A digitalmarketing budget is something not all small businesses are able to secure. So, if you’ve been allocated one, you’ll be wanting to follow that ingrained childhood piece of advice to ‘spend it wisely’.
The question most businesses ask when it comes to spending their marketing budget is “what will give me the best return on investment”. Knowing how to spend your digital marketing budget is unfortunately not as black and white as that and the answer, albeit it frustrating, is “how long is a piece of string”.
Whilst certain marketing activities work better for some industries than others (note, visual based social media, such as Instagram, would work considerably better for a restaurant or clothing brand than a solicitors or accountancy firm).
The success of each activity comes down to how good your competition is in each area. Understanding this is the key to knowing the effort required for each activity, whether it be SEO, PPC or social media.
Of course, you won’t get a true sense of how much that effort pays off until you get going, but a good marketing strategy is about testing, analysing and then acting.
Tips on how to spend your digital marketing budget
1.Look at your digital marketing options
Research the different digital channels available to market and promote your business and find out what they cost. Prices range greatly for different levels of exposure, so it’s good to see what you can afford. If a display advert costs more than your budget, you know not to include it in your marketing plan.
If you can establish the average lead and conversion rates for each activity, you know what you need to achieve to meet your estimated growth and spend accordingly.
2.Find out what your competitors are doing digitally
A competitor analysis might be time consuming, but it will save time when it comes to analysing your digital performance.
Look at how prominent your competitors are across each online channel. What marketing messaging are they using? If they’re doing PPC, what keywords are they using? Are they listed on any industry related sites? How often are they producing content? Is there anything you could be doing better?
3.Spread out your marketing budget
Now that you have knowledge on the costs and conversion rates for each marketing channel and what your competitors are doing, you can begin to divide your budget across the activities that will best work for your business and prioritise them, spending more on the channels that require the most effort.
Whilst it’s tempting to invest heavily on one particular activity, Google looks for a digital presence across a multitude of channels.
Once you begin to see what’s working, you can reshuffle your strategy and invest more of your budget into the digital activities that bring you the best results.
