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Regardless of its size or scale, any business’s marketing budget is the foundation of all marketing-related expenditures. It acts as a guide to staying on track with your estimated expenses compared to the actual expenses. A marketing budget includes all types of costs that you can expect to pay for each type of advertising you do. This can include print media like newspapers and magazines, social media, content writing, email marketing, and SEO. A company’s marketing budget and its Return on Investment depend on each other. Without knowing your current clientele, available capital and marketing needs could make you lose more than gain.
Planning your marketing budget requires much more than just putting a number on it. Rather, it requires a correct understanding of your company’s goals and expectations to yield the right results. It might be tempting to throw in more money in your marketing budget as soon as sales start to dip a little, but it’s crucial to first look at the bigger picture, weigh out other options, and take a step forward with caution. A good way to do this is by asking the right questions. Your answers will largely help you decide if the extra money is worth spending on the marketing budget. However, before investing in a marketing budget, it’s important to consult with a marketing agency in Adelaide. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge to offer, and they can help you create strategies that will work best for your company.
Why Don’t We Have Enough Customers?
When you think about falling sales, the first thing that comes to mind is a lack of brand awareness among the target audience. Fewer customers automatically translate to fewer sales and profits, sending any company into a frenzy. Rather than assuming that you need to advertise more rigorously to your customers, try looking at the bigger picture. Perhaps the problem is not related to attracting customers (marketing) but rather to retaining them (customer service). Even if you spend millions on drawing customers to your shop or website but have a non-friendly ambiance or a complicated web presence, you will still lose out on sales. In fact, bad word of mouth might harm your business even more than a lack of marketing efforts.
Another example would be your choice of media. Even if you are spending thousands on PR, sponsorships, and influencers, you might be investing in the wrong internet personalities. Customers are much more opinionated these days, and nothing goes undetected from their radar. Choosing the right people to collaborate with can be a huge deal-maker or breaker for your business marketing. So before spending on marketing, conduct a deep analysis of other factors that might be the real underlying problem.
Can Existing Marketing Channels be Further Optimized?
Before investing more money, it is important to ask yourself if your current marketing platforms and tools are optimized. For example, if you are currently only using social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube and Facebook, perhaps diversifying to TikTok by doing viral challenges can help target a different audience segment. Similarly, advertising on LinkedIn can help target a more professional niche.
Similarly, perhaps your current digital content is lackluster and fails to provide a solid call to action despite the overall content being of good quality. Asking the current web copywriters to pay extra attention to the CTA might help increase sales even by a small margin. Optimizing your current marketing channels could potentially multiply your ROI by two or even three times by making small and less expensive adjustments. When you have a higher return on investment, that will help draw in more customers, and the growth cycle will continue.
Before you make the decision to optimize your current marketing channels, it is very important to gather all the right data points, correctly interpret that information and then make the appropriate adjustments. Before spending further, you should also identify any important marketing alternatives that you could benefit from. You can look into what your competitors are doing and see if they have any smart or unconventional approaches that you can adopt as well.
Can the Follow-up Be Adequately Handled?
Once you have targeted the problem areas and know exactly where to spend, the next area that requires addressing is handling the new influx of customers and sales leads. It is crucial to have a strategy that will allow you to accommodate these newfound customers. Otherwise, you will only create a bad image for your brand and essentially nullify all the money and effort spent. Using automated email responses is one way of dealing with new sales leads. However, suppose your current workforce and resources are insufficient to handle new potential sales. In that case, it is better to outsource this task rather than burden them to the point of exhaustion and unproductivity.
Conclusion
Companies that shy away from spending on marketing can lose out on many prospects. On the other hand, companies who thoughtlessly spend on the wrong marketing aspects without understanding their needs also lose. Pumping up the marketing budget might seem like the best solution during times of slow sales, but it is usually not. Before spending more on your current marketing budget, it is extremely important to study the situation and answer the right questions.
So before drafting a marketing budget, conduct an in-depth analysis of other factors that might be the real underlying problem. Having the right agencies that can closely work with you and understand your requirements will go a long way in making you see the bigger picture. Seeking the help of a professional agency, such as a Public Relations Agency New York, can help give you a sense of direction on what to do and which steps to take.
Even if you do decide to spend more on your current marketing budget, make sure to collaborate with people and use tools that are flexible and can grow as your business grows. You want to establish marketing platforms and channels that can grow over the course of time so that you can keep hitting the metrics.
