Tag: Marketing Budget

1. Costs –

Donald Trump is right. Wealth isn’t accrued by how much you make, it’s accrued by how much you can save.  This is no different with your marketing budget. Marketers spend tons of money on things – media buys, advertising, staff, creative pieces, consulting, special events and more.   No wonder them and accounting hate each other!  Good marketers don’t necessarily need to reduce their costs, but they need to make sure whatever they spend money on can be attributed to increased sales.   Any marketing tasks that can’t be attributed to sales should be looked at closer.  Remember, marketing’s job is to bring in opportunities for sales. Therefore, each expense needs to be scrutinized for how well it’s bringing in sales opportunities.

2. Marketing Originated Customer % –

Not all new business comes from marketing.  Some are referrals, up sells to existing customers or other existing channels. If you want to see how well your marketing is doing at bringing new people in the door then you need to pay attention to the Marketing-Originated Customer percentage.  Divide new customers from leads by total new customers and multiply by 100.

For example:

Total new customers in a month = 25

Total new customers that started as a marketing lead = 10

Marketing Originated Customer % = (10/25) X 100 = 40%

3. Customer Acquisition Costs –

Some marketers, particularly those in tech, argue that this is the most important marketing budget number. Your customer acquisition cost is the amount your marketing department spends each month divided by the number of customers it receives each month.  Managers often debate what marketing expenses to include in the overall ‘marketing costs’ total, but we include all expenses.  After all, the marketing department only exists to win new business and acquire new customers.  Every one of their tasks – charitable donations, marketing campaigns, luncheons, paid-search ads etc are all used to generate awareness and new customers for your business’ product or services.

 We’re living in the startup age.  It seems like everyone has become an entrepreneur and ready to go after their ideas.  The thing is, most of us aren’t clear on how much preparation and dedication it takes to actually lift a new idea from the ground and make it a reality.   

To Compete

1. It will show you how competitive is your idea: Sure, you think you’re the first one to think about it, but that’s probably not true.  There’s a pretty good chance that someone already created something similar, so take a deep look and identify those competitors. Decide why and where you’re different and of course why are you a better option!

To Find your Audience

2. It will show you who your audience is: I can’t explain how important it is to identify and target the correct audiences. We’ve seen so many great ideas fail because they were targeting a wrong audience! A startup marketing plan will allow you to make sure you’re talking to the right group of people.

To understand your investment needs

3. It will let you know how much money you’ll need to invest: location, location, location, it was true 30 years ago and it still is. Having good placement and being seen means you’ll need to invest in advertising. Don’t underestimate these costs, they’re usually higher than the development costs.

Most marketers realize that they are not the ones who drive the market; thanks to social networks and the multiplication of channels to directly interact with brands, consumers now have the power.

Sellers who do not recognize this change face a panorama full of dissatisfied customers who did not receive the promised results.

Doing a multichannel marketing strategy means having a step-by-step guide for each segment covering all key contact points with consumers while integrating them all to reach your audience properly. But this is very complicated, especially if we add new channels such as mobile process becomes more critical.

1. Build a map of key segments

Before the creative development, establish a specific strategy for each customer segment. Digital marketing, for example.

2. Establish a clear process of creative development

Build a brief outline of the objectives set for each channel. You must see how to interact with each channel and then understand how to work together. It is necessary to ensure flows include response management, data collection, and measurement.

3. Develop a plan to manage responses

It is critical to the success of a creative plan to develop a management plan response. Consumers can respond in various ways to any message! Ensuring these responses can be captured and properly measured is mandatory.

4. Customizing the Message

Use customer information whenever possible to create relevant messages. Making intelligent personalization of audience segments or groups helps you design a message or specific action plan for each segment. Some brands are dealing with this factor; producing multiple versions of a campaign for each sector or channel adds value to the message and facilitates communication with consumers.

5. Evidence as key

Nourish messages are essential to maintaining contact and the interest of consumers and checking the effectiveness of actions and their impact.

6. Consider all possibilities to manage the campaign

Managing a multichannel campaign manually is certainly complex. Most campaign management tools are not closely integrated, but there are methods to assess the capabilities of each execution channel available.

7. Try and learn

Each of the actions of a campaign has a goal of learning. The fact that the coordination of a multichannel campaign is complicated does not mean you should skimp on tests and measurements in the program design.

If you have a small, medium or large company that isn’t represented well on Google you are leaving money on the table.   Why?

1. Digital marketing allows small businesses to compete with big ones – In the digital world, everyone has the same tools available.  You can get the same impact and visibility as larger brands do.  The playing field is level.

2. Digital is more profitable than “traditional” – It’s possible to obtain better results with less investment. 40% of companies recognize the savings obtained by using digital marketing techniques to promote their products and services. 30% says they intend to allocate part of their budget from traditional to digital marketing strategies.

3. ROI measurement – digital marketing platforms offer very comprehensive statistics on the number of clicks and results, analytical allows us to track the campaign and, the customer. Measuring the ROI of a traditional marketing strategy is almost impossible, however digital media provide data and statistics that show the development of the strategy and allow you to manage the results in real time.

4. Investment translated into conversions – These can be on leads, subscriptions or sales.  The marketing objective is to optimize these conversions to focus on improving search engine rankings, develop a social media strategy and design activities for e-mail marketing, among others. An effective strategy increases the profits of the company.

5. Interaction with brand fans.  The digital world enables direct and effective peer-to-peer personal digital experiences that translate into greater engagement and, therefore, higher customer satisfaction.