10 Tips to Better Manage Your Marketing Budget in 2019
Leading a business can be tough, and this is something we see in the sheer number of businesses closing each year. Among other things, it seems that managing the marketing budget is one of the trickiest tasks.
When we overspend on marketing, there’s a potential of running low on funds without seeing the results we initially desired. In fact, many businesses have put themselves into debt for marketing because they believe it will be the thing that saves them and generates sales.
When we underspend, we leave a huge percentage of our target audience untouched. We don’t drive profits as high as we could and, by the time this is rectified, another company has entered the market and filled the gap.
If you aren’t managing your marketing spend, it’s easy for it to run out of control. On the other hand, you might spend too little and allow your competition to move into your space. How do you deal with budget management? We have 10 superb tips…
1. Consider Your Marketing Goals
How much should you spend on marketing? This depends, right? For a small business, they aren’t going to spend the same amount as Walmart or Starbucks. Therefore, the first thing you need to consider is your goals.
Often, it’s easy to get carried away when spending money. ‘We can start this campaign, that campaign, buy a newspaper ad, pay for a guest blog spot.’ Before making any marketing-related decisions, ask just one question — Will this contribute to our marketing goals?
If your target market is now above the age of 65, paying for all sorts of social media campaigns won’t necessarily contribute towards your goals. Instead, your money needs to go towards areas where your market can actually be found. On the other hand, a social media ad campaign will be very successful when targeting those between 18 and 24. We know they spend a certain number of hours checking social media per week, so it makes sense to reach out to them here.
2. Change Your Mindset
If you really want to drive profits, we recommend a change in mindset. Whether you’re the CEO, marketing manager, or have another position within the business, treat the money as your own. In your personal life, you wouldn’t buy a new laptop if you didn’t have the money. Therefore, you shouldn’t pay out for things when you don’t have the money in the business.
- Do we have the money?
- How much will this strategy cost?
- Are there any hidden costs?
- Do we have a contingency plan?
There’s nothing wrong with getting close to the limit, but you should never get too familiar with it and this is one of the keys to budget management.
3. Learn from the Past
Thirdly, we can’t understate how important it is to look back and assess what has and hasn’t worked before. If you can look back and see that a particular strategy has been attempted twice and failed, you can put a line through the idea and move onto the next one. On the other hand, your analysis might highlight a particular strategy that has always brought a good return.
If you don’t have this data and you’ve recently launched the business, learn from competitors. Have they had particularly successful campaigns that you can emulate? Alternatively, do some market research and learn how people find businesses like your own. What’s the most effective method? From here, spend your marketing budget more appropriately.
4. Be Careful of Hidden Costs
We mentioned them previously, but we want to go into more detail because even the most experienced marketers have been caught out by hidden costs. When it comes to budget management, one of the best pieces of advice we can offer is to keep a spreadsheet. By doing this, you see where every single cent of your money goes.
If we look at product marketing as an example, most people will immediately think about promotion and launch. However, there are lots of smaller costs that may arise including message testing and research. If you don’t factor these costs in and include them in your spreadsheet, you’re going to get a nasty surprise when you review at the end of the quarter or year.
5. Diversify Strategies
Don’t just have one marketing strategy, even if you have a tiny budget. When you’re relying on one marketing channel to bring success, you have all your eggs in one basket. If this fails, you’re back to square one and you’ve wasted weeks or even months. Instead, diversify with your marketing budget.
If you have a handful of different marketing strategies on the go, it suddenly doesn’t matter if one isn’t pulling its weight. We can simply drop it, introduce another, and be grateful that other strategies are working.
6. Experiment
It’s great to have some marketing strategies that are reliable and will yield results but don’t get too comfortable. With the best budget management experts, they will always reserve a small percentage for experimentation.
Even when you think that you have great strategies, you could be missing out on something that has the potential to transform the business. Don’t miss out, keep some of your budgets for experimentation and you might just increase your ROI even more.
7. Don’t Spend More, Spend Smart
There’s an old adage that says we should be working smarter rather than harder. For example, rather than lifting heavy boxes to and from two locations, put the boxes on wheels and you’re saving yourself lots of effort. With marketing, this adage applies perfectly.
As your business grows, your marketing budget may do the same and this means you can introduce more strategies. However, don’t continually add to your marketing spend without assessing what’s already gone. Rather than continually spending more, you should be assessing what’s working, what isn’t working, what can be done to improve, etc.
If there’s a strategy that just isn’t working, get rid of it. Over time, your marketing portfolio will be filled with strategies that actually work. By doing this, you utilize every part of your budget rather than requesting more before you even need it.
8. Always Remember ROI
Next, and it follows the previous points, never forget ROI. Just like anything in business, our spend on marketing is an attempt to drive profits. Whether you consider immediate value or long-term customer value, this is up to you. However, all investments should be measured equally so you can compare directly.
9. Look for Cheaper Options
After setting up a strategy, don’t just take the cost increases that can sometimes come. Instead, assess the market and whether you can cut costs anywhere. In truth, this is one of the budget management strategies that go forgotten.
Could you save money by choosing a new agency? Could you actually get the exposure you need on a channel that’s cheaper? Are you spending lots of money on a tool that has features encompassed in another tool? If you can spend less money for the same results, this will certainly make the previous tip of ROI much easier.
10. Use a Marketing Budget Template
In terms of the actual budgeting process, take the helping hand offered by many services. With a budgeting template, you don’t have to start from scratch and you’ll simply input the numbers into the pre-planned spreadsheet. With the very best templates, they’ll compare budgeted spend against actual spend. What’s more, there’s a summary of all expenditure so you can quickly see what’s soaking up your budget.
Summary
With these ten tips, we believe it’s easier to manage a marketing budget in 2019. However, we want to end on an additional tip. These days, the most innovative companies are making the move across to AI algorithms in order to manage costs effectively. Why spend hours performing tasks that a clever AI algorithm can complete in seconds?
Again, we return to our advice to work smarter rather than harder. With social media ad campaigns, in particular, there are some brilliant AI solutions that will manage your campaign on your behalf. Rather than taking an afternoon away from your business to assess the campaign, the market, and what changes are necessary, the tool will do EVERYTHING.
By ensuring that your ads are always in front of the right people at the right time, your budget isn’t wasted and ROI increases. If you implement AI algorithms right across the marketing department, efficiency improves in every area and budget management is much easier.
There we have it, our advice on managing your marketing budget. These days, you don’t have to go it alone. Whether you hire a professional or take advantage of software and other clever solutions, get started today for positive results!
Bonus! Marketing Tools:
2. Bilbi AI: Daily Marketing Campaign Insights
