Unless you have a really special type of business, marketing is basically a non-negotiable. Setting a budget ensures you don’t spend too much or that you don’t spend too little. Putting together a focused, actionable plan helps you stay true to your efforts without forgetting any key tactics, benchmarks, or goals along the way. Marketing is needed for the success of any business, even the small ones. So, it’s imperative that you spend the time not only putting together a solid marketing strategy and following through with it but also determining, setting, and sticking to a budget.
Not sure where to get started? Keep reading!
1. Start budgeting early
Don’t wait until January 01 of the following year to start setting your yearly goals. Q4 is a great time to do an annual review and see where you had successes, where you can spend a little more effort, and what you need to cut out completely. Doing this early will prompt a strong start in Q1 and feeling prepared for the year ahead.
Waiting until the last minute will put stress on you and your team to get it done as soon as possible. And when things are rushed, they usually aren’t very good. With how vital a marketing strategy and budget is, it’s definitely not something we recommend skimping on.
2. Perform market analysis
The goals that you set for yourself should have an anchor in why you want to attain them. They should also be clearly defined and measurable (we’ll talk about SMART Goals in the next section). To attach numbers and definitions to things, you need the appropriate research and analytics.
There are a variety of tools you can use to do this, including Semrush—which breaks down the process for you in this article. Things that will help you define your marketing objective(s) and business goals are:
You should also do an audit of current marketing efforts (Web analytics, Google Ad insights, Social media insights, etc.) to get a good picture of what you’ve done so far and how well it’s performed. Additionally, key insights about your current customers and target market will help you choose the right channels and messaging for upcoming efforts.
In the end, what you’ll have collected is an ocean of information to use to gain insights about all things “your organization” and give you solid footing for your next steps.
3. What are your business goals?
Before or after you’ve done all of the research, set your business goals. Where you decide to do this in the process is up to you. If you have an idea of what you want to achieve by the end of the next year, then by all means, make those your goals. But if you’re having trouble setting them, then doing the above research can help you.
Business goals are best done when they are SMART goals:
- Specific: Make sure your goals are as specific as possible. Making them vague allows them to be objectionable which allows for confusion and everyone working toward different things.
- Measurable: By setting something that’s measurable or finding a way to measure it, you’ll be able to set clear benchmarks and feel confident that you’ve actually reached your goal.
- Attainable: You don’t want to make your goal easy to meet. However, you do want to make sure there’s a chance of meeting it or at least getting close. If it’s completely unrealistic, then no one will feel motivated to work toward it.
- Relative: Whatever goal or goals you set should be related back to your business and your marketing efforts. It should have a solid foundation as to why they’re your goals and what the benefit of meeting them will be.
- Time-Sensitive: When does it need to be done? Realistically, an overarching goal should take the year to reach. If you get it done right away, it wasn’t challenging enough. However, a year-long goal can feel overwhelming. Breaking it up into monthly/quarterly benchmarks will help keep you motivated and on track.
4. Set your yearly objective
Once you know your business goals, you can set a yearly objective. This objective will help you set your marketing initiatives and, further down the line, your marketing tactics. It will operate as a beacon for the rest of your efforts—where you want to end up by the end of the year. Like your business goals, your objective should be hard but still something you can realistically achieve.
Three objectives that can help guide your marketing strategy in a way that’s both specific and open to interpretation are:
- Increase Frequency of Purchase
- Increase Average Deal Size
- Increase Number of Customers
Like your business goals, you should still try to make those SMART goals. How will you know if you’ve achieved them otherwise? What will your benchmarks be?
5. Plan which marketing initiatives will help reach your objective
Based on your SWOT analysis, you’ll be able to see your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Working alongside your scores and insights, you’ll be able to determine what your marketing initiatives will be. Your initiatives should be 2-4 big goals that you want to attain throughout the year that work toward your Marketing Objective. Some initiatives you might choose include:
- Reach a new audience
- Position your brand
- Increase brand credibility
- Increase customer loyalty
And so many more! When determining which initiatives you want to use, remember to ask yourself, “Is this going to help us achieve our objective?” as well as “How will this help us achieve our objective?” They should still be a little vague and open to interpretation but much more action-oriented and specific.
6. Select necessary tactics for each initiative
Your marketing tactics need to be decided based on the initiatives you chose to help you reach your marketing objective. These should be very specific, actionable items that you can do every day to help you and your business meet the goals you’ve set. Some examples of initiatives are:
- Paid ads
- Organic social media
- Brand positioning
- Blogging
- SEO work
- Content creation
And more! It’s easy to get lost in the weeds, but keeping that beacon (marketing objective) at the forefront of your planning and discussion will help ensure you all make it out at the right place.
7. Determine what can be done in-house and what will require an expert
Now comes the time for the budgeting aspect of the marketing plan. At this stage, you might not know exactly what your budget is, but you should have an idea of what your marketing tactics will cost. You should also understand what you can do in-house and what will require an outside expert’s help. Do you or an employee have a strong understanding of social media? You likely won’t need to hire someone to fill that role. Are you capable of building a new e-commerce website to help you expand outside of a brick-and-mortar business model? You might need to work with a company for that one.
Not only is it important to know what a tactic might cost to hire out for, but you also need to consider how much time you’ll be spending if you plan to do it in-house. Is it something that requires a lot of time to set up, but then the rest of the work is automated? Is it a little bit of time here and there out of a few people’s day? Or will the tactic take a huge chunk out of one or several people’s time over the course of a quarter or more, effectively taking them out of their normal role and business model? Knowing all of these things will help you decide which tactics you really need and how they’re going to get done
8. Clearly define your marketing strategy
Semrush states that a marketing strategy is “the big-picture vision for how you’ll achieve your business’s goals.” If you go all the way back to steps three and four of this article, then you’ll see that your strategy will be defined by what your business goals are (based on market research) and what the yearly objective will be. These two things will help make sure that everything you do in your marketing plan will always be driving toward the bigger picture. Without highlighting a destination or losing sight of it, it will be too easy for you to forget why you’re doing which tactic and for what.
9. Clearly map out your marketing plan
Your marketing plan will be the day-to-day actionable things that will help you meet your overarching business goals and marketing objective. It will be a roadmap of how to implement “specific processes, tools, and tactics” and help to plan and reach daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly objectives. Your set initiatives and tactics will be the building blocks of your plan.
10. Set the budget
According to HubSpot, B2B companies will spend an average of 2-5% of their revenue on their marketing, while B2C will spend around 5-10%. Basically, if your annual revenue is x, you should take “x * .05” and spend that toward marketing. Check out their article to see a percentage breakdown by industry! Once you know what you’re overall budget is, you need to be able to allocate it appropriately to different marketing efforts.
By spending the time to create a marketing plan and determining who will do what, you’ll be able to take that marketing budget and decide which efforts will get the most time and money—and which won’t. A tip that will help you make these cut-throat decisions is to organize your marketing initiatives and tactics in order of priority. If there isn’t enough room in the budget for everything, you’ll feel confident in whatever may get less funds or eliminated completely.
If your website is your most important marketing tool and receives 10% of your marketing budget, then you know how much you have left for everything else.
Ultimately, what you choose to spend on your marketing efforts comes down to what you decide will be most valuable to your company.
Working with The Cultural North
We’re a Duluth-based digital marketing agency with services focused on:
- Web design/development
- Branding
- Foundations
- Videography
- Content creation
And, of course, marketing. To learn more about us, check out this page or get connected with one of our sales team members!