Marketing Budget: A Marketing Firm’s Guide

Marketing Budget: A Marketing Firm’s Guide

Investing in a good digital marketing agency is the priority of every brand. This is because a marketing campaign is not a one-man show. The marketing firm has a team of professionals that make your marketing campaign a success. Thus, while gearing up for a marketing campaign the marketing budget is one of the most important aspects. 

Here is a guide to a marketing budget by a marketing firm that will help you in your future campaigns. 

Steps to Create a Marketing Budget

Here are the steps to creating a marketing budget.

• Establishing Business Goals

Before approaching a digital marketing company you must establish your business goals for your marketing campaign. This is also because the marketing firm will then be able to understand why you are having a marketing campaign. 

While increasing sales is a given, that shouldn’t be the only goal. Your business goals must include gaining leads, increasing outreach to the target audience, increasing brand awareness, and so on. Moreover, establish a statistic for these how. For example, increasing target audience outreach by 20%. This way, the agency marketing your brand will find it easier to create targeted content as they have a reference. 

• Create the Sales Funnel

Another thing your business needs to do before hiring a marketing firm is to create your sales funnel as it determines where you will be spending your money. A sales funnel is the process that the customers follow to purchase the product or service. 

A sales funnel has four stages, namely, awareness, consideration, decision, and action. You will observe that the consideration stage has many people but a sharp drop is observed for the nest stages. This may be due to your marketing strategies. Thus, creating a sales funnel helps online marketing agency to formulate better marketing strategies. 

• Know your Outside 

While planning your marketing budget, it is necessary to establish your external costs. Here is a list of external costs.

• Operational costs
• Staff Salaries and overtimes 
• Costs for running your business

This will help you allocate your marketing budget while hiring a marketing agency because you will know what it costs to run your business. Moreover, it will also help you create the baseline of your ROI.

• Conducting Market Research

Conducting market research will help you understand your industry and its current trends. Moreover, competitor analysis and SWOT analysis will further help you establish your marketing strategies, pricing, target audience, and much more. 

• Setting Strategy Prices

The last step is to set up prices for everything to carry out your marketing campaign. This includes the digital marketing services to the price for marketing strategies. 

But how much do online marketing services charge to a marketing campaign? According to WebFx,

• SEO: $500 – $20,000+ per month
• PPC: 5-20% of monthly ad spend
• Content Marketing: $2000 – $20,000 per month
• Social Media Marketing: $250 – $10,000 per month
• Email Marketing: $300 – $2500 per month

However, the cost of each of these will vary according to the internet marketing agency. 

How to Manage a Marketing Budget

Here are a few ways to manage your budget for a successful marketing campaign 

• Orienting the Budget According to Marketing Goals

Your marketing goals and the budget must align with each other. Thus, you are allocating money from the budget to only those things that your need. For example, PPC (pay-per-click) will increase your website traffic, while sponsored posts on social media will increase your followers and engagement rate. This way the marketing firm can create content for specific strategies, 

• Look out for Hidden Costs

It is not uncommon for companies to look back and realize that they have spent more than their budget allowed. This is all thanks to expected spendings which we call hidden costs. Such an incident happens because companies fail to include the personnel, research, etc., all of which will cost money. Thus, it is essential to have a decent amount of budget. 

• ROI Measurement

When the company gives the digital marketing agency a green light to go all out, they expect a certain return on expense. However, if you look back and realize that you did not meet the expected ROI, then you will have to reconsider your budget for the next campaign. 

We hope this article will help you formulate your marketing budget for an upcoming campaign. 

Even the top marketing agencies will stress having a properly allocated budget that prioritizes quality over quantity. You do not need a big budget to make your marketing campaign successful. All you need to know is what goal to prioritize and use the right tools. 

Toshiko’s Tip of the Day: There are certain things that you must keep in mind while allocation the marketing budget as they will influence it. These are advertising, content, new personnel freelancers, and software.