- Should you spend money on social media?
I get asked that question all the time
and of course, the short answer is terrible
and that's, "It depends",
but in this video, I'm gonna break down
exactly when it's worth it and when it's not worth it
for you to spend money on social media, all right?
Let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter,
yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard,
and in this video, I'm answering the question,
should you spend money on social media?
The very idea of spending money on social media
makes some people very uncomfortable,
especially if your business isn't profitable yet,
while other business owners just consider it
the cost of doing business.
I am not gonna stand here in this video and tell you,
"Well you gotta spend money to make money."
But I am gonna break down a couple of scenarios
where I hope I will help you decide whether it's worth
spending money on social media or not for your business.
The first mistake that we tend to make is to assume
that if we spend money, we run ads, we boost posts,
then we're just gonna start making money.
But you have to ask yourself,
if you already got an audience,
are you already making money from them?
Are you already making predictable, trackable revenue
from the people that you do have?
Because if you're regularly reaching
500 people on social media,
but they're not buying from you or hiring you,
reaching 5000 people is very unlikely to change that,
so that could be a bad investment.
Now, inside of my signature course,
The Five Minute Social Method, I show you how to set
proper social media goals so that your social media
does actually drive revenue in your business,
but I've also linked up to a free video
about social media goals in the description of this video.
Now, if you're already profiting from your audience
without running any ads
or spending any money on social media,
basically your followers are buying from you or hiring you
or referring you, whatever that means to be successful
in your business, it's probably a good idea to spend money
to get your posts in front of more people,
even if you had to spend $75 to make $100.
Some people, that doesn't feel right,
but again, if you're spending $75 and,
here, let's put it this way.
If I came to your door and I said,
"Hey, I've got this $100 bill.
"Give me $75 and I'll give you this $100 bill."
And this of course, assuming that you trust me,
you're gonna do that, right?
And then you're gonna say, "Can we do that again tomorrow?"
"Sure, I'll bring another $100 bill,
"you give me 75 and you get $100", right?
So this is what happens when you advertise,
and in some cases, you might be able to make $100
for every $10 you spend, or 20.
But even if it is 75 for 100,
you're still making money from that, right?
So in that sense, you've got a product
or a service people like,
your followers are already buying from you or hiring you,
it makes sense to get that content
in front of more people in order to make more money.
Now, the other occasion where you might spend money
on social media is because you have little to no following
at all and you've got a little budget to play with
and you want to use it to grow faster.
This can be essential for Facebook business pages,
because the organic or free reach
on a Facebook business page is so terrible.
The last full year study I saw said the average reach
of a Facebook business page is 1%.
So if you had 500 followers,
which would be a good following, right?
You have 500 followers, you put up a post,
five people will see it on average.
Hardly seems worth posting at that point, right?
You worked hard to get these 500 followers
and only five people are seeing your post?
And maybe it's double that, maybe it's 10.
Still barely worth the time that you spent posting.
Now, what most people do to compensate for this
is they post more often.
They post every day, they post two times a day.
I was in a Facebook group the other day and this woman says,
"Oh yeah yeah, I post five times a day on Facebook
"so I can reach people as much as possible."
I hate hearing that strategy because even though
it seems to make sense on the surface, it really doesn't.
First of all, you are coming up with,
if this woman is posting five times a day,
or let's just say twice a day on Facebook,
you're having to come up with 14 posts a week.
At the end of the week, you got 14 posts that you did,
it took a ton of your time,
because there are 14 of them,
some of them obviously were not as good as others.
So what if instead, you only put up one post a week,
yeah, one post a week, and then you spent $7
to keep it coming up in people's feeds all week?
You can boost on Facebook and Instagram
for as little as a dollar a day.
So instead of spending how many it took you
to come up with 14 or 21 posts,
you come up with one really good post, you spend $7.
Not only does it reach people all week,
but you also reach new people
who are not already following you.
Miss "I post five times a day" is just reaching
the same people over and over again
with her watered down, mediocre content,
or Mr "I post five times a day", whatever it was.
Because all you're doing is you're just shoving
the same content in front of that same audience
over and over again, and if you're doing 14 to,
what would she be doing, 35 posts a week,
odds are a good number of them are mediocre.
Now, one more thing I wanna address,
because you may have heard this,
you should never boost your Facebook posts
or boosting is always a waste of money.
First of all, if you look closer, a lot of the people
that are saying that, especially the loudest people,
are trying to get you to hire them
to manage your Facebook ads for you,
because Facebook Ads Manager is complex,
boosting is a lot more simple,
or they may be trying to get you to buy
a Facebook ads course, which will cost you
a thousand, $2000, then you gotta learn it yourself
and manage them in that way.
Now, don't get me wrong,
Facebook Ads Manager is an awesome tool,
but a lot of the people that are yelling
that you should never boost
sort of have an ulterior motive in there,
so you can look for that.
But more importantly, there is no scenario in the world
where boosting is always a waste of money
or it's never a good idea.
Saying you should only use Facebook Ads Manager
or don't bother advertising at all on Facebook
is like saying, "Oh, you should go to this amazing buffet.
"They have 100 items, but if you're not gonna try
"every one of them, just skip dinner altogether", right?
That doesn't make any sense.
This is a post we did for a restaurant client
that was rolling out breakfast service.
We put it up, we put $5 behind it.
It immediately took off, reaching thousands of people
so we added more budget.
Ultimately, we spent 30 bucks on it,
it reached almost 13000 local people
and over 2000 people engaged with it, for 30 bucks!
Where else can you do that other than on social media?
I also love Joanna's story.
She's a member inside of my FMSM Pro Group Coaching Program
and she's a child sleep consultant,
so she needed more parents to hire her.
She figured out the proper social media goal for her,
spent 30 bucks and booked $1400 in new business in two days.
So yeah, boosting can absolutely work
and I love Joanna's story because she was struggling along,
figured out the right thing to work and all of a sudden,
it's like, "Ah, social media can be easy
"and profitable again."
So will you spend money on social media?
I would love to know.
Let me know down in the comments.
And if you'd like to know more
about proper social media goal setting
and making sure that the money you do spend
is something that leads to revenue,
so you make it back, right?
So you spend 50 bucks, you make 100,
or you spend 20 bucks, you make 100,
you can find out more
about my Five Minute Social Method course experience
down in the description of this video as well.
Thank you so much for watching,
you're not only supporting me
but also my two tiny superheroes at home.