When was the last time you thought about your marketing budget?
If you don’t know the answer to that question it’s time to address that issue now. Step back, reevaluate your goals and look at where your business is now. Then, you can start to plan your marketing strategy to set you up for further growth and success. But to have a good marketing strategy, you need a solid budget. What should you be prioritizing here, you might wonder.
That’s where we come in! Keep reading for our guide on what you should include in your marketing budget to get you started today.
1. A Growth Strategy
In a world that is more competitive than ever, why should a potential customer choose you? Before splashing the cash on ads, website design, and campaigns, you need to get a few things in order. Your marketing budgeting needs to account for:
Brand Narrative: What problems are you solving for customers? Why do you do what you do? You need to talk to your customers to understand the issues they’re facing.
Your Competitive Advantage: Why are you different from the competition? Each employee needs to know what makes you unique so they can back it up to customers.
Your Specific Buyer’s Journey: What are the stages of decision-making? How do you communicate at each stage? This helps you work out what to offer as people look up their problem and how to solve it.
You’re going to need to get on the ground and do the market research into your target audience. Developing your growth strategy will help target your marketing efforts. This, in turn, gives you more chance of success.
2. A Website Tailored to Your Buyer’s Journey
Your website will be the digital version of your office or storefront. As such, within your digital marketing budget, you need to include website design. It needs to represent your business as you want people to see you, and carry your brand values and message.
This is a constant evolution, and you need to make sure it reflects the buyer’s journey you have set in your strategy. You need to keep giving users (and Google) a reason to return time and again. This requires constant, updated, and new content that adds value.
Track page views and visitor data on your website to see what people like and dislike. Build on what they like, giving them more and you should see a boost in conversions. This could be as simple as starting and monitoring a blog page.
Within your market research find out what issues your target audience has. Use your blog to provide answers and guides to these questions, as this provides value. Track the content to see what performs best and build on it from there.
This is also great for boosting your rankings on search engines like Google. Use Keyword Planner to see what people are searching for in your industry. Pick some and put them in your blog posts to optimize for those searches to get that crucial top page position.
3. The Content Itself
You want to add blog posts, video marketing and content, infographics, and any other lead magnets that draw in visitors. There are different types of content to focus on in your budget, which we’ll break down below.
Content to Boost Sales
Talk to your sales team to find out what common questions and objections they hear back from leads. Use this to guide your content creators and address those issues.
You could do a guide on how to use your product, or you can have a listicle of the benefits your service brings. If you address those concerns at the start of a journey, it’ll speed up the conversion rate.
Content to Improve a Visitor’s Experience
Speak to your customer service team and see what questions and issues they deal with. This will help you build up a knowledge base. Customers want a self-service digital experience on your website.
To achieve this, create an in-depth FAQ page on your website where people can look up common issues they have. It should detail what the issue is and how to solve it.
On top of this, create a page that makes it easy for them to submit a ticket to support. You’ll also want a form that lets them ask a question that isn’t on the FAQs so you can keep your FAQs updated.
Once you get an idea of what content to produce and write about, put a plan together. This plan should include your advertising budget and strategy to promote the content. But also think about:
How many blog posts a month do you want?
How many videos and other content pieces?
How often will you review the progress and performance of that content?
This is all work you need to budget and plan for.
4. CRM, Marketing Automation, Sales & Customer Service Software
When it comes to what to put on a marketing budget, a single software system for sales and marketing is a must. Marketing, sales, and customer service need to work together to:
Create leads
Close deals and make conversions
Please customers and meet their expectations
Ensure your customers keep coming back for more
Get customers to recommend and refer others
To do this, everyone needs to be on the same page and use the same software to record what they’re doing. The software you choose should have CRM at its core and allow you to:
Automate marketing lead follow-ups
Track sales and marketing emails in one place
Make sales quotes and proposal management visible
See marketing and sales workflows
See customer feedback
Access support tickets
Set up the website knowledge base
Set up live and bot chat first-line support
There are more features for each software provider out there as they’re unique. But those are the key features you should look for to streamline team cooperation.
5. Canvas For Reviews
A McKinsey study (2020) shows you’re twice as likely to become a primary supplier if your digital experience is exceptional. If your customers love the experience you give them, they’ll spread the word. And search engines put a lot of value into the reviews you get.
Not only do they look at the reviews on their platforms, but the third-party reviews too. This is why you need to budget for and set up business listings that allow reviews. It’s also worth running a net promoter survey too. This will give you an idea of how likely it is existing customers will recommend you.
Making a Marketing Budget That Works
So, there you have it! By including these items in your marketing budget you’re on your way to a strategy that works.
Don’t underestimate the value of planning and research. It’s important to know your goals and your audience. This helps tailor your ads and content, making your budget go further with bigger results.
If you found this article helpful, check out our blog for more. At Trigger Digital we’ve got advice, tips, and tricks to suit all your marketing needs and more.
