Working With Smaller Budgets Can Be More Difficult

At the time of writing this post, September 2023, the job market is a little crazy. In just one year’s time the US went from a hiring frenzy to mass layoffs. There’s a decent chance that you, or someone you know, was impacted in one way or another.

Whether you’re currently looking for a job in paid media, or hiring for an open role, there’s probably one line that you’ve seen across multiple job descriptions.

Must have experience working with monthly budgets of at least $XXXk

When brands or agencies are looking for candidates who have experience managing monthly budgets of at least $100k, $250k, or even $500k; it can reduce the size of the applicant pool. People looking for a job might feel discouraged because they’re coming from a smaller agency. At the same time, a brand looking to bring on a new paid media manager might miss out on a great hire because they don’t meet this one qualification.

A potentially hot take, but I would argue that someone who’s driven success with a $10k monthly budget has a stronger background than someone who’s delivered results with a brand spending six or seven figures each month.

While this rest of this post won’t be about job hunting, I will dive into my perspective on what it’s like to work with organizations of every size. I’ve got experience working with companies who have spent anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month, to a few million.

My goal is to highlight the lessons that can be learned from working with some smaller marketing programs so that you can apply those insights to your next interview, or to your day-to-day work next week.

There are a few specific areas that I want to focus on relating to the experience you can gain working with smaller advertising budgets. These include:

• Running and evaluating tests

• Performance results and urgency

• Leaning on previous success

Running And Evaluating Tests

Testing is a core component of any paid media program. From my own experience, running tests with a larger budget is much easier than with a smaller one.

Determining the outcome of a test is all about collecting data and ensuring that you have enough data to make a confident decision. Allocating a relatively large budget to a test means that you can collect more data, and collect it faster.

In an ideal world, every advertiser would run each test until it reaches statistical significance. From there it’s easy to confidently determine the stronger performing variable. However, many brands spending under $10k/month might never generate enough data to reach statistical significance in a timely manner.

Following that same concept, it might take a brand spending $100k/month four weeks to conclusively run a test, whereas it might take a brand spending $10k/month eight weeks. This requires advertisers working with smaller budgets to be more thoughtful about their testing approach.

Large brands can get away with limited planning, and expedite learning by spending money on testing. Smaller brands might have to conduct more thorough research to align on testing only the variables that they believe will be the most impactful. If you know that you can only run a few real tests a quarter, you’ve got to make sure that they’re valuable.

This requires marketers working with smaller budgets to hone their research, evaluation, and prioritization skills. In these scenarios, it’s all about preparation before activation.

The Urgency Behind Generating Results

Another difference between working with larger brands vs smaller brands is the urgency with which marketing efforts need to produce revenue.

Larger brands often have more cash on hand to cover bills and salaries, so going a few weeks with sub-par results isn’t the end of the world as long as the marketing team is learning. On the other hand, many smaller brands don’t have that same type of financial cushion or runway. These smaller brands need marketing efforts to drive revenue as soon as possible.

I’ve seen this dynamic allow for gaps in measurement at larger brands. There’s enough money coming in to keep the business moving, so they might not have pinpointed what’s actually driving results. This leads to teams reporting on metrics like “conversions” instead of actual business impact. It can create a gap between marketing and leadership because they’re not speaking the same language.

When working with smaller brands, measurement and attribution are critical. If the marketing budget is only a few thousand dollars each month, and that budget has to generate revenue, then it’s imperative that the team understands which efforts are driving results.

I’ve found that advertisers working with smaller budgets are almost forced to develop a stronger understanding of the impact that marketing has on a business. This helps to align departments and improve communications across the company.

Leaning On, And Learning From Previous Success

There are many reasons why companies with big advertising budgets got to where they are today, but one of those reasons is that they found something that works. Somewhere along the way at least one of that brand’s marketing efforts started profitably driving new customers.

An advantage of working with bigger companies is that you can lean on what’s worked before. You can turn to these strategies and tactics for inspiration, knowing that anything new derived from the original winning play has a decent chance at being successful. At the same time, when the company needs to catch up on goals toward the end of the quarter, it’s easier to scale what you know has worked in the past. Developing a new campaign with minimal time and planning can be difficult.

Conversely, organizations with smaller marketing budgets might not have figured out what works for them yet. It’s on the marketers working with a few thousand dollars a month to develop a profitable strategy. I emphasized strategy there because these marketers aren’t as focused on which bid strategy to choose or which Advantage+ setting to select, they’re analyzing:

• Product positioning

• Customer research

• Media economics

• Messaging across creative, copy, and landing pages

• Post-click funnel testing

• And more

Working with a smaller budget requires you to be a true marketer, not just an ad platform expert.

Wrapping Up

While organizations of all sizes face challenges when trying to successfully run paid media campaigns, teams working with smaller budgets shouldn’t be discounted because of their ad spend. Managing a smaller budget helps marketers to build skills related to:

• Research, prioritization, and planning

• Measurement and business acumen

• Holistic marketing practices

Marketers who operate in more of a specialist role at large companies might not always have the opportunity to develop an expertise in these areas. I believe that as automation continues to streamline the tactical paid media execution, some of these more “generalist” marketing skills will become even more valuable.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).