For marketers, aligning goals with a budget is paramount to the process—if you want to improve your business, you need to allocate resources toward those goals.
The question is: How do you strategize and plan around a budget? We’ll dive into our methods for working with a marketing budget and why it’s crucial for every company, regardless of size or industry.
Trust me, you need a budget
Marketing is a big part of your business. Let me rephrase that: marketing is a big part of any business. You want to create a powerful content and marketing strategy that sells, and every strategy needs a sound financial framework.
A marketing budget addresses many areas, but first, consider staffing:
- Hiring an agency – Once you find the right agency, they can begin working immediately on crafting a marketing strategy that delivers. If you want to take advantage of the expertise that comes with hiring an agency, they usually charge an hourly rate or a flat fee depending on what they’re doing for you. All fees are at face value, so there is no need to consider benefits or other overhead that usually comes with hiring a FTE. Not sure what agencies can tackle? We have some ideas and examples that continue to spark joy in our clients.
- Hiring a head of marketing – In-house marketers can be hired and utilized quickly if you can find someone who has experience with similar verticals and industries. If not, it could take longer to find the right person for the job. The cost of hiring an in-house marketer depends on their experience level and how much they make per hour or day. PayScale pegs the average salary for a marketing manager at around $68,000, not including taxes or other benefits your company may offer. Salary ranges are also dependent on market value and location.
Assess whether there are areas that would benefit from having someone on-site versus an agency that can provide quick, brand-fluent content that converts. For example, social media is essential for converting leads, but just isn’t getting any traction within the company. An agency can get things going rather than hiring someone internally who may not feel confident tackling such a big task right off the bat.
Know who you are
Know your business type; it will dictate some of the best ways for you to market your company. The more money you have to spend, the more creative and strategic a plan can be. So if you’re at a mid-size company with $10 million in revenue and looking to grow by 10%, you’ll need a very different approach than if you’re an enterprise business with $100 million in annual sales.
Create a messaging plan that moves people
Find your why. Why is your service or product valuable? What problems are you solving?
Once you have clearly defined what exactly your brand does, who it serves, and why they care, think about leveraging the social media channels that resonate with your target audience. For example, our target audience tends to hang out on these platforms:
- Social media platforms (LinkedIn/Twitter)
- Podcasts
- Blogs/newsletters
(Oh, and by the way, social media is our jam.)
Craft a strategy and see it through
This will be your guiding light for each budget planning session. Think about what your goals are for the next fiscal year and what kind of budget is required to see those goals through:
- What do you want to achieve? Are there certain goals that have been on your mind for some time? These should be top of mind when building a marketing strategy and budget.
- How much money do you have to spend? You may have only $500 per month or $5,000 per year to work with—it all depends on the size of your business and its revenue stream. Either way, don’t get caught up in wishing for more than what’s available right now. Instead, focus on setting expectations and creating an achievable plan that will deliver measurable results regardless of budget constraints.
- What are your goals? It’s important to establish specific objectives so everyone knows where they’re headed and how their efforts will be evaluated over time. This could mean anything from increasing brand awareness by 50%, driving traffic through paid search ads, or converting window shoppers into leads—whatever drives value for your business.
If you don’t have a clear idea of where you’re headed, start creating a budget—you can’t build a house without knowing where its doors and windows need to be.
New budget, new marketing plan! Hit the refresh button on your content strategy and connect with us.