4. Be flexible with your timeline

[shaownhasan]

Unless we, as marketers, are taking some of those small risks while continuing to do what works, we will stagnate as a business.

In those types of situations, you need to strike a balance between leaning on your sure-fire strategy and justifying bold moves.

For example, you may allocate your budget accordingly. 60% of the marketing budget and resources are going to be spent on the best practices that we know are going to support growth. Maybe 10 or 20% can be allocated to risks today, but next year we need to move that to 40% because we know we need to prepare for our next level of growth.

This is also another opportunity to demonstrate the power of social data and band data social listening. For example, with the right platform, we can review audience sentiment and perception compared to our competitors—all in real time. Bringing powerful insights like this to the CFO can help identify risks.

Remember as you continue to build your track record, you will become more confident in admitting the unknown because you will have the data and insights to back up your claims.

It’s not uncommon for CFOs, especially in B2B, to push back on awareness-related spend, especially if budgets are tight or the market is uncertain, given it’s a long-term investment that doesn’t have direct, immediate revenue attribution.

Social media investments can fall in this camp, so sometimes we need to identify and communicate an alternative timeline. Consider if this is the right time to make an investment in these longer term brand equity, brand awareness solutions or can we push that off because we have short-term goals that we need to meet first?