AJ Agrawal explains: Your social media budget is usually something you set at the
start of the year. Although you have to bear in mind that
budgets are important, they should never be rigid. Things move
so quickly in the worlds of business and social media that you
can’t afford to stick rigidly to a budget.
So when you should you consider upgrading your social media
budget?
Your Budget Is A Placeholder
The first thing to understand is that your budget should act as a
placeholder. This is the minimum you will spend in order to
carry out basic social media operations. It should never be the
final budget because you have no idea what might happen.
When you set your budget, make it small and leave room for
expansion. It’s best to start small because if you give yourself a
huge budget it usually leads to disaster where you blow the
entire thing on testing something that isn’t working. It’s better
to budget too little and upgrade than budget too much and ruin
your profits for the year.
Scaling For Success
Social media is all about split testing. The process is the same
for all businesses. You will take various ads and status updates
to test. Each time you will change a small aspect and check the
results against your previous ones. Once you find something
that gives you a reasonable ROI, you steadily scale up.
Scaling up is when you should increase your social media
budget. It’s difficult to hit upon something that really works, so
when you do get to it you have to give it room to breathe and
grow. You may think that you can simply wait until your next
budget review, but this isn’t going to work.
AJ Agrawal Contributor
I cover the art of using smart, simple shortcuts that lead to growth.
An ad has a short shelf life. It may work after you scale it now,
but within a few weeks you will get diminishing returns and the
whole process has to start all over again. Your budget has to be
there and available to increase when you start to notice signs of
a breakthrough.
The Holiday Seasons
During major holiday periods, such as Christmas, Easter, and
the last week of summer spending on social media goes up. If
you want to get the same results as before, you have to consider
upping your budget or bowing out entirely. These are major
selling periods and every business is competing for the
attentions of the general public.
The cost of running ads and the cost of getting results is
influenced entirely by the overall market. A highly competitive
niche will always attract higher prices. There’s no getting away
from it, and thus you have to account for budget increases
during times of high levels of competition.
The Skunkworks
A skunkworks is a name in the business world given to the part
of your business where you will test for new innovations. Even
smaller companies should budget for this, particularly when it
comes to social media.
This is the arm of your company that will allow you to shoot for
the moon or die trying. Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneur’s
refuse to increase their budget to accommodate this type of
testing. They pay for it in the longterm because they are only
following trends long after they’ve appeared, rather than taking
control and pioneering their social media activities themselves.
When Things Go Well
If you are making lots of profit in your business and you have
some spare capital, don’t leave it in the bank. Make it work for
you by sending that cash to the front line. Invest it in your
future by upping your social media spend. The work you put in
so you can build customer relationships will ensure that you
more than get your money back in the longterm.
Go Up And Down
It’s clear that there are times where you should increase your
social media budget. Like with any part of a business, you also
have to be willing to decrease the size of your budget when
things change and when things aren’t working out for you.
During times of trouble, you may decide that the best thing is to
temporarily bring back your spending and redirect it to more
immediate matters. This is perfectly fine and is a sign of good
leadership. Budgets are fluid and should be going up or down
following regular reviews.
Last Word
It’s difficult to up your social media spend, especially if you have
to do it at short notice. But giving your business this level of
flexibility ensures that you will get a jump on your competitors.
4/24/2016 When You Should Consider Stepping Up Your Social Media Budget Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/04/22/whenyoushouldconsidersteppingupyoursocialmediabudget/print/ 3/3
This article is available online at: 2016 Forbes.com LLC™ All Rights Reserved
AJ Agrawal is the CEO and CoFounder of Alumnify Inc.
Follow him on Twitter at @ajalumnify.