So your business has finally decided to invest in a marketing team and long-term marketing strategies. But when it comes to creating a marketing budget, where do you even begin?
Having a clear and concise budget is a crucial part of any marketing strategy but times have changed with the rise of social media, influencer marketing and more. Marketing budget’s no longer just pertain to buying advertising space in magazines amongst your industry or paying for a stall at expos.
Here are 10 considerations you should keep in mind when putting together your marketing budget.
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Online or Offline?
Ideally, every business should have a website and online presence at the very least – in this day and age it’s one of the most effective ways to drive sales and bring in new customers. But many companies prefer more traditional marketing methods like print advertisements or attending expos – and that’s okay! Deciding whether you’re going to invest your marketing budget in online or offline marketing – or perhaps 50/50 each! – is one of the first things you should establish.
Identify Your Goals
As we all know, marketing is a long game and in many cases, you won’t see huge increases overnight.
For example, it can take a minimum of six months to see any benefits of search engine optimisation!
Therefore it’s crucial to have set goals in mind – and ones that are realistic at that too. Do you want to reach x amount of followers on your social media networks by next year? Or perhaps you want to secure a 25% increase in sales via an online sales funnel?
Avoid becoming overwhelmed with marketing – and where to even begin – by having clear goals established before you begin.
Then you can start to strategies across different channels to reach these goals.
Strategy
Strategy is a big focus when it comes to planning your budget.
If you’re just planning to get an online presence with a website and some social media channels, that’s one thing.
But if you really want to excel online and draw in a bigger audience, you’ll soon be looking at SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing…the list goes on – and the prices vary.
Establish your strategy early on or pick perhaps one or two, to begin with, if you’re new to the world of marketing then go from there.
You may seem increased success by focusing on SEO and then may consider investing in PPC and email marketing down the line too.
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Industry Trends and Events
Industry trends and events will most likely make a hefty difference in your budget.
No matter what your industry is, there will likely be events worth investing in from expos and pop-ups to webinars and networking nights.
Or, for example, an event that happens sporadically.
If your company is related to sports goods, you might find a good chunk of your budget goes towards a campaign revolving around the Olympics which, of course, only occur every four years.
Seasonal spend
Seasonal spending is another thing to keep in mind.
Every business has some months quieter than others, whereas, for many, the Christmas holidays are the busiest time of the year.
If you find sales tend to drop in the spring, this may be the time to allocate more budget towards a marketing campaign to boost sales.
Seasonal marketing is also important: if you create handmade gifts, for example, blog posts, social media posts and discounts can be created for multiple holidays and awareness days throughout the year, from Mother’s Day to #InternationalSelfCareDay.
Flexibility
Things change – as we all know due to the pandemic!
This means new challenges arise and even entire strategies may need to be scrapped due to world events.
We’ve all seen tweets that have suddenly become tone-deaf in light of news stories or sudden topics trending via TikTok. It’s important to keep some budget aside for any sudden changes and even reactive trends. If you sell home office goods, you’re probably seeing a lot of success following Covid-19’s pandemic.
If you run in-person consultation sessions? Not so much. However, events like this are also an opportunity to think outside of the box.
Is your service something you can bring online and be the first to offer in 2022 when people are still wary of venturing outside too much?
One-time Expenses
One-time expenses pop up more regularly than you think. If you’ve only just decided to invest time and money into a marketing department, you may want to run an entirely new rebrand alongside that.
Perhaps you don’t even have a website yet! Or, for example, you may want to extend your business offline and open a shop after seeing continued success in online sales.
One-time expenses can be quite costly, but the benefit is that they only happen once!
Understanding Your Market
You may have years of experience selling your product or service to loyal customers gained through word of mouth but if you’re considering digital marketing, that’s a whole other ball game!
If your target audience is predominately the elder generation, for example, they’re unlikely to be interested in influencer marketing or seeing product reviews on TikTok.
Likewise, if your product is aimed at a younger generation, you’re more likely to find them liking product videos on Instagram or collecting freebie samples at festivals than networking on LinkedIn.
It’s important to invest time and money into understanding your audience and their online behaviours – particularly if you’re considering paid advertising.
Workforce
Chances are, you’ll need multiple members of staff to help with any marketing strategies and campaigns – in most cases, you’ll probably need a team!
Once you’ve established your goals, you can then look into hiring the right staff force – whether it’ll be graphic designers, marketing assistants or outreach executives.
If you’re unsure of what roles you’ll need to hire, it’s probably worth investing in an experienced marketing executive who can assist you and grow their own team at the same time.
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Research
Finally, do your research! Take a look at what competitors are doing and establish what the general figures are for your business type and industry.
For example, a recent blog suggests that new businesses should invest between 12-20% of their gross revenue on marketing, whereas more established companies spend between 6-12%. These factors can be a great starting point.
It’s also important to keep in mind that marketing is an ever-growing and changing business with new trends becoming established regularly as well as different social networks and platforms.
This is why you should analyse and revisit the above suggestions every year when it comes to creating a budget.
