Do you want to take your business to the next level? If yes, then you need a marketing budget. No marketing plan can be executed without a marketing budget.
Developing and tracking a marketing budget can be a difficult task, especially if you have no marketing experience. As the marketing budget holds many purposes, you need to get it right. Otherwise, you will not have the resources allocated to market your brand effectively.
To help you develop and track a marketing budget, we share some of the top tips that will serve as a guide. Before we begin, you should know that the amount you need to spend on marketing depends on your industry.
Why Marketing Budget Matters?
Now, you must be wondering why a marketing budget even matters.
As the team is working on various projects at a time, it requires clarity to utilize the budget for the right projects that will help the business achieve its goals. The following reasons explain why a marketing budget holds great significance.
- Use or Lose: Every organization has a certain cash flow, which the team needs to justify. Otherwise, the organization would spend it on something else.
- Prove Projects Accomplish Growth: When you know how much money is being spent on marketing, you are in a better position to calculate ROI (Return on Investment).
- Supplement the Allocated Budget: The finance department is responsible for determining the investment needed for the year ahead. When you have a document that outlines your requirements, you get to help supplement the allocated budget.
How to Develop a Marketing Budget?
1. Identify Marketing Goals
When it comes to developing an effective marketing budget, the first thing that you need to do is establish marketing goals for the short-run and long-run. You can break down the bigger picture into small marketing goals which will be reflected in the marketing budget.
The secret to identifying marketing goals is by getting specific about the goals. Keep in mind that marketing will not boost sales within a day. The goals must be tweaked once the marketing campaigns are deployed.
Examples of Short-Term Goals
- Increase website traffic for your business by 10%.
- Gain 30 high-quality comments on your social media platforms each week.
- Generate new followers on social media to improve brand awareness every month.
Examples of Long-Term Goals
- Rank at the top on Google for the main keywords.
- Develop a sales funnel to generate new customers over five years.
- Create marketing automation flow through email marketing to help save the team some time.
2. Understand the Target Audience
Next, you need to gain a better understanding of your target audience. This is where you need to create buyer personas. If you do not know what a buyer persona is, it is a visualized representation of the target audience’s needs and personality.
Although you can have many buyer personas, it is best that you do not have over five as it would complicate things. Be specific when creating the buyer personas. The following tips will help you create the perfect buyer personas.
- Study Facebook Insights for tracking how users interact with the brand.
- Gain a better understanding of your audience demographics by using Google Analytics.
- Interview people that seem like the target audience.
- Survey current clients.
The following information should be included in each of the buyer personas.
- Age
- Location
- Job Title
- Income
- Marital Status
- Education
3. Select the Marketing Channels
There are many types of marketing channels. You may choose the marketing channel that most suits your brand’s personality, budget, and marketing goals. You may also choose a combination of marketing channels.
The most popular ones are mentioned below.
- Digital Marketing: The channels included in digital marketing are search engine optimization, online advertising, email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.
- Inbound Marketing: Some of the channels in inbound marketing, such as SEO and content marketing, tend to converge with digital marketing.
- Outbound Marketing: Since outbound marketing can be tough to track, it makes sense to combine inbound marketing with outbound marketing. Some examples of outbound marketing include promo products, trade shows, direct mail, and TV advertisements.
- Brand Awareness Campaigns: Once again, brand awareness campaigns also converge with different marketing channels, such as advertising, video marketing, public relations, content marketing, and advertising.
Choose the right channels and determine the cost that needs to be allocated to the budget.
How Can You Track the Marketing Budget?
Successful businesses know how important it is to keep track of their marketing budget. Today, there are plenty of marketing budget tracking tools that you can use. However, many businesses continue to use Microsoft Excel as it helps serve the main purpose.
1. Campaign Tracking
For campaign tracking, all you need to do is create a line item for each campaign. It should note the name of the campaign and the amount of money invested.
The investment will consist of salaries paid to employees based on the total time spent on each campaign. You also need to note down if there are any adjustments in the campaign.
2. Lead Tracking
Finally, you also need to create a line item for each lead, mentioning the status, notes, revenue generated, campaign, lead source, and date.
Go slow when you adjust the marketing budget and tweak the strategy accordingly. Always remember that even something as simple as changing the picture of a Facebook ad will make a big difference.
Develop Your Marketing Budget and Track It Now
Once you have gone over our post, you will have an idea about how to develop and track a marketing budget for your business.
Only when you understand your target audience will you choose the right marketing channels and keep track of your performance to make necessary changes along the way.
Make sure to utilize the power of Microsoft Excel to keep track of your marketing investment. Tracking the marketing budget is just as important as developing it.
Shaheryar Sadiq provides ghostwriting and copywriting services. His educational background in the technical field and business studies helps him in tackling topics ranging from career and business productivity to web development and digital marketing.
