Businesses of any size always try to get the most out of their budgets, but this is particularly important for small businesses with limited funds. Careful planning and prioritizing, along with following a few tips, can help you get the most from your digital marketing budget. This approach lets you keep more funds free for other aspects of your business.
Research the Market
Before you even start thinking about your marketing budget, take some time to research the market. Try to figure out approximately what your competitors are spending to give you a baseline estimate. You can also research how much you will need to budget for various strategies, such as PPC, to see the results you want.
This should help you create an early estimate for your budget and how to allocate it. As you go through the other methods on this list, you can adjust that estimate.
Take the Time to Create a Marketing Strategy
If you want to make the most of your marketing budget, you should have a strategy to apply. Without a plan, your marketing spending will likely be random and wasteful.
By contrast, if you have specific goals in mind with your marketing campaign, you will know how to focus your budget on reaching the set goals. This lets you allocate your marketing budget based on how you prioritize your goals and campaigns.
Prioritize Marketing Goals
One reason why a marketing strategy is so important for making the most of your marketing budget is that it helps you prioritize. This prioritization is crucial as it ensures that you allocate enough of the budget for your most important goals.
Be Aware of Hidden or Potentially Changing Costs
As you create your marketing budget, set some aside for hidden or unexpected costs. This is a natural part of digital marketing. You can never be sure exactly how much you will spend on Facebook ads or how much time your team will have to put into certain marketing tasks.
By allocating a bit of the budget for these unforeseen expenses, you will prevent yourself from going over budget or having to take away some of the funds from an important goal.
Balance Out Time and Money
When it comes to marketing, small businesses have to decide what they want to do themselves in-house and what they want to outsource to a marketing agency. Taking the time to do it in-house will save money but cost you time. By contrast, you will save time by hiring a marketing agency.
When balancing the two options, don’t forget to account for the fact that a marketing agency will likely deliver better results than you can get yourself and do so more efficiently.
Target the Right Audience
Targeting your audience right will increase the effectiveness of your money in a marketing budget. If you try to reach a wide audience with your marketing strategy, you will find yourself spending a great deal of money. Even worse, you will have a low ROI because not everyone you reach will be likely to convert into a customer.
Instead, take the time to figure out your target audience and then direct your advertising efforts. Think of it as focusing your digital marketing expenses on the people who are most likely to buy from you.
Recycle Creatives When Possible
Creating creatives is a costly part of your marketing campaign, so find ways to reuse them. For example, you can make small changes to a blog and post it on another website as a guest post. Or you could tweak a post on one social media page to use on another.
Always Evaluate and Reevaluate
Throughout all of your digital marketing efforts, make sure to pay attention to data, such as Google Analytics. Your biggest goal when examining the data is to confirm that your marketing efforts are working. Specifically, you want to find out which marketing campaigns or tactics have the best results and which have the worst results.
You can then use that information to reallocate your marketing budget. Reduce the budget for campaigns performing poorly or consider completely eliminating them. At the same time, if you see a marketing campaign delivering amazing results, reallocate more of the budget to go to that campaign. This will help ensure that you are using your budget in ways that are most likely to deliver results.