Marketing is a vital piece of business success. Your marketing materials allow you to reach your target audience and essentially scale your business. Without a marketing budget, your efforts are not likely to reach their full potential.
Why is a marketing budget so important?
Marketing is an investment as opposed to an expense. If you want to spend wisely, you will have to create a marketing budget that earns.
There are four main benefits of having a marketing budget for your business that will help you grow and reach your desired level of success. They include:
- Giving you a clear direction in managing your marketing efforts
- Allowing for an effective allocation of financial resources
- Providing coordination across all aspects of your business
- Documenting results based on money spent and money earned
Knowing why the marketing budget is critical for business success is the first step to acknowledging that you need one. The second is effectively implementing that budget.
How to create a perfect marketing budget
According to Forbes, creating the perfect marketing budget starts with assessing your business goals and the materials you will use to achieve them. There are several ways in which you can do this.
The first is knowing your sales funnel. When you take the time to evaluate your sales funnel, you will be able to determine if there are any issues with how it is working and areas that may need to be tweaked or changed. It also helps you figure out the areas of the funnel that require top priority status.
For example, if you use email and social media marketing, and email marketing generates the fewest leads, you can prioritize social media. At the same time, you can plan new ways to optimize your email strategy. Determining how many deals it will take to reach your yearly goal will give you a concrete estimate of what marketing tactics are needed to get you there.
The marketing materials you explore will be entirely dependent on your business and goals. However, they should be focused heavily on branding development. Splitting your marketing budget between the following avenues can help to create a well-rounded approach to your marketing efforts:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Sales collateral
- Campaigns
- Advertising
- Events
By utilizing all the materials and ways to market your specific business, you can reach a wider audience by staying true to your target demographic.
Including your marketing budget in your overall expenses is also a crucial step towards success. Many businesses use the money they have leftover for marketing, and that is a mistake. As mentioned above, marketing is an investment in the success of your business. To implement marketing as an operational cost, you will have to compile your overall expenses. Then you can allot 7-8% towards marketing.
Finally, don’t be afraid to scope out the competition to see what works and what doesn’t as a jumping-off point.
If you want to create the perfect marketing budget for success but don’t know where to start, book a strategy session with us today! We can help you devise the best plan to make your marketing budget work for you.