There is a significant probability that more of your company's marketing budget will be allotted to digital marketing with each passing year, regardless of whether you employ conventional methods, current trends, or a bespoke formula based on particular demands.
We polled more than 500 CMOs as part of our research into the evolution of marketing, and the results showed that 58% of them are transferring their spending from traditional to digital marketing.
Your digital marketing budget's real financial quantity will vary depending on your company's kind, size, and industry, but you may benefit from suggestions and tactics to maximize your spending.
In this post, we provide eight practical suggestions on how to make the most of your company's digital marketing budget while achieving business goals.
1. Establish what is covered by the umbrella of digital marketing
You need to be aware of which components are classified as "digital marketing" and which are not if you want to maximize your expenditure. However, not all activities or services may fit under the marketing category. For many businesses, if it's online, it's called digital marketing.
You may concentrate on the appropriate platforms by choosing what is included and what is not. Some of the things to think about doing are:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a vital tool for generating quality leads and increasing traffic, even if some senior marketers may not view SEO or organic traffic as a marketing activity. A free checklist and several helpful SEO reporting tools are available.
Social media is becoming a significant source of quality leads for many businesses. People in your target market are likely to utilize social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is frequently regarded as the industry benchmark for internet marketing since you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and you can target customers based on precise demographics. (For assistance with your campaigns, have a look at our PPC for eCommerce tracker.)
Email marketing initiatives - Email marketing, which is more of a "pull" than a "push" technique, is still an effective way to reach consumers online.
Digital display (banner advertisements, online videos, etc.) - Today's banner ads are targeted and non-intrusive, and video is quickly becoming a key component of marketing strategy.
Content creation for blogs and websites - It's simple to overlook content production when considering your marketing budget, yet doing so is crucial to the big picture.
2. Determine the websites that your target audience frequents
Understanding your clients and where they spend their online time is the first step in optimizing your spending. You may optimize the return on your investment and allocate your resources in the right direction in this manner. Since marketers may have preconceived notions about where their ideal consumer is active, the findings of this sort of inquiry can come as a surprise to them.
An inefficient use of marketing funds would be, for instance, if your business spent a significant portion of its digital marketing budget on leveraging the potential of LinkedIn only to discover that the majority of its clients spend the majority of their time on Facebook.
Your marketing team may monitor where your target audience spends its time, how long they remain, and what makes them depart by employing analytics (like GA4) and sophisticated metrics. Create a persona for your ideal consumer so you know what you are searching for before you start to gather this information.
Personas should be available if you have a budget to work with. Create thorough personas of your ideal client or consumer, taking into account their age, gender, work title, income, family life, interests, and any other pertinent information, if for some reason that hasn't happened. To assist you below is a buyer persona template.
3. Check Several Channels
What works for one marketer may not necessarily work for another in the fickle world of digital marketing.
Your business should have defined key performance indicators (KPIs) early on in the budgeting process. By testing across different channels and comparing results to your KPIs, you'll obtain a better understanding of what is and isn't working. You can discover that one channel has a significantly greater conversion rate than the others or that one channel has a significantly cheaper or higher cost per conversion (CPC).
You may take advantage of possibilities and avoid places where you're not seeing good results by doing testing across a variety of channels. By concentrating on the channels that yield the best return on investment, you can now maximize your digital marketing spend (ROI). Most likely, the 80/20 rule or, depending on your business, even 90/10, can be used.
4. Remarketing across channels
Remarketing is simple to overlook, yet it may offer a solid return for little outlay.
Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is the practice of showing advertisements to visitors who have already visited your website or clicked on one of your ads but failed to convert. Your adverts will now appear while they browse other websites and platforms because they have previously indicated an interest in you.
Remarketing did not previously track website visitors to multiple channels. However, thanks to cross-channel remarketing, after clicking on a Google ad (here's a beginner's tutorial), a user may subsequently see follow-up advertising on Facebook or Twitter.
Giving customers a second and third chance to connect with your brand after their first encounter can help your business make the most of its money. Additionally, like with any PPC advertisement, you only pay if the ad is clicked.
5. Assess Trends to Maintain Competitiveness
You may find out how to maximize your digital marketing budget by looking at what other senior-level marketers in your sector are doing.
Delivering a stronger ROI on their marketing budget is the top challenge, according to 20% of senior marketing executives and CMOs surveyed, for them in 2023.
This is not to mean that you should closely monitor the competition, but being aware of what they are doing online will help you identify where you need to make changes in order to stay competitive.
For instance, understanding how a rival allocates their resources and maximizes their budgets may help you calculate your own budget if you want to take up some of their market share.
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Salty Red Dog Marketing, LLC is a marketing agency in Red Bank, NJ, Westport, CT, and everywhere in between. We service businesses with marketing strategies, digital marketing, social media, and consultations.
Contact: info@saltyreddogmarketing.com
Phone: NJ: (732) 783-4822 // CT: (203) 429-9671
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