Budgeting for marketing can appear to be an arduous task. Online and offline channels are so numerous. An effective Digital Marketing Budget is an essential first step; it prevents funds from being misused or stretched out over too many channels.
It is okay to pause if you haven’t yet received an actual marketing budget. Put things on hold and create one. A blind investment in marketing is far worse than none at all.
Are you unsure where to begin? Take a look at this article on how to allocate digital marketing budget. Industry-specific budgets and how they are allocated should differ by industry. You won’t be able to allocate your Digital Marketing Budget in one particular way, but by following these steps, you can identify what works best for your company.
Top Tips to Build an Effective Digital Marketing Budget Plan
1) Set a Goal
Branding, lead generation, and sales are the three core areas of marketing. Your brand may wish to focus on a variety of goals within each of these buckets.
Each bucket includes the following examples of goals:
Branding
- Followers/engagement on social media
- Display
- Google-branded searches
Lead Generation
- Subscriptions to email newsletters
- Downloads of white papers
- Signing up for accounts
Sales
- Gross revenue for the year
- Purchases as a whole
- Order value on average
- Programs
Your Digital Marketing Budget will be allocated based on how you prioritize and define the goals within these three buckets. When developing goals within each bucket, be sure that they are SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
2) Recognize Past Efforts (and their success!)
Having an understanding of how your brand has tested its marketing in the past, along with what it hasn’t tested – and why – is essential.
Moreover, look at the results from your past efforts – it could be that most of your budgets have been spent on a channel that has not delivered the results you were hoping for. Alternatively, you may want to consider pivoting to a new channel if something that was successful ten years ago isn’t anymore.
It isn’t uncommon for clients to claim that certain channels are vital to their business, but they can’t provide a specific metric that supports this claim. It’s always possible that any channel will work, but be sure that you understand how those efforts contribute to your overall aims.
A foundational digital marketing budget can be formed once you know what marketing you’ve done so far.
What percentage of your leads come from Google paid search? Maybe you should increase your budget there. Do you often spend a lot of time on social media management but receive little engagement? It might be more effective to reallocate that budget to a more effective channel. Also, take a look at our social media marketing service
3. Plan your Actions
You should analyze your current goals as well as your past results-then create an effective plan. Research which websites and apps your target customers use, and consider which methods will best capture their attention.
You might want to find out how your target demographic spends their time online if you want to raise brand awareness. Decide how much of your marketing efforts should go toward sponsored posts on Instagram for a demographic that spends a lot of time on the app (for example, Millennial women).
4. Do Competitor Analysis
Make sure you know what your competitors are doing when it comes to marketing. Not only should you be on channels that your competition is active on, but perhaps there are some channels that are not being used by your competitors, where you could really stand out.
By understanding the competitive marketing landscape, you can avoid missing out on viable marketing channels.
5. Plan How to Allocate your Budget and Which Channels to Use
Prior to making any final budget decisions, it is important that all marketing channels and strategies are weighed equally.
Not every channel is necessary for your brand. You aren’t allocating your budget wisely if you spread a small budget over many channels. Plus, not all channels are appropriate for every brand.
6. Decide on a Budget
Having identified your marketing objectives, you now know where it will yield the most results for you. Where should you spend your Digital Marketing Budget and digital advertising budget? A marketing budget of 9-10% of your overall revenue is generally recommended. The following channels are important:
- Creating content (copywriting, graphic design, video)
- SMM or Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Paid Search
The most important consideration, however, is to tie each channel back to the individual’s objectives. Also take a look at our email marketing service
7. Optimize and Evaluate
You’re not in the clear once you’ve set a budget and started your campaign! Maintain a constant evaluation of the Digital Marketing Budget throughout the year as you may need to reallocate funds according to how things fare.
You can only make solid decisions based on solid data. Keep track of how your marketing strategies are performing. Make sure your paid social media advertising is bringing in more customers and that your Google remarketing is driving them to your website. You must track the results of your marketing activity so that you will know the future paths to take-and the ones to avoid.
Understanding how to allocate your digital marketing budget is probably the most important part. As you track more data, you will have more information available to make strategic marketing decisions.
It’s also important to decide whether you want to manage your marketing in-house or with a Digital marketing agency for PPC management services. It can be tremendously helpful to have an agency manage it all, even if you are a CMO. Hope this article helped you have a clearer picture on how to allocate advertising budget and how to budget for social media marketing. Comment if you have any queries.
