Letter #76: These expert tips can help you manage your content budget better

There was a time when I used to be short on cash (days before my career picked up — #sedlyf), and my heart would say, ‘if only I had more… I could do …’

I know you think the same as content peeps with a budget to stay within (even if that budget is good enough — because hey, when is it truly enough? 🤣)

But take a page from what my brain used to tell me: don’t scratch the itch to spend just yet — save now, feel rich later 💰

This is exactly what Jacalyn Beales, Demand Generation Manager at Lever told me too when I asked her about managing content budgets.

Jacalyn has held positions as a creative director as well as a content manager. And has some stellar advice for managing all sorts of budgets —$5k or $100k and beyond.

In a nutshell, Jacalyn says:

“It’s less about how much you have to spend and more so [about] what you hope to achieve by spending that money.”

With that, let’s dive into the 3 regular questions I ask experts every alternate Tuesday:

• A mistake Jacalyn made when managing her content budget

• An actionable tip to get you one step closer to better using the 💲💲

• And a secret tip to better use the allotted dolla bills

Here’s Jacalyn for you (did I just sound like an RJ about to play your favorite song? 🤔):

👉 Learn from Jacalyn’s mistake: Not knowing the outcomes you want to achieve.

“[The one mistake that] sticks out the most to me was when I was managing a client’s budget back in my agency days, and I didn’t track any real KPIs with it.

“I focused so much on what I was doing with the budget that I didn’t think about the end results of all of that work (and money spent).”

The lesson?

“Have clear goals for the money you’re spending and be able to explain why you’re spending money the way you are/plan to. Not too dissimilar for how you budget things in your personal life, that same approach should be applied to the money you spend at work.”

👉 Do this today: “Consider what you actually need money for.”

“It’s tempting to ask for a large budget and then spend money on all sorts of neat/creative/new content efforts — but do you need to?”

“Personally, I’d look at the historical/past performance of paid content efforts and where you saw the most success. From there, you can decide what’s worth budget, what you can do ‘for free,’ and better allocate budget for things that will have an impact vs. things you want to try and test.”

This works also because:

“Not everything requires hard spend — and knowing when/where you need budget can build confidence in your money-management skills with leadership too (which means more buy-in for budget down the road).”

👉 The secret tip for correctly using your content budget: “Always have a buffer.”

“With a buffer, you ‘set aside’ 10-15% of your total quarterly budget and reserve it for testing, last-minute content efforts, or any unique opportunities that come up that require spend.”

“For example, if your quarterly budget for content is $37k, set aside roughly 15% of it so you have about $5,500 to play with if you need it.

“The upside is that you have money set aside for testing, and if you don’t spend it, you can always add it to the next quarter’s budget! It’s a great fail-safe and I’ve never had any leadership team complain about have a buffer in the budget 😅”

So today’s takeaways:

• Have clear goals (complete with progress tracking KPIs) for where you want to spend your dollar ching ching

• Create a ratio for spending your budget on projects that’ll have an impact and tactics you want to test

• Set aside a buffer amount from your budget on a quarterly basis

That’s all folks.

Masooma’s done talking about mazuma 🤣🤓

Catch you next week!