How to Budget for Social Media Marketing
Last week I celebrated the one year anniversary for MicroExplosion Media and after doing social media marketing consulting for a year on my own and almost a year prior to that for another company one thing I’ve heard marketing directors, company executives, and small business owners ask about most is how to budget for social media marketing. This question usually comes once they’re convinced social media marketing will work for them and they’re trying to figure out how to put financial resources toward it.
Many companies are accustomed to creating marketing plans and budgets many months before they plan to execute the plan. They need the time to get bids on the campaign projects and begin the creative development. That’s how traditional marketing budgeting has worked for a long time and it was easy for it to work that way because everything was done in print or a broadcast medium that had long lead times and buying cycles.
People Are Your Marketing Budget
Social media marketing is different and requires a different budgeting mindset. In traditional marketing you spend most of you money on projects and physical deliverables or ad buys. The shift in social media marketing is to put the money into people. The money has to be put into people because social media marketing requires time and only people have time to give. Whereas in a traditional marketing campaign you may set aside $50,000 in your budget for a large direct mail campaign, in social media you may take that same money and put it toward hiring another person dedicated to the social media space for the brand/product. In time, the marketing budget may decrease but that same money will be going into people who have a focus on social media and can then extend the growth of your brand with content, community, and conversation.
People Can React, Respond, and Rethink
The other reason to put the money into people is that the world of social media marketing allows you to move very quickly. If the market changes or a window of opportunity is available you need the human resources to respond and react quickly. This also means that you give yourself time to have great ideas later on. One of the biggest drawbacks to a long range marketing plan is that it doesn’t give you the flexibility to come up with a better, more relevant idea later on. You can get stuck with something you know isn’t going to be as effective because the environment you planned for nine months ago isn’t the reality of the market today.
We all know business changes rapidly today so why would you still create your marketing plans the old way? It just doesn’t make sense. Decide what you should stop doing, then start putting that financial resource into people who can really help you build relationships and create content that has value for the people you most want to reach.
Tags: digital marketing budget, interactive marketing, interactive media budget, marketing budgets, marketing plans, new media budget, social media budget, social media marketing, social media marketing plans, social media plans
October 6th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Congratulations on your first year!
This is exactly the way some companies are thinking. Not always hiring a company to do it for them but a person. It’s how I found my job with Vibemetrix. Our CEO was looking for someone to bring him the value and the marketing in one person without spending thousands of dollars on a direct mail marketing campaign when our service is targeted for marketing, PR and SEO types.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Bill - Excellent entry. Way to nail down the paradigm shift…. and congrats on your first year.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Thanks Michelle. Great to hear some companies are already figuring this out.
Nathan, thanks for the encouraging comment.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Great post Bill. Many many companies struggle with this. I recently bid on a project that I found through my Facebook network. Good stuff and companies on the forefront of this wave are going to be the ones who win!
Jason
October 9th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Thanks Jason. I agree, the early birds will certainly catch the worm. Sounds like you and I are both seeing that happen first hand now.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[...] — to be able to speak the language of business, understand how they expect to see things planned, measured, tracked, and reflected in the bottom [...]