Planning for a Prosperous New Year: Create an Effective Marketing Budget

Don’t look now, but you have already started the first quarter of a new year. A new year means new customers, new sales goals, and new opportunities to grow your business. It’s an exciting way to start the year, but it won’t last long if your marketing budget isn’t right from the start.

Many companies plan their marketing budget based on the previous year and how much they’re willing to spend on marketing. This is a great way to hold yourself back from achieving your sales goals, or to spend too much on wasted efforts.

Want the most bang for your buck? Plan and implement a marketing budget that gets results.

1) Start With A Marketing Strategy

Before you calculate your marketing budget, align your marketing goals with your company's strategic goals and vision for growth. If you plan to grow by 20%, but only want to invest enough in marketing to get new business cards for everyone in your company, you're probably going to be disappointed with the results of your investment!

It's important to develop a written marketing strategy that your executive team, sales team, and marketing team are on board with. You need everyone to be driving their activities in the same direction.

2) Set Your Marketing Budget

Once you've aligned your company goals with your marketing goals, you'll need to identify your marketing budget so you can develop a detailed marketing plan that supports your strategy.

Lean: 1 - 2% of your top-line revenue. Basically, you’re committing to engaging and retaining current customers with simple tools and strategies. This is ideal for companies that are looking to maintain their market position and don't have ambitious growth goals.

Target: 3 - 4% of your top-line revenue. The goal is to attract new prospects and retain current customers with advanced tools and strategies. This plan is best for companies that are looking to increase their market share and have moderate growth goals

Stretch: 5% or more of your top-line revenue. Your target is to accelerate your results by applying more resources that are focused on driving leads, conversion, and sales. To do this, you’ll need more complex marketing strategies and cutting-edge tools. Go with this plan if you have ambitious plans to grow and increase your market share.

3) Allocate Your Marketing Budget Dollars

Armed with your goals and a budget, you can now get into the nitty-gritty of developing a tactical plan to transform your marketing dreams into reality! The complexity of your plan will depend on the marketing budget you’ve identified, but you should also consider including tactical plans related to:

•         Web design and maintenance
•         SEO and paid advertising
•          Social media
•         Blogs, newsletters and email marketing
•          Networking and outreach
•         Traditional advertising
•          Misc.

Determine how much of your marketing budget should be allocated to each aspect of your plan.

4) Implement A Marketing Budget Plan

Once you've developed a plan that supports your company's goals, you need to implement it. And to guarantee a successful implementation, you need a team of qualified marketers, designers, and technical experts. You’ve got a few options for creating such a team:

•           Hire an FTE.  A full-time marketing professional who can delegate and outsource.  This will cost a salary, plus benefits and potential contracting fees for services they cannot provide.
•           Contract with a marketing company.  When choosing the marketing contractors, ask questions.  How many clients do they serve at a time, what are their costs, how many people will be devoted to your goals.  The larger the agency, the more clients’ goals they have to focus on.  Ask if they will go on a monthly retainer fee.  This saves you on having to pay benefits
•          Mix it up.  A hybrid team gives you the best of both worlds.  It consists of a small in-house marketing team that's dedicated to one or two key tasks, supplemented by an outside marketing team that can round out your marketing efforts. Be sure that everyone is clear on their roles and responsibilities, agrees on metrics, and is committed to a shared vision for success. This can be a very effective approach to implementing a solid marketing plan!

If you need help developing and implementing a marketing strategy, contact SK Consulting today!  From concept to creation to implementation, we’re there with you every step of the way.