How big is your social media budget? Show
I’ve heard of companies that spend millions on marketing and others who spend zero (we skew toward the zero side at Buffer). Regardless of how much you spend, you aim to spend it well. That’s why a hypothetical situation like — what would you do with $100 to spend on social media marketing? — can be an extremely valuable exercise. I have some ideas on what I’d do with the $100, ways to wring the most value out of every penny. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have also. Giveaway: New Social Media Strategy Class + 2 Months of Skillshare PremiumWe’re excited to launch our new social media strategy class on Skillshare this week. You’ll learn everything from expert content curation strategies to getting started with paid advertising, from our Digital Marketing Strategist, Brian Peters. The class is free for all Buffer customers for the next 28 days. After that, you can access the class as part of Skillshare’s library. Also, we’d love to offer our Buffer users and community members two free months of Skillshare Premium, which you can use for our class and over 15,000 other classes! Just click on the button below to get started. Take the free class Before we get into some answers and ideas, I thought it’d be interesting to see just how much social media takes up in an average marketing budget. The answer: The industry average settles between $200 to $350 per day. This average comes from an analysis by The Content Factory, looking at the cost to outsource social media marketing services. They found that $4,000-$7,000 per month was the industry average, which works out to the above per-day costs. As a percentage of the total marketing budget, The CMO Survey found that social media spending is at 11.7% in 2016 — a three-time increase since 2009. How does this compare to yours? Is your budget higher or lower? At Buffer, our marketing budget consists mainly of the tools we use. We have also recently started exploring Facebook ads to increase our brand reach and social engagement. Here’re the three possible ways to spend your $100: Plan A: The all-in-one social media budget Plan B: Invest in education Plan C: Advertising-focused Let’s dive in! One of the first qualifications of spending $100 on social media is that the way you spend is likely to be quite unique: Everyone has their own specific niche and audience to serve, and most social media profiles are at varying degrees of completeness. With this in mind, I’ve aimed to share some thoughts here that might fit the majority of profiles. Feel free to adjust as needed for your particular situation. Graphics/photos/videos – $40With visual design carrying such a large emphasis on social media, it feels great to put your best foot forward on the visuals front. This can mean:
We’ve written some fun tutorials on what to do with certain resources — how to turn photos and graphics into ideal social media images. It’s possible that you’ll be able to create these images for free with the great, free tools out there. Two of our favorites are Unsplash for free high-resolution photos and Canva for quick graphic design. If you choose to spend in this area, here’s one direction that your money could go.
Advertising – $40If you’re just starting out and looking to grow your influence on social media, advertising can help build an initial audience. Even for established brands, it can be a great option. Social media advertising is a huge topic with lots to consider. To help you get started, we have written guides on Facebook and Instagram advertising. The takeaway: Test and see what works! Spend $5 per day on Facebook or Instagram ads for a little more exposure.
A study by Nanigans, a Facebook marketing partner, found that while Instagram ads cost less for impressions and clicks, Facebook ads have higher click-through rate. Our top time-saving tip for social media managers is to manage your social media with a tool like Buffer. You can manage one social account per platform — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ — for free forever. If you want to manage more accounts, the Awesome Plan is just $10/month. With Awesome, you can manage your brand’s accounts plus keep your personal queues full, too.
Analytics – $10Your social media management tool likely has a good deal of analytics already built in. There are also many free social media analytics tools out there. To stay super lean, you could stick with these free options and move more of your money into design or advertising. If you’re up for spending a little to learn what’s working on social, here’re some great options:
Audience research – FreeOne of the key things we’ve learned about social media is that it’s hugely helpful to listen to the people you’re talking with online. What are their needs? Their problems? Their favorite things? A lot of this falls under the umbrella of audience research. Many elements of audience research can be had for free. If you find one that works well for you, that could be the one worth spending a bit of your $100.
Sharing buttons – FreeFor your website or blog, you can boost your social media marketing by making it easy for others to share your content. If you’re after something a bit more customizable and premium, you might like one of the following tools.
Total spend: $100Plan B: Invest in educationThe inspiration for the $100 question came from a post on Inbound.org, asking what you’d do with $1,000 to start an online marketing strategy. (Tons of great answers there, too, if you’re curious!) One of the takeaways I learned there is that it can sometimes be best to invest your money on educating yourself. Here’re some options for how to spend $100 on social media education. Great books – $80We’re incredibly grateful for the chance to learn from so many good books. I read a cool quote from author Ryan Holiday: I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I’d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it. It’s great advice, and we’ve taken it a bit to heart here with these book recommendations.
Helpful ebook and blogs – Free
Great communities – FreeBeing able to tap into the shared knowledge of a big group of experts or like-minded peers is a huge advantage and privilege. In terms of social media marketing, these few communities have some of the best advice and most knowledgeable participants:
Miscellaneous resources – Free
Total spend: $80Plan C: Advertising-focusedLet’s say you have a good grip on your social media marketing workflows. You’re in a groove with your scheduling, content, follow-up, and reporting. Maybe you’d just like to grow with a little paid promotion. Here are some options for spending the $100 toward advertising particularly. Facebook ads – $40With Facebook, you have many different ways of approaching an ad campaign, and all these ways can typically fall within these four categories of benefits:
(The same goes for Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads, too. And since the creation of Instagram ads and Facebook ads are very similar — through the Facebook Ads Manager, you can spend this amount on Instagram ads instead if you think your audience are on Instagram more than they are on Facebook.) For small budgets, you’re likely to get the most bang for your buck with boosting reach. Twitter ads – $40Like Facebook, Twitter gives you a number of ways to get your content in front of more people. Here’s a list of possible paid routes with Twitter:
Many of these advertising options have to do with Twitter cards, which are a media-rich version of a standard tweet. LinkedIn – $20LinkedIn gives you the options of
Total spend: $100Big-picture ideas on how to spend money1. Spend your money on what you can’t do wellIf you lack a certain expertise in an area, this could be a great signal that it’d be worth it to pay someone else to take over. 2. Spend your money on what takes you the most timeTime is money, as they say. Your time is super valuable, especially if you’re juggling all the many tasks of a social media manager by yourself. Look at what takes you the most time to do. Can you spend a bit of money to make these processes a bit easier? 3. Spend money in such a way that you can make more money to spendEspecially when you’re first starting out, it’s likely that money might be a bit lean. The idea here is that you’d spend your budget on only those activities that could lead directly to you making more money. If you have $100 to spend, it’d be great to have a way to get $100 to spend again the following month. Your planI’d love to hear your ideas, or maybe even how you’ve spent it in real life, too! Any insights you have would be so great to hear. Did you find this article helpful? You might also like our all-you-need social media toolkit.Get started for free now What is media plan in advertising?Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting media outlets – mainly newspapers, magazines, websites, TV and radio stations, and outdoor placement – in which to place paid advertisements.
What is a media budget?An Media budget is an estimate of a company's promotional expenditures over a certain time period. The term “advertising budget” in essence is nothing but planning the advertising expenditure. The amount of money to be utilized for advertising purpose is charged to the profit and loss account of the co.
What is an example of paid media?Paid Media
Examples include Google Ads, social media ads, as well as more traditional options such as television commercials, print ads, and billboards.
How do you write a media plan for advertising?How to Create a Media Plan. Target your buyer personas. As a marketer, you don't want to advertise to just anyone. ... . Define your SMART goals. ... . Find the media planning tools best suited for you. ... . Analyze historical data. ... . Choose your media mix. ... . Put your media plan into action.. |