Promoting your business can require a significant investment. Media and creative fees will add up over a sustained advertising campaign. Good PR doesn’t come cheap either. And a decent direct marketing campaign – well, that’s going to require more than shirt buttons. So social media can seem like a bargain. After all, some people will even tell you social media is free. And to a certain degree they’re right. Facebook won’t charge you to set up a page, for example.
The problem is, anyone that tells you that launching a YouTube channel (or any one of a hundred other digital media options) is free has missed a fundamental economic principle – that of opportunity cost – and the impact it has on your marketing decisions.
You may not need to pay YouTube for the channel but it’s going to take time to set up, time which could be spent selling widgets or keeping clients happy. Unless you can you magically create several hours a week, you'll have to decide which activity will yield the greatest return.
Now this isn’t to say that social media is a waste of resources – far from it. We’ve plenty of clients with positive ROI (yes, actual cash in the bank) from social media. The point is that the next time someone tells you something is free, ask them who will do the work. If it’s them, will they charge you for their time? If it’s you or one of your team, do you need to stop doing one task to start writing a blog post or set up and maintain a Flickr account? If so, what’s the cost (lost revenue, lost goodwill etc.) of the dropped task?
