Social media promotion is the future. Google continues to place more emphasis on social media as a means to increase your exposure in the search engines. Your marketing budget should always prioritise social media because let’s be honest, there are very few people without at least one account. Most of us have more than one. Here are some tips for setting a marketing budget.
One-Time and Constant
You’ll always have some constant costs which you have to cover year after year. Things like custom skins will be one-time expenses. Rather than simply coming up with a number for your budget, you should split your budget into one-time and regular expenses. This will help you plan for the long-term instead of just the duration of your current budget.
Expand Outwards
Your social media promotion should focus more on just Facebook. A lot of businesses make the mistake of planning a budget for Facebook and nothing else. Look at this resource from The Partnership Group. It shows, out of a possible 10, the number of retailers on Facebook was given a 6.9, yet the number of retailers on Pinterest was a 9.3. Further research indicated 70 per cent of consumers from these websites click through to a retailer’s website.
This data shows you have to do more with your budget than just cover your current expenses. Create an additional column for experimentation. This part of the budget focuses on expansion and other social media outlets. It shouldn’t make up the core of your budget, but it should make up a significant portion.
Original Content
You must consider how much original content you intend on creating. Original content is essential for establishing your brand and you can spend as much or as little on it as you want. It doesn’t include Facebook adverts or any such things. It applies to things like videos and blogging which will go on your various social media channels.
Take into account any equipment you might have to buy. Also, you shouldn’t discount labour costs. Small businesses often forget to factor in the price of having people operating cameras and appearing in original content.
To properly estimate this, consider setting a price for how much you’ll charge. Make sure you never go over this amount. If your chosen person doesn’t accept this price look elsewhere.
What You Have vs. What You Expect to Have
Set your social media promotion budget based on what you already have. You should have the money in the bank all ready to go. Promotion is a very volatile industry and anything can change at any time. One change to Google’s algorithms could make your social media efforts obsolete overnight.
Paying for promotion based on what you might earn is dangerous. You’re spending money you aren’t sure you’ll have yet. If something changes throughout the year, you might be forced to start taking out loans or completely reworking your budget and strategy.
Four Budgets
A single budget isn’t accurate enough. You should consider a single budget as a predictor. Create a social media budget for the four quarters of the year. Feel free to use the financial year if it suits you. This can better account for unexpected growth, an increase in revenue, and changing needs and requirements.
It doesn’t have to be more work. Simply go through the year and decide what you intend to do. During busy periods you might want to increase the amount you invest in social media promotion. At the end of the last budget, add the figures together to create your total yearly budget.
The benefit of this is you can experiment with social media. It doesn’t take long to work out if a technique isn’t working. For example, you might find Facebook adverts don’t bring in enough people to make the cost worthwhile. Your automated Twitter bot might be failing you. By using this budgeting method making changes won’t ruin your annual social media budget.
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