Norel Mancuso, CEO of Social House Inc., Explains Why Every Business Needs to Budget for Digital Strategy

Norel Mancuso has led Social House, Inc. as CEO since launching the digital growth agency in 2010. Social House, Inc, is now an award-winning digital growth agency which has broadcast content to at least 182 countries while representing some of the best known beauty, fashion, and luxury brands, including Pepsi, Revlon, Henkel, SONOS, Playboy, and L’Oreal.

With Norel at the helm as CEO, Social House, Inc. has become a leading authority in the digital and experiential marketing space. Social House, Inc. has expanded its menu of services with the introduction of SH Society, a paid media solution developed for small businesses.

We asked Norel about Social House, Inc., and what is required for a business, whether large and global or small and local, to achieve digital marketing success.

Grit Daily: Social House, Inc. is a digital growth agency. What services do you offer clients?

Norel Mancuso: Social House, Inc. transforms brands via strategy, content, and influencer campaigns designed for paid media amplification. More than a paid placement agency, we design and curate elevated content and then implement that content via paid media to drive exponential growth for businesses.

We go beyond traditional social media and paid advertising, by tapping into cultural conversations with strategies designed to be both creative and measurable. Our methodology is rooted in our TriVision Approach which bridges Strategy, Content, and Paid Media to produce agile, original, and even unconventional narratives that resonate and inspire.

GD: Every business, including the restaurants in my town, seems to have a digital strategy. What should they budget for when they launch their digital campaign?

Norel Mancuso: Businesses big and small need to have a digital strategy to make their social and paid media efforts work harder for them. So, good on the local businesses in your town for having that in order first. The most important step of a digital strategy is to determine your digital goals and objectives as a business. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Your goals can be anything from driving traffic to your website, newsletter sign-ups, content engagement, brand awareness, and more.

Once your goals are set, it makes it a lot easier to plan financial allocation to your digital amplification efforts. From our experience, digital paid media placements have the potential to be the most lucrative, as it allows businesses to geo-target quality customers. Most of our small business clients allocate anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 a month in paid media spend to reach their goals, but again this all depends on your growth goals and objectives as a business.

GD: You contend that it is important for a company, regardless of size, to focus on paid social media. Why?

Norel Mancuso: There are roughly 200M businesses on Instagram alone, all vying for a share of the feed. That’s a lot of noise on a platform from your competition. Not to mention, family, friends, and colleagues who are also taking up room in a potential customer’s social media feed. That being said, roughly 4% of your audience on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) will ever see your organic content. Meaning if you post on your feed, only 4% or less of your audience will be served that post in your feed. Now, imagine if there was a way to turn that 4% into a large net to not only reach your audience but to reach new audiences who don’t know about your business yet. That’s what social media paid advertising can do for your business and that is why it is vital in the current landscape.

GD: Smaller businesses, typically with small advertising budgets, see digital as a very inexpensive way to market. What are they missing out on if they exclude paid social media?

Norel Mancuso: Essentially what they’re missing out on is potentially reaching ‘new’ customers. Paid media has the potential to bring your business a steady influx of interest from qualified leads.

GD: Big brands obviously have far more resources for social media than smaller competitors. How can smaller brands and emerging businesses with small budgets compete?

Norel Mancuso: While bigger brands focus on reaching a wide range of demographics, being a smaller business allows you the opportunity to reach specific markets more effectively. Big brand competitors might be making digital investments based on national or regional sales trends. Your business, however, has the advantage of knowing what your local customers want most.

Paid social media ads can start as low as $1. Spending for this type of advertising is virtually unlimited, but you can set a limit that will stop the campaign from spending more money than you’ve allowed.

GD: You have created SH Society to help small businesses in the digital space. What is SH Society and how does it benefit smaller companies?

Norel Mancuso: In 2021, we launched SH Society, a subdivision of Social House, Inc., which is a month-to-month, paid media solution for small businesses. When the pandemic hit, we had so many small businesses come to us for help but we had traditionally only serviced enterprise level clients. SH Society is our solution to this demand. We work with small businesses to place their paid media ads, while giving them 24/7 access to real-time reporting. To date, we have driven over 15 million clicks to small business websites and garnered over 392 million impressions.