CMO Guide To Social Media Salaries & Budgets

Most CMOs see their brand as their most valuable asset and social media is a crucial piece of the puzzle. That’s why they seem to be inspired to transform their brand into a social business.

Most CMOs are even dedicated to build mutual beneficial relationships between their targets and their brand.

So hiring the most experienced social marketing experts, might need an extra budget benchmark? Financial planning for your business is extremely important, especially with marketing.

Social Media Jobs & Salary Guide for CMOs

Below social media jobs and salary guide might help CMOs to create more realistic social media marketing budgets for 2012 and beyond…

Being an agency CSO, I have noticed that almost every brand goes through several social phases. And being part of many panels through this blog, most CMOs find budget benchmarks pretty helpful. And most brands climb the stairs in 5 to 6 stages.

The Stages in Social Media Marketing

Stage 1 at most brands is chasing some channels. Being out seems most important in that stage. Mostly the social media marketing budget in stage one, comes from other budget line items. Some brands start social from their PR budget. Some take the budget from their media or creative budget. Some from their online budget or Google budget.

Stage 2 is the consumer facing stage. Here a budget line item for social is created in their brands’ SAP system. And mostly stage 2 includes social media advertising budget, creating social pages, some blogger outreach and social video seeding. Stage 2 is mostly a combination of creation, PR and Media.

In 2012 average in stage 2, CMOs will spend around $200,000 on social advertising per year. The traditional agency mostly gets around $160,000 for concept and creation. Social hot shops mostly get around $140,000 a year for concept and development. Around $60,000 goes to influencer/blog programs.

Stage 3 CMOs will embrace technology investments like in 2012 a budget breakdown could be: creating owned media channels or community platforms for around $150,000 a year. Yearly social media monitoring including actionable insights and strategic choices would be around $130,000 a year.

Custom technology development most CMOs budget around $ 120,000 a year. Social CRM would get a budget of around $50,000 in 2012 and social media management systems around $35,000 a year.

Stage 4 is mostly the internal soft costs. Here CMOs will spend their budget on hiring in-house social media experts for around $300,000 a year. Research and development budget could be around $ 60,000 a year and social training and education around $40,000 a year.

Stage 5 content becomes king. CMOs turn part of their media budget from publishers towards building their owned powerful media channel and content strategy, creation and curation and community marketing, management and moderation become more important to grow the community and fan base in an organic way (like most CMOs started with Paid Search but later invested more in long term Natural Search).

Stage 5 most CMOs I’ve worked with (leading consumer brands) tend to turn 5-10% of their total media budget into creating a powerful owned platform (community) with compelling content, seeding, organic social (SMO) and community marketing. When content is above average, the 5-10% mostly brings 20-50% in earned media value and increased SoV.

Stage 6 is for the CMOs who are gearing up towards becoming a social business. Their social media marketing team will be a team that could be compared to a small magazine or TV show: editorial teams of 5-15 people, like i.e. KLM, Starbucks and Coca Cola, which are all having a huge social media team in-house as well.

In stage 6 the budgets for the social architecture, systems, processes and people can exceed millions of Dollars per year.

What About You?
How are you shaping your social media marketing budget? And what stage(s) gave you the highest challenge in your company? Our audience would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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About the Author
Igor Beuker was CMO at 3 listed companies, chairman at the IAB, jury member at Webby, AMMA and Esprix awards, founder of 3 digital agencies (sold to WPP) and global chief social officer at Mindshare. Now he is freejack consultant and still a sought after keynote speaker.

Source: eMarketer.