How to Spend Money on Social (Without Losing It All)

Social media has changed the way brands do business, but already those methods have changed. In the beginning, each post had the chance to reach a significant portion of followers to your page, for free.

A steady stream of fresh content on your page would bring a steady stream of new likes and new potential clients. You could put a little spend behind your posts if you wanted to boost your audience, but you didn’t need a social budget to see big results. Times have changed.

Now, advertising on social takes a more careful and calculated approach to use your marketing budget effectively and reach your clients.

At Constant Contact, our partner program offers resources, support, and education so you can bring on new clients, increase revenue from existing clients, and keep your clients longer.  Find out how to get started today.

Spending on social is now a necessity

Companies used to spend on social sporadically, but now social spend should be worked into your overall marketing budget. Spending on social media marketing, is the new norm.

The good news is that spending on social has become more of a science, and less a “spray and pray” affair, like in the past. Specific budgets can yield specific, measurable levels of exposure. Be clear on what social media channel(s) your existing or potential clients use and use your ad dollars to help capture that audience.

Set a marketing budget for both your business and each of your clients. Once you have planned your spend limits, start planning which audiences you will be targeting on social. The more specific you can be, the better.

Drive clients to a specific action

Reaching audiences on social can be effective for spreading brand awareness for your business, but it’s not the whole game. When you’re designing campaigns for social media, it’s helpful to think of the specific action that you want these potential clients to take. Just like choosing audiences, the more specific the better.

Buying products or booking services is the most obvious action you might want clients to take, but it’s not the only one. It also may be the least efficient for your audience, and therefore, the most expensive to target. You’ll have to experiment with your messaging to figure out what works best, but a different action, such as signing up for an email list or visiting your blog, may be easier (and cheaper) to achieve.

Market to your clients, not any clients

Every business wants maximum exposure, but spending money to reach everyone isn’t sustainable or efficient. Some people are simply less inclined to buy from your business. They may have already solved the problem your service fulfills, may not have an interest, or there may be other factors counting against you.

There’s no need to panic – there are still plenty of people out there just waiting to hear from you so they can make a purchase. These are your clients. Your business should be targeting these specific audiences that are more likely to become your clients. To get started, think of your best clients, then create audiences that mimic their characteristics.

Start thinking of possible audiences for your business

Here are some examples of targeting specific audiences:

Targeted: $2 a day – on one or two posts – targeting females aged 28 to 68 in the greater Houston area that list online jewelry associates or retailers in their profile. The goal: quick sale of downloadable social media marketing best practices, specifically tailored to online jewelry retail businesses.

Frequently Targeted: $10 a post – posting at least three times a week- targeted at Friends and Friends of Friends. The goal: increased exposure and increased chance of purchase or recommendation of your marketing services or packages.

Specific Targeted: $100 for 10 days – on a one-off post promoting your speaking engagement – targeting males and females aged 24 to 64 in the north Atlanta area that are members of Chambers of Commerce and list marketing as a hobby or profession. The goal: gaining attendees at your Constant Contact Partner’s marketing workshop.

As for where to target clients, Facebook is huge. Now that the platform has stretched all around the world, you can target clients using the richest demographic information available to your business. For as little a $1 or $2 per day, you can reach some of these example audiences:

• People who like your page.
• Friends of People who like your page.
• Choose a ZIP or city. As a local business targeting other local businesses, this is a great resource.  Get good at Facebook demographic choices and you’ll get the most out of your marketing.
• Emails into Facebook. You can upload emails into Facebook. Facebook will find as many of your email contacts as it accurately can.

Don’t be afraid to spend and experiment

Don’t think of social media as a black hole that you throw money into and hope to get some new likes now and then. Social media marketing has now become a strategic science, one that you can use to your advantage if you’re willing to take some risks and experiment.

Just like email marketing and any other form of advertising, social media marketing is an experiment. This big sandbox of likes and followers will help you test different messaging and campaigns to see what works best for your audience of potential clients. Since the world of social moves so fast, these experiments will let you grow and adapt quickly, informing your overall marketing outside of social to become more and more effective.

To get started, start small and focus on growing after you’ve seen positive results or trends. You don’t need to have a big budget on social to see a big impact. The more specific you can be with your targeting and your desired action, the less you’ll need to spend to start seeing results. You’ll be spending money, yes, but you should just as quickly start to see significant returns on your investment.

At Constant Contact, our partner program offers resources, support, and education so you can bring on new clients, increase revenue from existing clients, and keep your clients longer.  Find out how to get started today.