
How Our Marketing Team Spends Money Each Month - kawera
https://open.buffer.com/marketing-budget/
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capkutay
Most people are focussing on their advertising spend, but it looks like
they've built their marketing team for inside sales rather than growth.

$3k/month on advertising means they're getting spending about $100/day. That's
too low to properly target a SaaS audience for actual growth. My guess is that
because they have 80k customers (according to their website), they focus most
of their marketing plans around customer success and renewals rather than
acquiring new leads. You can see they have a lot of budget tied to
mailchimp...a sign that they spend a lot of time on lead/customer nurturing
campaigns.

I don't think this blog post is meant to be useful for any company that
doesn't already have mass traction.

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soneca
Their advertising could be focusing on kickstarting their content marketing
material. Spend big money creating good content, spend small (but smart) money
promoting on niche targeted audiences, count on it to be further spread
through word-of-mouth.

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was_boring
I see a lot of comments about people are amazed by $3k/mo advertisement spend
and most goes towards salary.

I would say they have chosen wisely. HN is a forum for technical startups and
people who work in the field. Yet here they are, without spending anything on
advertising on the front page.

The blog post was written by the marketing director, and just by being here
they are marketing buffer. This is lead gen.

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analyst74
Not marketing professional here, but I'm surprised at how almost all of the
budget went to payroll related expenses. I would have imagined higher
percentage spent on advertising spot, online and offline.

~~~
waisbrot
Yeah, it's cool to see a budget. But then it's puzzling because I don't know
what a marketing team _does_ besides advertise.

~~~
soared
Pasting from another comment. Advertising is a section of marketing (You could
get a degree in either one).

The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying
markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing
content, working on the website, researching potential new products,
understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic
for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing -
like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user
guides, etc.

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nishantvyas
So to summarize, they have "10-Person Marketing Team" spending 93k/month
total, with 2 major breakouts, 1\. Teammate Expenses (73,225 + 9,402 + 367) =
~83K 2\. Everything Else (or Actual Marketing) = ~10k

Why do they need 10 person team for $10k budget (actual money spent to bring
customers in)? unless these guys are literally going door to door.

P.S. I'm not marketing professional.

~~~
soared
Advertising is only a small portion of marketing. Probably 1/3rd of 1 persons
job is spending that $3k media spend.

The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying
markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing
content, working on the website, researching potential new products,
understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic
for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing -
like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user
guides, etc.

~~~
sjg007
I would do more sales...

~~~
Daktest
May not be necessary for their kind of product and market. Looking at their
company page, there doesn't seem to any salespeople at the company.

Would suggest that you check out Patrick McKenzie's post about SaaS companies.
Buffer fits the 'Low-touch SaaS' description pretty squarely - which would
mean that they don't necessarily require a dedicates sales unit.

[https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-
saas](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas)

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tvanantwerp
While lots of folks may think the salary-to-advertising ratio here is way too
high, I think it probably makes sense. I have to imagine that most of the
Buffer marketing team is either creating marketing materials or promoting them
in highly targeted ways. (I.e., they must be doing things that don't scale.)
Moving that entire salary expense into ads would probably yield far less value
to Buffer. What's more useful: an article from a well-read tech site talking
about Buffer's cool features that came about from direct outreach, or some
more easy-to-ignore Google ads?

~~~
pascalxus
but doing things that don't scale is a temporary move until you figure things
out. The results of those experiments must yield something.

they must be doing something that will eventually scale.

~~~
jermaustin1
You are thinking about doing things that don't scale as a feature of your
service/product.

The non-scaling feature of Buffer would be something like if a customer queued
something to post to their Instagram feed, then a human actually posted it for
them.

Sure it doesn't scale, but you can probably do that for a while until the tech
stack is built out.

GOOD Advertising is always much more hands on.

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butler14
Staggeringly low media spend, particularly on Google, which is the channel
most likely to help drive sales within a suitable return on advertising spend
threshold.

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forkLding
I'm always amazed at the amount of data Buffer makes transparent

~~~
mprev
It's as much part of their marketing as anything in the budget that they
shared.

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libertine
Is it just me who finds odd they put advertising production and media buying
all mixed into "adversiting", yet break it down by media channel?

It's usually: production + media

I read their advertising breakdown as media purchased, unless production is
diluted in the value (which I doubt because you can use ads across social
media channels for example, despite having different specs).

Or they just don't want to disclose it, which is completely fine :)

~~~
soared
Its possible they do everything in-house and use free stock images. For
facebook you don't necessarily need a designer, someone can easily write
search ads, and they don't do any banner/video/etc advertising.

Not how I would run it, but I don't know much about them.

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wkemmey
I know it's not the main theme of the article, but I'm really interested in
Buffer's laptop policies. How do you handle it if a laptop needs repair? or is
stolen? What if the breakage is the employees fault, but they are not a repeat
offender, so to speak? I'm curious how Buffer handles these things that I've
seen problematic at other companies.

~~~
kevanlee
Good question. I lead the marketing team at Buffer, and we've had a couple
cases where the computers have failed earlier than the renewal date (every 3
yrs). We reimburse a new laptop if it's needed. Otherwise, I really haven't
experienced any "at-fault" scenarios or stolen laptops. My sample size is
pretty small though (4 years, 10 marketing teammates).

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soared
Amazing to me that their media budget is only $3,000. That is absolutely tiny!
I'm curious why they don't do any programmatic (like display), and how they
only spend $500 on search ads (I'd imagine brand-only terms would be over
$500/mo).

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jl87
Yeah...I'm thinking you guys need to start spending on some advertising.

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jclegg
What about rent?

~~~
kevanlee
Good one. Buffer is a fully remote/distributed team with no office.

That being said, expenses like Internet go to the admin budget and not
marketing.

Thanks for the question. (I work at Buffer and wrote the budget article) :)

~~~
leonroy
Not even a coworking type office for management or receiving mail/having an
official company address?

