The year 2020 is quickly approaching. In fact, we’re officially five weeks out ... FIVE WEEKS! Each winter, the new year creeps up and it's hard to keep up with tasks that come with the new territory. Budgeting for business expenses and investments is a crucial task to make time for. Budgeting helps you get an accurate reading of ROI and it helps your day-to-day marketing tasks run smoothly.
Before crunch time hits, take time to ask yourself: “how much should we spend on digital marketing this upcoming year?” Intentional budgeting and planning for digital marketing efforts can result in better outcomes and streamlined execution for the year. Budgeting, in terms of marketing, can refer to actual monetary funds, but it can also refer to your time and energy.
There are a few digital marketing tactics that should be given a bit more monetary attention. Email marketing, social media marketing, marketing automation, video, content marketing (all facets of inbound marketing) are tactics that should be considered. Use your budget to your advantage to make the biggest impact!
Email marketing is a great tactic when trying to reach a certain audience. Emailing your customer base is versatile and easy to make personalized. Email marketing is shown to be one of the most integrated marketing methods. You can promote your website and products, encourage new and old customers
A recent study found that on average, out of a business’s total marketing budget, 16% is used for email marketing. This is a good starting point to gauge what dollars go where. Email marketing has recently trended down but research also shows that even though some businesses prefer not to use email to promote products and services, those businesses that do still see positive outcomes.
Social media has become the norm for digital marketing. Although there are (obviously) many other useful tactics, in today’s world, social media is where you’ll most likely reach the biggest audience - depending on your customer base, of course. There are always exceptions but you’re probably going to be using social media in some form, regardless.
Even though we know that social media plays a large role in the marketing pie, don’t spend all your money on this one slice. Some businesses make the mistake of thinking they need to allocate drastically more funds for social media, but that’s not always the case. Think strategically when deciding how much to put towards your social media expenditures. If you’re not sure where to start, or how to determine if social media efforts are paying off, we can help!
Marketing automation goes hand-in-hand with social media and email marketing. In order to see ROI with social media and email, it is crucial to utilize marketing automation. Marketing automation is becoming a more well-known term in the business world. Check this out - 92% of all small businesses lose money every month because they ignore marketing automation and the benefits that come with it. That says a lot about marketing automation and the lack of knowledge and use.
When considering how much to budget for marketing automation, consider how much you want your social media, email, and blogging to matter. Also, consider how much easier you want your job to be in terms of time spent posting and sharing content Marketing automation can bring serious efficiencies and epitomizes the “work smarter, not harder” mentality. We’re a bit biased, but this is worthy of some bigger marketing dollars.
Ah, the ever-elusive video marketing tactic … this is definitely something you should consider budgeting for and utilizing in 2020. Social media posts with video have 48% more views. Video marketing is on the rise and has shown to be a very successful marketing tool. If you can up your game and start creating some real quality video materials, you will surely beat out your competitor. A study conducted by HubSpot shows tells us that 85% of consumers want to see more video content from brands.
There are two main ways to consider how you want to start budgeting for video marketing. You can budget for a special video marketing project or you could budget for marketing outcomes. Both have their pros and cons, and both are used in dramatically different situations. A video marketing project is much more specific. Videos for marketing might also have smaller projects within it, but there is more freedom.
You might be worried about budgeting too much or losing revenue on such an unfamiliar endeavor, but if executed and planned correctly, video marketing can be used to your advantage. The best way to get familiar with video marketing is to just start! Dip your toe in the waters as soon as possible; the more you play around with it and fine-tune it, the stronger and more impactful your content will be.
Content marketing can be a tricky thing to budget for because sometimes it’s not as concrete as the other practices. Making your content, for the above tactics, specific and relevant to the audience, makes a world of difference. Changing your content for different contexts and device view-ability matters too. There are many factors that play into content marketing.
Another example of content marketing is blogging. If you have a blog, make sure you spend ample amount of time grooming it to be the best source for your audience. If you don’t have a blog yet, consider creating one to help gain your reader’s trust and as well as build a relationship with them. Business blogging can be an important part of your content if it’s created and used correctly.
If you have existing blog or videos, it can be hard to decide where to go from there. Consider where you want to share this content and what audience you want to see it. This can help narrow down what you intend to do with certain content. And as a result, this can help you decide how much to spend on more creation or just distribution of the content. You can also use reporting tools in place to see what content has performed the best and made the most positive impact, and work to create content around that same topic or in a similar format.
Budgeting for any aspect in life - personal, business, leisure - is very beneficial. It gives you a good look at what resources you already have, what resources you want, and how much money is allocated (or should be allocated) to those areas. Budgeting for your digital marketing tactics may be overlooked and ignored, assuming it will just “figure itself out”.
Here are some things to consider: