishing more frequently. My working estimate rose to around 60 pieces, at least half of them good-quality videos. I wanted one standout video each week with a chance of reaching people outside the existing audience.
Sixty is a production target for this account. It also raises a practical choice for the owner. If the team commits to a more ambitious weekly film, which simpler posts can carry the rest of the calendar? Counting all of them as one identically priced post had made our August budget look more comfortable than it was.
What Facebook measured by 28 October
Facebook recorded 100,743 organic views and 122,751 views from ads from 1 to 28 October, for 223,494 Facebook views in total. The campaign began on 15 October. The reporting window therefore includes earlier posts, and the figures describe the account as a whole. A view is also different from a unique viewer or a clinic enquiry.
Those numbers justify looking more closely at what reached people organically. They cannot tell us by themselves whether an expensive video earned its place. For that decision, I want to compare individual posts over the same number of days and look at how many new people each reached.
What the first full month needs to settle
The programme is ongoing. The first complete campaign window runs from 15 October through 13 November. The review will count actual published pieces and videos, reconcile production hours and bills, and separate organic distribution from paid views. Until then, €1,500 is my estimate of the current monthly production cost. It is high enough to change the plan and still below what I think the revised volume would take.
If an outsourced marketing team carries your weekly publishing, ask for two numbers alongside the views: how much the pieces took to produce and how much of the planned calendar actually shipped. The SmartKey approach connects that review to a decision about next month’s work. Our article on hiring versus outsourcing explains why production and approvals both belong in the comparison.