Marketing on Social Media is not expensive: Here’s why
I was recently watching some past episodes of Dragons Den on YouTube and I noted that many of the businesses pitching focused on social media as their main route to market. Each pitch was assured by several dragons that competing (via relevant keywords) against the endless rivalry would be far costlier that their proposed marketing spending budgets.
As Google is competitive on ranking for keywords (organically or paid for), social media likewise is an expensive route to get your business its fair share of quality target click throughs and leads – The more local you are, for example ‘sell your property Cardiff‘ rather than ‘sell your property‘ then the better chances you have to compete both financially and in results. Surprisingly so, when you study the many options to advertise on Facebook for example, much of what they recommend is what is totally free such as keeping an updated business page, connecting your Instagram account, live video broadcasting and more.
You need to decide what your main goal is from using social media for business. Ideally, it should be to take advantage of all the avenues that it offers you such as brand awareness, web traffic, engagement (views / likes / comments / votes etc), direct messages, increase members / likes / subscribers. When opting to pay for social media advertising you are usually asked to define what you goals are so get to know what these actually are prior to running with a campaign of any kind and be prepared with the content required (articles / images / infographics / videos).
Example of dragon highlighting the costs involved in social media marketing
Sometimes on Dragons Den a company / person will use their already acquired social media following within their pitch to increase the value of their concept ie the amount of money they are after for the percentage they are willing to give away. These pitches with an already existing presence on social media indeed have an advantage over those which haven’t. The mention of an already established route to market / loyal fans will intrigue Dragons so hearing the likes of ‘we’ve already 50,000 Facebook page likes‘ or ‘100,000 follow us on Twitter‘ will only be a positive towards you getting investment.
- Followers
- Likes
- Subscribers
- Views
- Members
- Shares
All the above and more are the activities we are looking to generate on social media in business. As we build these up then so will the interest in our business increase where we hope to drive increased:
- Click-throughs
- Form filling
- Orders
- Calls
- Emails
- Bookings
So, how much should your social media marketing spend be in estate agency? Time is the vital ingredient and a touch of being clever. Rather than looking at setting bid amounts, monthly limits or what advert to run and when, instead try and build the audience for yourself. Groups, pages and accounts is where this happens and not always should you think about your business page, by this I mean you can also expand your chances of success by taking on a theme. Let me explain:
Red Brick Estate Agency can have a page on Facebook and secure one also on Twitter. Good idea and with updated accounts you are findable and open the door to engagement with the outside world. Now if this Red Brick Estate Agency are based in Cardiff, then how about attracting an audience that is made up mostly of those living in this city and holding on to that audience so you can repeat advertise to them whenever you require rather than spending out on marketing campaigns that only last you a set period of time or until your float reaches zero?
Red Brick Estate Agency could create a group on Facebook or an account on Instagram and theme in around an interest that would engage a larger majority of the ‘locals’ such as ‘Cardiff City Local History Group‘ or ‘Landlords & Property Investors – Cardiff‘. What’s the point of that you might ask?
- You start to build your own target audience
- You have access to a target audience 24/7
- You can share your content and get engagement from your ‘members’
- You can sponsor the page with Red Brick Estate Agency at the header
- Once your group grows you will be recognised as a name in town that has local interests at heart (ie historical values of Cardiff / Cardiff Landlords & Property Investors).
- If your group grows to a sizeable one then you no longer need to pay to advertise to them (you have them already)
- If your group membership engages well as a community you can arrange events and meetings which could take place at Red Brick Estate Agency
Time as mentioned will be needed and it could be that you pay for this time to contract out this work externally such as by using an SEO / marketing agency. If you decide to incorporate this work internally then you can divide the management of your social media groups / pages / accounts. Content will be key from images to posing questions with added administrational duties as your numbers grow.
“Some groups on Facebook that I manage I have now set moderators for who look after the day to day running such as accepting new members (checking profiles to eliminate spam accounts) and allowing new posts / comments. Once a group gets past 10,000 members it can be a daily responsibility that you need to factor in, especially to be acknowledged within daily work rotas.”
So you invest time and you invest less money and certainly, in my honest opinion, no where near the amounts you need to as a small / medium sized business – Many of the larger estate agency chains will usually have a person that is head of social media to include both management and future planning and marketing budgets are greater affording some towards social media ads though these circulate around the brands exclusively over what we have looked at above.
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