04 Feb How to Manage Your Marketing Budget

Every business needs to have some type of marketing plan, and therefore some type of marketing budget. However, this is one of the most challenging business expenses to budget for, because the average business owner doesn’t have a great understanding of the costs of most of today’s online marketing efforts.

This is particularly true for small businesses, who may be wondering which marketing expenses they should start with and where they should begin. This is why it is so important to begin with a list of your goals, and what you are looking to accomplish with your marketing efforts. From there you can develop a marketing budget that ensures you are only spending money on the things that are required by your current marketing goals. 

This can include expenses such as SEO bloggers, paid search engine ads, sponsored social media posts, Facebook ads and more. You need to keep your priorities in mind when developing this budget and make sure that you are only spending money on what you need to, otherwise your marketing budget can start to get out of control.

You should diversify your marketing budget, just like you would with an investment portfolio. This should include different approaches and both long-term and short-term marketing efforts. Give yourself a budget for experimentation as well. Typically, this shouldn’t be more than 10%, but it is an important part of your budget. In today’s industry, there are always new marketing approaches growing in popularity. Some may be worth the hype and others may be a passing phase, but you should be able to try out different methods to see if they work for you. Just make sure you don’t over-do it.

Creating a marketing budget is an important first step in developing a successful marketing effort. However, once you have set up the budget—how do you continue to manage that budget? 

First, consider a budgeting template. There are countless free marketing budget templates that you can use in order to create a spreadsheet for your marketing budget and expenses. Keep track of everything in the right template and you can see where you are overspending as you’re doing it. The more organized you are, the easier it will be to stay on budget, particularly with digital marketing, where lots of small expenses can really add up.

There are also software programs available that can help you track and maintain that budget you set for yourself so you can see where all of your money is going and see if and how it is paying off.

Here at Life In Motion, we can help you develop a marketing plan that not only fits within your budget, but one that helps you get the return on investment that you need in order to really start growing your business and improving it for the better.