How to Set Your 2019 Social Ad Budget

With 2019 right around the corner, businesses are starting to think about their marketing budgets and where to put their advertising dollars. With the digital marketing space constantly changing, businesses’ can’t just repeat the same budgets that they had in 2018. And while spending more money may seem attractive, spending more money does not necessarily guarantee success.

How do you define your marketing budget? With social media, we know that there are a ton of moving parts that must work together to help consumers move down the funnel and eventually to a sale. With that being said, businesses aren’t exactly sure how much to spend on social media and even how much to spend on which network. This blog will revolve around the strategy in creating a budget for social media and how each social media channel can benefit your business.

First, you will need to define your goals for the coming year and where you hope to go. That way, you can find out approximately what it will take to get there. Then you will need to define your target audience, and then from there, you will be able to see which social media networks your advertising dollars will see the most success.

Related: How will Marketing Budgets Evolve in 2017?

Define Your Goals

It’s important that you define the goals of your business first! Some of the questions that you should look at are:

• Why are you on social media?
• Are you looking to grow your brand/generate brand awareness?
• Are you looking to drive more conversions?
• Are you trying to drive traffic to your store?
• Are you trying to retain customers?
• Are you launching any new products/solutions in the coming year?

Once you answer these questions for your business, you should set KPIs (Key performance indicators) for these goals. To do this, look at the performance of your business on social media for this year, and make goals based off of that. For example, if you saw website traffic increase by 25% YoY, you can set a goal for 2019 for your website traffic to increase by 30%.

While it’s exciting to make lofty goals, it’s important to be realistic as well! When you’re making these goals, don’t make them something that you know you can’t achieve.

Related: Building a Marketing Budget

Define Your Target Audience

Next, you should look at your target audience. It’s important to note that not everyone is your potential customer. You don’t want to waste money on people that will not be interested in your product/brand at all. It’s more beneficial to focus on the people that are most likely to convert and be customers of your brand. After you define your target audience, this will lead to what social networks you should focus on!

What Social Networks Should I Focus On?

Since each social network has a different demographic, it’s important to know who your audience is before you choose where to spend ad dollars. This will help you focus on which social networks you should advertise on.

Here are the benefits of each platform:

• Facebook: This is the largest social platform in the world, with more than 2 billion active users. Here you can reach virtually anyone and everyone. This platform is great for generating awareness, educating users about your brand and driving leads. The targeting criteria for Facebook advertising is extremely robust and advanced.
• Instagram: Instagram has over 500 million active users and boasts extremely high engagement rates. While this platform is typically for a younger audience (18-29), it is extremely graphic-heavy and visually-driven. This means that you need to use images that are high-quality and will catch a user’s eye as they scroll through their feed. Some of the industries that are suitable for Instagram include fashion, cosmetics, food and art.
• Twitter: Twitter has 328 million active users and is a fast-paced, ever-changing platform. It allows brands to share relevant messages, announcements and updates about their company. You should also use compelling imagery here and get your message across with a clear CTA in the short text.
• Pinterest: Pinterest has about 175 million users and is extremely visual-based like Instagram. However, unlike Instagram, Pinterest is used mostly by women, with an 81% female user base. It’s seen as a strong platform for e-commerce sales because users are intentionally searching on here to find products. Promoted pins also blend into the Pinterest feed seamlessly, making it less distracting.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn has about 227 million active users and is primarily for B2B businesses. The demographic is evenly split between male and female users, and 61% of them are between ages 30-64. Here is where you will find the users with the most disposable income and the most quality leads. Some of the industries that find the most success with LinkedIn ads are recruiters, secondary education and high-end B2B products and services.

Choose which of these social platforms will benefit your business the most, and from there you can set a budget for your ads. It doesn’t make sense to advertise on every single social platform if your audience is not there. For example, if you are a B2C brand selling clothing, it won’t make sense to advertise on LinkedIn, but it does make sense to advertise on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Related: Q4 Budget Planning and Allocation

Be Creative!

When users typically use social media, it’s not in their mindset that they are going to purchase something. That is why when you are making your creative, make sure you are not too sales-oriented as this can turn off the customer. Instead be educational about your brand and show the benefits of your product. Tell your customer how your product can solve a problem that the user is having.

It’s also crucial to be creative with your images and videos. While users are scrolling through their feeds on any social platform, you want to get noticed and stand out amongst everyone else. Make sure that your creative is attention-grabbing and eye-catching!

Wrapping Up

While making your 2019 social media advertising budget, it’s critical to map out your business goals, your target audience and which social networks your audience will be on. Of course, everyone wants more sales, but to do that you must first look at what will drive the best return on investment.

Building this strategy will ensure that you are getting the most out of your budget and that you are not losing money. Creating a social media budget for the year can be a daunting task, but laying out all of these key points will help you determine the success of your business.