It is not about how much money you have, but how you spend your money. Funnelling vast amounts of money into failing marketing strategies won’t improve your company’s revenue streams. Sometimes the most effective marketing solutions aren’t the most expensive ones, but the most creative ones. Managing the costs of each and every activity during a marketing campaign can be quite difficult, especially if you don’t have a detailed plan on how your marketing budget should be spent.
That’s why Helen Cox Marketing is going to take you through a few tips that might help you structure your marketing budget better and use it more wisely.
Monitor the marketing costs
Being reckless about how you’re using the funds allocated for promotional activities of your company is a somewhat natural tendency. You don’t care how much it costs, as long as it improves the sales of your products, right? This is a dangerous line of thinking, however, as it can lead you to some poor financial decisions.
Calculate the exact cost of each and every marketing activity you’re planning over a three or six month period, and then use these numbers to create a budget. Do you know how much you’re spending on blogging or networking each month? If not, you should, because by totalling all marketing expenses you’ll get a better idea of how you can apportion the budget.
Plan for rainy days
Each marketing activity comes with a certain amount of risk since unforeseen circumstances can at times change the course of a marketing campaign drastically. Different types of projects carry different types of risks, which is why the budget you’re planning should be larger by 20% than the total cost of all marketing activities you planned over a certain period of time. Having a safety buffer in your budget can be important for a variety of reasons because it is far from uncommon to spend more than you initially planned for a promotional event or a TV ad.
Exceeding your budget repeatedly is not advisable, of course, but sometimes investing in a marketing activity a little more than you planned may help you achieve the results you want.
Keep track of the return on investment
This is one of the most common concepts of economics that allows you to know how much you’re investing in each segment of marketing and how much you are getting in return. If you’re spending more than you’re earning, then it is time to look for a new approach to marketing and invest in other areas. Make sure that all costs in your budget can be easily tracked, in order to have a clear picture of how much you’ve spent and which results you’ve accomplished. Analyse the ROI numbers and use them to invest the funds more efficiently, since there is no reason to stick to a marketing strategy that costs you a lot of money each month while producing minimum results.
Cut all unnecessary spending
Spending huge amounts of money on marketing doesn’t necessarily mean that your company’s sales are going to go up. Sometimes a simple, creative and inexpensive idea can be much more effective, than investing in a large campaign that is ill-suited for the audience you’re targeting. Besides, by writing your own blog posts or sharing new content on social media you can save money you can later use in other areas of marketing. On the other hand, you shouldn’t try to do too much on your own either, because a single person can’t run an entire marketing campaign. Conduct a thorough analysis of your budget and locate all expenses that don’t seem necessary and try to find a better way to utilise these funds.
More on budgeting and small business marketing.
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