How to Keep Scope Creep At Bay for Better Marketing Results

Are you getting the most out of your social media marketing strategy? Or are you a victim of the sinister yet common menace called scope creep? Hosted by Terrah and Audrey from TJ Creative Agency, this episode uncovers the tricky world of scope creep in social media marketing and its consequences on finances and relationships. We lift the lid on how this seemingly innocuous issue can eat into your profits, strain professional ties, and wreak havoc on deadlines.

But that's not all! In the second half, we explore how establishing clear boundaries with clients can keep scope creep at bay. From being explicit about deliverables to maintaining a professional relationship, we provide practical advice on taking back control and sailing smoothly. We also touch upon interesting insights, like the average earnings of social media managers and why it's vital for marketers and those planning to hire them. So get ready to arm yourself with our insider tips and avoid the pitfalls of scope creep.

Chapters

• 0:00 Scope Creep in Social Media Marketing
• 8:45 Avoiding Scope Creep in Client Relationships
• 18:27 Staying in Control

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever wondered what goes into your favorite brand's digital marketing strategy? I'm Tara, the founder of TJ Creative Agency, and I'm Audrey, the creative marketing director of TJ Creative Agency. Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person, will teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online. Hi guys, welcome back to social sessions. It is just me, audrey, here with you, but that's okay, it's still going to be a good episode.

Speaker 1: 0:32

I am pretty excited about this topic. We are going to be talking about scope creep, which, if you are not familiar with that term, scope creep refers to changes or growth in a project scope at any point after the project has already begun. So this is also not specific to social media marketing. This can apply to just about any marketer. If you're freelance, if you work at an agency, any type of marketing can really deal with scope creep. So normally we do an update of the week and that's usually like a tip for social media or an update on social media, and this is a little bit different. But I thought it was interesting and I feel like it's maybe something that all of us need to just be aware of and that is how much social media managers are making on average. Why do I feel like we all need to know this? A because if you are a social media manager, this kind of lets you know the ballpark in which you should be able to ask for in a salary. And if you're not in social media marketing and you're an entrepreneur or you are someone looking to hire a social media manager, maybe in house, maybe this is a good indicator of how much you should be expecting to pay, like how much this expense should really be. And, at the end of the day, I think this transparency just helps Everyone out. So later released an article about how much social social media managers are making on average and they said according to built in, the average salary for a social media manager is around $72,000 a year. However, according to Glassdoor, it's closer to 52,000. Personally, I tend to lean towards the built in information than I do Glassdoor. I just like maybe that's just a personal thing, I don't really have any things I can cite as to why I don't trust Glassdoor as much, but I just don't. But regardless, you can see there's quite a discrepancy about $20,000 worth of a difference, but I think that's at least kind of a ballpark, especially if you're working for a larger company than obviously you can probably try and raise the bar a little bit more. You can ask for a little bit more If you're a smaller company. Maybe you don't ask for as much money, but hopefully you get benefits from working from a smaller company that you might not be able to get working for a corporation.

Speaker 1: 3:02

They also included, like other marketing positions, to essentially compare them to. So email marketing salaries are around an average of $78,000. Seo managers are around $80,000, content marketing managers are $85,000, and product marketing managers are averaging around $117,000 a year. So, first of all, it's clear that social media managers are on the lower end of things, which is quite frustrating because we do a lot of that stuff. I mean social media managers. I don't know about you guys, but I do some email marketing, I do SEO, I do content marketing. Like there's a lot of things that social media managers do that these other positions do as well.

Speaker 1: 3:52

Now, I'm not saying that to like go on a rant, but I think it is just due to this still being a newer position, right, this wasn't a position that existed like 10 years ago, or if it was, it was still really, really new. Like, I don't know about you guys, but when I tell people, when people ask me what I do for a living, I typically just say I work in social media, and to me that feels pretty self-explanatory. I feel like if someone were to tell me granted, again, I work in this space. But if someone were to tell me that they work in social media, I would assume they do one of three things. I would assume they either manage and strategize for companies on social media, run company social medias, they are an influencer themselves, or they work in influencer marketing. Those are kind of my three assumptions. But I still get a lot of questions when I say that of people being like what does that mean? What do you mean by that? So that's what I mean by it's still new. I still get questions all the time and I bet you guys do too of what does that mean? What does social media look like as a job? So that's probably why we're on the lower things. Hopefully it ends up going up within the next few years. But I just felt like that was something that we should talk about, that we should share for the sake of transparency.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Now, before we jump into the actual topic. You guys know what I'm going to say. I would love it if you rate and reviewed the podcast. I would absolutely love that. Also, for those of you that sent us screenshots or shared on social media that we were in your top listens last year on Spotify, for Spotify Wrapped it truly means so much to us. Tara and I were so excited I hope you guys know this, but they do Spotify Wrapped for podcasters on our end and it'll tell us essentially how much we've grown. Over the last year. We were so excited like we grew so much in 2023 and we hope to just expand even further, and so, in order to do that, we need your guys's help, right, we need you to share these episodes, we need you to review the podcast, we need you to answer the Q&As on Spotify, whatever. It's super helpful when you guys do that. But again, thank you guys for all of you guys that have done that. Thank you that for those that continue to listen, that share the episodes, like it really does help. We grew a lot this last year and I am very thankful for that, and I just wanted to say that.

Speaker 1: 6:30

So now, jumping into scope, creep, let's. Let's define it first and how it really impacts your projects. So scope creep is essentially when a project's requirements start to grow after that's the keyword after the initial agreement is made. So some examples within social media might be a client messaging you outside of your office hours and saying can you post this really quick? Y'all, I know we've all felt that one. Okay, I know people do that. That's an example of it, right.

Speaker 1: 6:59

A client asking for extra content outside of their package right, for a lot of social media managers we have X amount of deliverables that we have to meet, whether that's on a monthly basis, a weekly basis, whatever it is. And when clients email you or text you and say, hey, I have a campaign that's going up next week, it's going up whatever, in three days, can you post these, these three posts? And now you're doing three extra posts outside of the deliverables that you agreed on. Or maybe it's a client asking you to handle other platforms, or even a feature on another platform that was not originally agreed upon. So that could be your handling the in feed post. Right, you might be handling reels and static posts and grid posts and things like that, and your client asks you to start making stories for them or start handling stories when that was maybe not something that was in that original agreement.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So why does it happen? What is the common cause of scope creep? The biggest reason is to why this happens is because we don't have set boundaries. So when clients come on, when they initially come on as a new client, you need to make it very clear what your boundaries are, and if you want more information on boundaries, we actually have an entire episode on boundaries which I will link, so I'm not going to go into that in super specific detail because we've talked about that. But it also happens because our contracts are not clear, right? So you have to be like I said, a lot of us work with deliverables. That's something that's in a lot of our content in our contracts.

Speaker 1: 8:45

But if you are not crystal clear with what you are delivering to them how many platforms you will be using, how many posts a week they're getting, how many stories a week are they getting, if you leave any room for misunderstanding or even a little bit of wiggle room, that's where the clients start to think okay, this wasn't mentioned, but I'm sure that they are going to cover this as well, right? So you can't leave any room for misunderstanding in your contracts. So that means really answering the nitty gritty from the get go. Are you handling video content or are you just handling photography? Are you editing their videos or are you just doing graphics? Are you managing their DMs? Are you managing the audience engagement? Are you handling stories or are you just doing in feed posts? Are you coming in to gather the content or do they have to hire a photographer and you're handling the editing and day to day management? All of that stuff needs to be discussed before you even start working on their content. All of that stuff needs to be clear in the contract. Okay, because when it's not, that's when the client starts to think they can just start asking for anything. Right, because in their head, you are the social media manager, you're the social media expert, so they should be able to ask you to do anything in regards to social media when that's not the case.

Speaker 1: 10:16

So some of you might be asking why is it such a big deal if you start to do things outside of your contract? Because a lot of us especially if we are entrepreneurs or working for a smaller company or whatever you're an agency you want to keep the client happy, right, this is really the cycle that a lot of us get stuck in. You want to keep the client happy because A they're paying the bills and you don't want to lose them. But it is a big deal because it directly impacts your revenue and overall profits. The more that you take on for a client that is not included in their original agreement, the longer the project is going to take, or the more time that you are going to be spending on their content, and that is time that you are not getting paid for. So it essentially lowers your hourly rate, right? Because when you come up with your packages and you come up with your pricing, most likely you have determined okay, how much time would a package like this cost, right? Let's say, for example, maybe you have a package that has you get five posts a week, two of which are videos. You get five stories a week and you determine that that's going to take you about 10 to 15 hours a week. Okay, let's just assume that for one client. So you create your pricing based on that 10 to 15 hour a week mark, right, what you think you should be paid for? 10 to 15 hours a week.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Now, when you start taking on things outside of those deliverables. You're going to be working for that client more, right? Maybe they start asking hey, can you manage our TikTok Now? Can you? Can you start even something as simple as? Can you start reposting the reels that you are making onto our TikTok? Let's say that adds another two hours a week. Those are two hours that you are not getting paid for, essentially right. So it's directly impacting your profit. And suddenly you start spending time on a client and if you're not getting paid for it, that time could be spent somewhere else. That time could be spent trying to grow your business. It could be spent on another client, it could be spent trying to attract new clients. So it essentially just it directly impacts your profits, right.

Speaker 1: 12:55

It can also lead to a relationship with a client that is a little too relaxed and a little too personal. So this typically ends up when you have a really relaxed relationship with the client. Now, I'm not saying you can't have a good relationship with a client, those are separate things. But when you have a very relaxed relationship with a client, it typically ends up with deadlines being missed, right, because they're like, oh, we're friends, like it's okay, they're going to understand. I got really busy today so I wasn't able to send over my marketing calendar or I wasn't able to send over my edits, and that typically ends up putting us under pressure, right? So let's say you tell your client hey, I need these edits by end of day, friday, because things are starting to go live on Monday. Okay, let's say they don't get to them. They don't get to them, they don't get to them.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Monday comes up and you, suddenly you are like you text them or you email them or however you communicate with them and you say, hey, I need to know if you have those edits. Things start going live today. And then they send over a list of edits and now you're for forced to work under pressure, because now you have to get this done In a few hours and maybe it's a long list of edits. Okay, now you're a little bit stressed out. It kind of throws off your entire plan for Monday and it just leads to a stressful Work environment.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Okay, and then you also don't want the relationship to be too personal either. Right, because when it gets too personal it typically ends up being a poor working relationship. It makes it hard for either of you to be able to Offer or receive constructive criticism, right, because now Emotions are involved, right, and that's not. That's not a great way to there's not a great way to work with your clients. So all of that can really happen with scope creep when they start to Ask you to do more things. It kind of ends up being friendly, it kind of ends up being relaxed and it just sets the tone for the relationship for the rest of the time that you work with this client. So how are we going to avoid it? We know why it is an issue, but how are we going to avoid it?

Speaker 1: 15:13

Number one we are Going to be super clear with what each package entails, so kind of like what we were talking about earlier. What are the deliverables, what exactly are you going to deliver to them and what are the timelines that you're working on and when should they expect content calendars and when do you need marketing calendars from them? By? Everything is very clear in the contract and in those package details. Right, like I said earlier, do not leave any wiggle room for miscommunication. Number two is going to be effective communication. Communication is so Important with your clients especially, let's say, they do start to ask you to do things right. Maybe they do start to, you know, say, hey, can you manage this, can you handle this? That's where the communication comes into play. Maybe it's hey, this actually takes me a decent amount of time, and so that's something that we charge extra for. If you want to add this Platform or you want to add more deliverables onto your package, I would be happy to, but you can say that politely.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Number three document everything. Oh, my god, you guys document everything. You need to have a Contract written up. You need to have your deliverables and what's included in the package written up. You just have them sign them, document it all. Because if, if your client says, hey, you told me that you would do x, y and z and you say I don't really think I said that and there's no document, how are you supposed to solve that issue? How are you supposed to solve that issue? It probably will end up looking like you doing x, y and z for your client because you don't remember what you said and what you didn't say and you don't want to make them upset. Versus, if it's documented, they say you said you would do x, y and z and you said, actually, this is what's included in your package. Then they can say, oh, okay, yes.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Number four set boundaries. Like I said earlier, we have an entire episode All about boundaries, how to set boundaries with your clients, why it's so important. But same kind of thing when they start to ask you for more, you can politely. You can politely explain the project boundaries. You can politely explain what the project or what the package is that they are paying for, how you are already delivering on them, and then you can politely say that is a service that we offer, but it's for an additional fee. Most of the time they're going to take it fine, okay, because they understand that you are running a business.

Speaker 1: 17:55

Most of the time they will say okay. They will either say, okay, I would be happy to pay you for this additional thing that I'm asking for, or they'll say it's okay, thank you so much for letting me know. Regardless, they know now. Okay, so those are, that's how you're going to avoid it, right? Those are all things, and a lot of those things are a little bit easier said than done, and they do require you to take charge and be in control of the relationship with your clients. Versus your clients being in control.

Speaker 1: 18:27

That's really the biggest thing here is that if you let your clients control the relationship, you're probably going to end up doing some things that you don't want to be doing and it's just going to get a little messy. So these are ways that you are going to stay in control and really stay on top of your profits and your revenue. So I hope this was helpful for you guys. Let's all agree right now, in 2024. We're not going to let scope creep happen to us. We're going to try our very best to not let that happen, and that's it. That's it. I will talk to you guys next week. I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll chat later.