Split social spend between new and existing customers

Key takeaways

Splitting a marketing budget between new and existing customers on social media usually favours new buyers, because existing customers can be reached cheaply by email and organic posts. As a GBL rule of thumb, put 10–20% of social spend towards existing customers and the rest towards finding new ones.

• 10–20% of social spend usually goes to existing customers.
• 80–90% goes to reaching new buyers.
• Repeat-purchase businesses can push the existing share to 30%.
• Email and organic posts reach existing customers at low cost.

Why does social spend lean towards new customers?

Existing customers already know you, follow you or are on your email list, so you can reach many of them without paying. Paid social is strongest at finding people who have never heard of you. Spending heavily to show ads to existing buyers often pays for sales that would have happened anyway.

• Social media budget for a UK small business
• Email vs social media: which deserves your marketing hours?

What should the existing-customer share pay for?

Use it for things that create a second sale or a referral: ads to past buyers announcing a new service, reminders for seasonal repeat work, review requests and referral offers. Upload customer lists only with a lawful basis under UK GDPR, and keep the message different from cold ads.

• New service or product announcements to past buyers.
• Seasonal reminders for repeat work.
• Referral offers that reward introductions.
• Review requests after a completed job.

• Customer referral schemes for small businesses that work

When should you tilt towards existing customers?

Tilt towards them when repeat purchase is the business model, such as cafes, salons, subscriptions and consumables, or when new-customer costs rise sharply. Then 25–30% can be sensible. Tilt back when you need growth beyond your current base or are opening in a new area.

What are the risks of the wrong split?

All acquisition and no retention leaks customers you paid to win. All retention and no acquisition shrinks the business slowly as customers move or stop buying. Track how many sales each month come from new versus returning customers, and set the split from that number.

• Customer lifetime value: what a social customer is worth

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: retargeting audiences full of existing customers absorb a large share of ad spend and report excellent results, because those people were going to buy again. Excluding recent buyers from cold campaigns usually frees budget for genuinely new customers.

• See client work
• Social Media Marketing for UK businesses

Customer split checklist

• Measure the share of sales from returning customers.
• Set the existing-customer share at 10–20% to start.
• Use email and organic posts first for existing buyers.
• Exclude recent customers from cold ad audiences.
• Check the lawful basis for any uploaded customer list.

• How much to raise a social ad budget at a time
• Social media spend for a business under £100k turnover

Next step

Count last quarter's sales from new and returning customers. Compare that ratio with how your social spend was divided, and adjust the next month's plan.