How to Set a Marketing Budget

Do you feel like your marketing attempts are siphoning more out of you than they earn you?

That may be because you don’t have a clear-cut budget. Whatever you do for your business, always have a budget to help you with money management.

Marketing is invaluable for a business to thrive. Therefore, a marketing budget will help you stay within your means and get the most out of your money. Before formulating a budget, you need to understand a couple of things about marketing.

First of all, there is a long-term and short-term marketing budget. With that in mind, the second thing you need to understand is what a short term budget is and what a long-term budget is.

Long-term budget

A long-term budget is one that will require regular payments for the same effort. For instance, if you’re running a campaign for six months, you’ll need to make monthly payments for the campaign to keep running.

Short-term budget

A short-term budget on the other hand often includes one-off payments. For example, if you implement a marketing strategy that doesn’t require additional costs to run.

How to set-up a marketing budget

•    Outline your strategy

It all starts when you outline your marketing strategy. The approach will guide you through formulating a budget. For instance, what marketing media will you use, do you need campaigns and promotional events?

These are some of the questions that your strategy will address. With a plan in place, you have a clearer picture of how to go about formulating a budget.

•    Set goals

Your approach only highlights what you’ll do, your marketing efforts to grow your business. However, the goals you set for the marketing efforts will guide you toward creating a budget that works for your vision and goals.

•    Define a timeline

How long will you be carrying out these marketing efforts? Remember, a short-term budget will be different from a long-term budget. Therefore, choose your marketing timeline carefully since it directly affects your budget.

•   Set a scalable budget

An approximate budget is essential because a fixed number will restrain you. A budget is meant to guide you through achieving your goals. With this in mind, always set a more significant amount to allow room for changes, additions and any other variations.

Moreover, once your marketing efforts begin to bear fruit, you can slowly increase your marketing budget to match your business growth.

•    Test your budget

At this point, you have everything you require to kick-start your marketing campaigns. What you need now is to test your budget. Get developers, SEO experts and reputable marketing agencies necessary to your strategy and find out if they fit within your budget.

During the testing stage, you get to pick those who fit within your budget, all this before implementing your marketing strategy.

Additionally, testing your budget should also include a test of your strategy. Is it a winning strategy or not? If you don’t generate enough leads during the testing stage, it’s safe to go back to the drawing board and re-strategize.

Conclusion

A marketing budget can be tricky since your expectations might not match the results. What you need is patience in your business and a smart, well-thought budget that doesn’t strain your business.

Always ensure that your marketing budget covers as many platforms and techniques as possible.