How “Free” is Social Media for a Business?
It’s true, you could log on to Facebook, Twitter or Google (after reading this of course) sign in and create a page solely dedicated to your business. None of the sites will ask for a credit card, they won’t tell you that you are on “a free trial”, they will simply say, “Welcome!” Now, you are sitting there with this newly created page and a dream of sending a post that goes viral. New customers will flock through your door telling you they saw the post and they chose your business because of it. You’ll have all of these new customers because you took a couple of minutes to create a “free” page. I’m not here to tell you that scenario can’t happen, never give up on the dreams and aspirations you have for your business. I am here to tell you that realistically, that page you just created is anything but free.
Time
Currently, total time spent on social media beats time spent eating and drinking, socializing, and grooming.
-Social Media Today
You have either been told that it’s important or you have picked up on the trends of other businesses trying to utilize social media. According to Social Media Today on average people spend about 2 hours a day going through social media. If you just created a free page, what better way to get your brand in front of people that you know are scrolling looking for something to keep them entertained?
Now that you know there is a large potential audience, how are you going to reach them? Well, first you have to come up with a plan. You have to find trending and relatable content, make sure that it looks good and represents your brand well and get it posted. After it’s posted (and assuming it gets the attention you are hoping for) someone has to respond to the engagement!
Now, any successful campaign doesn’t just get attention on occasion, something like this takes time and should be done almost daily. Let’s estimate (on the low side) it takes an hour a day to take care of all of those things. You are busy running your business, when was the last time you felt you had an hour in your day you could dedicate to something that wasn’t necessary for your day-to-day operations? If you feel that you won’t be able to do so on your own, are you willing to risk the productivity of one of your paid employees to do it for you? The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 with some cities and states having their own laws where minimum wage ranges from $11.50 to $15.69 an hour! Are you sure your business is prepared to take 5 hours of work away from an employee a week to pay them that wage, all in the hopes that the one post is going to make it all back?
Money
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, it won’t cost anything for a business page to be set up for your business on any social media platform. However, Rani Molla of recode.net says that in 2018 advertisers are expected to spend $40 BILLION more on online advertising than TV.
$40 Billon, in one year. Let that sink in.
Platforms that are free to create, manage, and use will outspend what has widely been considered the best form of marketing on the planet. Still, think it won’t take actual money to make sure you are separating your business from your competitors?
This isn’t to scare you into thinking that you will have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook this next year. In fact, Facebook is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing there is. Every business has a marketing budget, if you are paying for some of the typical forms of marketing (tv, radio, mailers, etc) maybe it’s time to start doing some research or consulting with the market professionals to see if your business is missing on untapped potential.
In a recent marketing campaign that I ran for a client, these were some of the results (above). For $360 in a little over a month, we were able to drive 310 link clicks to the businesses website, reach over 21,000 people, and have the brand and the content seen almost 61,000 times. What’s especially unique about Facebook marketing is not only are you able to easily identify how the campaign performed but also who the market you were reaching during the time of the campaign as well.
If needed I could have easily made changes to the ad and tried to use Facebook to target a more specific audience. In this case for the product we were trying to sell this was the breakdown we wanted! $360 was the budget for the quarter but the turnout of the campaign made it worth it to run over one month since this was a sale that is relied on heavily every year to increase the bottom line. Not only was the client extremely happy (and busy) we were able to find some additional money to use on our upcoming campaigns!
In the end, can you run a successful social media campaign without spending any money?
The short answer is yes.
BUT, as I have just laid out for you, it takes time and it would be wise to at least consider spending some of your companies budgeted marketing dollars on social media to maximize your results! Don’t be scared of social media, but definitely be realistic with your expectations and make sure you are prepared.
Optimize Social Media provides social media & reputation solutions that evolve with our clients. As social media experts we manage Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp, YouTube and Instagram accounts for our clients on a daily basis. We help the modern business owner implement a specialized social media strategy so that they can make more money in real life. Enjoy our blog.
