If social media isn’t free then who has to pay the bill?
by asi
Here we are with another senior client who was fairly easily persuaded that it’s time for the brand to have a proper social / digital strategy. A long term plan that goes way beyond periodical/tactical campaigns (usually digital extension of ATL ideas) and understands that there is a massive opportunity to strengthen existing relationships and create new ones. Yup it’s time for your brand to embrace digital culture, get closer to people, do some awesome things and have some fun! #fuckyeah
And now the all too familiar response/question: “Well, there won’t be any additional budget so we need to reshuffle our existing pot”. Gladly, we’ve passed that ridiculous myth and established that social media isn’t free.
So if social media isn’t free, then who should pay the bill?
Here is my quick answer:
As long as you treat digital/social merely as a marketing channel, you think in terms of tactical campaigns (even if they are social-media-powered) then budget should come purely from the marketing pot.
But if you want to invest in a long term community and relationship building, if you wish to get closer to people, to listen, to get feedback and loads of insights, then there are two other obvious aspects of the business / budget that have to chip in.
1. Media:
Yeah, yeah, social media is about the people, not the media right? It’s true but only as a a social-media-experts-cliche’. People and relationships are to some extent your new media budget. If brand X grows a healthy loving community/audiences of 500K on a social platform, say facebook, these audiences will make or break your new activation. Make them happy and they will help you do your job to reach out as many people as possible. They will share your content, RT your stories and help you spread your stuff around. In the world of streams and networks people are the media so long term investment in people should lead to more efficient future media spend. Put simply, If I were the marketing director I would simply ‘shave’ 5% of my annual media budget and invest it in getting closer to people.
2. Research/insight:
I think it was lovely Katy who said that one of the problems of organisations today revolves around the fact that traditionally insight and research are doing the listening whereas marketing is doing the talking and they usually ignore each other. A fairly simple qual/quant research project with 2-4 groups, few depth etc costs you around £20K. That’s what it cost you to have a proper monitoring /listening platform in place plus monthly or quarterly reports that will provide you with ongoing insights into the place your brand occupies in people’s life and invaluable real-time-real-setting-real-responses to everything that is relevant to your category.
‘naff said. These two should be your first two pots to look for extra £££. If you want the full shabeng version with loads of other related stuff go over to Jeremiah Owyang’s
I’ve heard this “social media is not a channel” argument quite a lot lately. I think I get fundamentally what you’re aiming for–social media is not box to check in the marketing mix (perhaps we should get the word “media” removed).
But really, especially in the framework of spending, how could it possibly be a business expense? Is an email newsletter a business expense? Or any piece of loyalty spending? Is social media really any different?
It seems like all we are trying to do with the “social media is not a channel” talk is to make it seem more important than it really is.
Thanks Matt. good point.
i think that social media can be what you make of it. I never believed the new-marketing fundamentalists that say “it’s all about X” or “it’s NOT X it’s Y”
If you treat it like a broadcast channel, then so be it. My opinion was always that it can be much more than that.