6 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Budget
Uma Bhat
Fri, 06/08/2018 - 10:56

With the reach that comes with social media marketing, which has access to billions of active social media users, it is not surprising that most of the brands are resorting to social media marketing to increase its brand awareness.

According to a research, an average firm is expected to allocate 41% of their marketing budget to social media marketing, and this rate is expected to grow to 45% by 2020.

It’s quite clear that businesses and social media marketers are spending a significant amount of their total marketing budget towards social media marketing.

Regardless of how much you spend on social media marketing, the ultimate goal should be to use it wisely. Allocate the budget wisely towards creating a comprehensive social media marketing budget and make sure that you get value for every dollar that you spend.

Here are 6 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Budget:


Create Original high quality content

Any social media marketer will know that ‘Content is the King of social media’.

Interesting and engaging content is the key to convince people  to click through your posts. Spend your budget towards creating original, creative, unique, witty and inspirational content to attract more audience on social media.

Engage a creative writer who can judge the mood of each social media platforms and create content according to the expectations of the audience.

For effective use of the budget, you should also repurpose your evergreen content, use guest bloggers, and also collaborate with influencers to produce a piece of content.
 


Curate content

Feeding your audience with interesting and informative content will reward you with increased audience engagement.

Curated content will help to keep your audience engaged without actually spending all of your social media marketing budget.

Decide on the amount of content that you want to curate in addition to original content. Social media marketing wisdom says:

“To be successful at social marketing,  share other people’s content 80% of the time and your own content 20% of the time.”

Identify good sources from which you can share content, reshare, and retweet other people’s content, and repurpose your own content.

Tools such as SproutSocial and Feedly will assist you greatly to curate content. Use your budget wisely by understanding your sources and by using the right tools to curate content.
 


Add high quality Images, Graphics and Videos

Using the power of images, graphics and Vidoes is indeed one of the best ways to utilize social media marketing budget effectively.

A social media analysis reports that when articles have at least 1 image for every 75-100 words, the article was shared twice as often!! This is the power of images.
Due to its high impression on social media, it will be worthwhile to allocate budget towards graphics and images. Engage in procuring quality images for your blogs, websites and social pages.

According to a research, 54% of consumers want to see videos from their favourite brands. Make effective use of the budget to create demo videos, How-to-Videos, brand videos, interviews, case studies and testimonials.


Use third party tools

91% of Retail Brands Use Two or More Social Media Channels.

This has made managing social media marketing more challenging especially when you are on two or more social media platforms.

This is why it will be worthwhile to use your social media marketing budget towards social media management tools. The tools are effective in creating content, curating content, monitoring audience conversations, scheduling content and analyzing social media activities.

Social media management tools such as Cloohawk, will help you to increase engagement with audience, find influencers, increase followers, competitor analysis, run performance reports and much more just with the click of a button.
This helps the social media managers to focus on the right and effective methods of marketing rather than wasting money on insignificant results.


Utilize Micro-influencers

The biggest buzz-word right now in social media marketing is the Influencer marketing. Micro-Influencers offer an amazing opportunity to promote brands that uses the popularity and expertise of a person on social media.

Research says that  Businesses earn approximately $6.50 for every $1 they spend on influencer marketing.

With a good influencer marketing, you can reach to a larger audience on social media to promote your products and services effectively.

Hence it is becoming more important to spend the right amount of budget on influencer marketing.

The best part of influencer marketing is that it doesn’t come at a very high cost. You can start from small steps by engaging with a micro-influencer, and then increase your investment as your business grows.
 


Use paid advertising

In addition to all the organic and free methods available on social media marketing, it is also important to keep aside a portion of your budget towards paid advertising.

Paid advertising is essential for your sales and marketing efforts to reach higher conversions and profitability. It helps your content to increase reach and elevate your brand.

With the specific targeting options available with paid advertising, it allows you reach visitors and audience who are interested in your brand. It will therefore help to obtain more qualified leads.

Paid advertising offers many choices, platforms and types of campaigns that you can choose. Test the messages and campaigns that fit your brand, and evaluate what works well for you. In this way, you can make effective use of your social media marketing budget.
 

Conclusion

Social media marketing plays a critical role in the success of your business. Hence allocating a considerable amount of budget towards social media marketing is essential for every brand.

Irrespective of whether you are just starting out on social media marketing or already established with it, ensure that you get the maximum returns on your investment in social media marketing.

 The main intention of allocating a budget towards social media marketing is to ensure that it multiplies many folds and it can be used for business development. It’s important to make sure that the money does not go down the drain.