How to Plan a Digital Marketing Budget
Today, we have the internet and internet-ready devices in customers’ hands, everything is connected to the internet and ready to pull up information. With modern marketing, businesses dedicate a portion of a marketing budget to digital efforts. When it comes to marketing you should follow your audience and go where they go. According to reports, 95% of businesses have increased their marketing budgets in recent years. You may be asking how much is enough? In this blog we will discuss how you should be thinking when it comes to allocating your budgets and making it effective.
Set the goal
Setting and solidifying your goals for your marketing budget is a critical initial step. There is no point in going into this with no idea on what you want to achieve from your marketing plan. You want to be deciding on where you want to see your results. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, increasing revenue or sales, or create brand loyalty? Each of these are very different goals and have different approaches, therefore the correct planning needs to be done.
Analyse the past
Another important step you need to take when planning your budget is to analyse what has worked and what has not. As well as looking at your own results you can also do some research on your competitors. Have a look closely at what your previous results have given you, where have you experienced success and why? This is an important piece of information that will help you with your next steps. You are now able to use this information to find out which social media platforms you will be mainly boosting your posts on. If your analysis of your past digital marketing efforts shows that building up your brand awareness works very well on social media accounts like Instagram, then you may want to give this particular platform more of your budget.
Plan your content creation
One area in your planning that is always going to need some concentration is the content you create. The type of content you create will depend entirely on your business and what you are trying to achieve. Businesses that are more content based might benefit more from video use, whilst some businesses may benefit from the information and still imagery. If you are planning on producing video content this may add to your budget, so you will need to keep this in mind.
Choose your platforms
Another important consideration when planning your marketing budget is which platforms you are going to predominantly use. Again, this is highly dependent on your business and the market you are catering to. If you are more of a b2b enterprise, and you are appealing to decision-makers at management level then you are probably going to be creating content that is meant to be consumed in the office, or on a desktop/computer. It’s going to be content that appears as articles or on dedicated websites. If your business is more retail or public-oriented, then your customers are likely to be using portable platforms like phones and tablets. This may also mean your content may use video and imagery posted to social media, which will again affect your budgetary goals.
Monitor your results
One of the best aspects of digital marketing is that you don’t necessarily need an end of year review, with the information you collect from your social media analytics, you are able to tell how effective your posts are, and if your money is well spent or wasted on a regular basis rather than yearly. With this information, you are able to move forward with your marketing and progress on to the next steps.
