For a business to make money, you need to invest in it. And SMM promotion brings in the most revenue. People live in the age of social media, which is why all products are advertised there. Thanks to this, marketers spend little on promotion but earn a lot.
To prevent SMM from eating up all your money, it is important to know your goals, audience, and budget. If you miss even one of these points, your business will suffer losses. In this article, we will figure out what to pay attention to when launching your campaign.
Each goal has its own approach and budget. For example, it is difficult to track how recognizable a brand has become after an advertising campaign, but it is cheaper than the target action “sell.”
It's better to invest money in one or two platforms where your audience is guaranteed to be, than to try to promote everywhere at once.
1. Content budget. These are the costs of creating content:
Don't skimp on this stage. Poor-quality content is money down the drain.
2. Promotion budget. This is the largest part of your expenses. It includes:
3. Budget for specialists. You can manage your accounts yourself, but if you don't have the time, you will need a specialist:
To prevent SMM from eating up all your money, it is important to know your goals, audience, and budget. If you miss even one of these points, your business will suffer losses. In this article, we will figure out what to pay attention to when launching your campaign.
Step 1: Define your goals
Every advertising campaign should have a measurable goal. Here are some examples:- Increase brand awareness. Larger media outlets should start talking about the product. This can be a repost or paid advertising. The main thing is to be in the public eye so that people have positive associations with the brand.
- Drive traffic to the website. This refers to specific numbers. For example, increase website traffic by 50% — that is, more people should interact with the brand.
- Increase sales. For example, sell 100 units of a product through social media in 2 months. You can track this using UTM links — insert them into a post on the channel and analyze the statistics.
Each goal has its own approach and budget. For example, it is difficult to track how recognizable a brand has become after an advertising campaign, but it is cheaper than the target action “sell.”
Step 2: Study your target audience
For a business to be profitable, it is important to find out which audience will benefit from the company's product. What is their age, what do they want, what are their preferences, interests, and problems?- If your target audience is young people aged 18 to 25, then you should focus your budget on TikTok and Instagram.
- If it's the B2B segment, then your choice is Telegram with business-themed channels.
It's better to invest money in one or two platforms where your audience is guaranteed to be, than to try to promote everywhere at once.
Step 3: Divide your budget into expense items
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Divide your budget into parts to make it easier to calculate the effectiveness of each expense.1. Content budget. These are the costs of creating content:
- Photo shoots, video shoots. If you sell physical goods, visuals are essential. Appearance is important to people — it's the first thing they will focus on. Only then will they touch, smell, and use it.
- Design. Create banners, infographics, and other creative content to catch the customer's eye — this way you can keep them interested.
- Copywriting. Writing texts for posts, articles, and advertisements.
Don't skimp on this stage. Poor-quality content is money down the drain.
2. Promotion budget. This is the largest part of your expenses. It includes:
- Targeted advertising. Advertising aimed at a specific audience. The cost depends on the platform you choose (Instagram, Telegram, Facebook).
- Advertising with bloggers (influencer marketing). Purchasing advertising integrations from opinion leaders. It is important to carefully check bloggers for fake followers — otherwise, you will simply lose money.
3. Budget for specialists. You can manage your accounts yourself, but if you don't have the time, you will need a specialist:
- SMM manager. Responsible for strategy and content plan.
- Targetologist. Sets up advertising and runs campaigns.
Step 4: Calculate an approximate budget
Ask an economist to calculate the budget: costs and potential income. This will help you understand whether SMM will pay off or not. For example, you want to get 5,000 visits to your website from Instagram in 3 months.- Average cost per click. Let's take $0.5 per click.
- Total budget for clicks. We put 5,000 clicks in this category. That comes to $2,500.
- Budget for content and specialists. Allocate another 30-50% of the amount for promotion. In our case, that's $1,000.
- Total budget. We add these two items of expenditure together and get $3,500 for 3 months. If we end up getting less from the advertising campaign, we work on fixing the mistakes.
