Return on Investment or ROI is the usual bottom line when social media programs and strategies are considered. In other words, it is important that any strategy, which you have visualized, brings in the required ROI. However, despite the fact that most social media marketers have started creating budgets for their initiatives, there is no method to ensure this. In other words, there is a marked lack of awareness regarding factors that need priority, especially when it comes to social marketing strategies. Following are some steps that will help you prioritize your social media marketing budget:
Understanding the Maturity Level of your Organization: Not all companies are at the same level in terms of their social marketing maturity. Through their observations, experts have created three levels of social business maturity, namely novice, intermediate and advanced. It is important to understand the exact level at which your business stands in terms of social business maturity before adopting any concrete measures for social media marketing. It is important to note that the budget allocation as well as the number of people required for social marketing campaign is different for different levels.
Novice: If your business is starting out with social media marketing, then the approximate budget required would be slightly more than $50,000 and the number of people required for your campaign would be approximately 3-4. It is important to create a team initially that will look into creating policies for social media, educate others in this regard and use and implement collaboration tools for maximum internal sharing. It is also important to clarify the responses that should be given using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter etc along with deciding who responds to the queries. Finally, novice level businesses should invest in good brand monitoring tools, which will help them set the next stage for interaction.
Intermediate: With intermediate levels, the budget is around a million dollars with the staff anywhere between 8-9 people. Here, the companies can concentrate on expanding their social marketing activities by creating a hub or central team, which responds to several smaller teams or units or spokes. The next step is to identify and exploit community programs for furthering your business, through advocacy as well as through word of mouth. Moreover, it is the perfect stage to adopt social media management systems for developing and deploying content, which will help improve communication.
Advanced: Such programs usually have around 20-21 people working towards implementation of social media marketing strategies but the budget still remains around a million dollars or more. At the advanced level, social media marketing is not restricted to a particular unit of the business but is spread throughout, with all units operating under these strategies. Support of niche agencies that can help promote your social media standing and interest can be sought at this stage. Finally, social marketing should meet and merge with digital technology through the use of several digital tools for improving customer relations.
It is important to note that these are merely some of the factors that a business can look into, provided it has clear understanding of the level that it has reached with respect to social business maturity.
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