How to Determine Where to Spend Your Marketing Budget

Establishing a marketing budget is only the first step in making sure your business is marketed effectively. Once you know how much you have to work with, it is important to make wise choices about where that money will be spent.

By considering a few key criteria, focusing on your most pressing marketing needs and evaluating what worked best in the past, you can determine where to best spend your marketing budget.

Marketing is changing and smart companies are keeping up with these changes. With web marketing, it’s become possible to reach more customers than ever before, but you need to keep a few important principles in mind when you are looking for marketing activities.

As you look at the next year of spending, keep the following four criteria in mind:

1) Trust
Which marketing methods and practice will help build trust in your company?

2) Targeting
Do the marketing methods give you the ability to approach a small segment of your audience?

3) Engagement
Are your marketing methods getting you in front of active enthusiasts of your product or service?

4) Social sharing
Do these marketing methods make it easy for your audience to spread and share your content to their social contacts?

With these criteria at the forefront of your decision making process, you need to look at where you are going to get the most bang for your marketing buck. What are your main goals for the next month, the next quarter and the next year? Which practices are going to help you meet those goals? Marketing activities and methods can help you meet a number of different goals but some are better than others for specific goals.

Here are five few possible ideas:

1) Increasing website traffic and conversions:
Web re-design, copywriting, SEO and PPC advertising.

2) Increasing sales:
Targeted email marketing messages, sales pages and web design.

3) Building a community and increasing your reputation with that community:
Email marketing, social media and community management.

4) Increasing exposure:
Trade shows, press releases, white papers, email newsletters and guest blog posting.

5) Boosting credibility:
Regular email newsletters, authority blog posts, press releases and white papers.

Your marketing spending should reflect your goals. Looking at your most immediate goals for your business will help you identify which marketing activities you should invest in. Give priority to those tactics that will help your reach your goals in the next few months.

Finally, you need to look at your past performance before you invest in marketing for the new year. Which marketing activities had the biggest ROI for your company in the past 12 months? Which efforts were disappointing at best or complete failures at worst? Just because a technique or method is an industry standard or works well for another company does not mean it is a good fit for you. Always rely on your company’s experience with a marketing method to make your final decision.

With these criteria, goals and experiences in mind, you can spend your marketing budget wisely and effectively.


However you decide to spend your budget, CFL Marketing can advise you and help execute your plans – contact philm@cflmarketing.co.uk for more details or log onto www.cflmarketing.co.uk