Allocating your marketing budget to increase value and maximize your return on investment (ROI) is key to achieving marketing success. Why? It enables you to prioritize campaigns, invest in the most effective channels and tactics and build a marketing strategy that delivers clear results.
Whether your annual marketing budget is $10,000 or $10 million there is a specific process you can use to allocate your budget effectively. Here are a few tips and strategies to help you maximize your budget and drive growth:
1. Outline your marketing goals
Setting goals helps to create the foundation for your overall marketing strategy. Think about what you want to achieve over the next year. Are you looking to improve brand awareness, generate more leads or increase sales? The marketing goals you set will guide your budget allocation.
When setting your goals, make sure they’re SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Then identify key metrics that you can track to determine whether you’re making progress on each goal.
2. Plan your annual marketing strategy
Once you’ve established your goals, it’s wise to map out your annual strategy to determine what you will need to achieve those goals. This includes outlining all the campaigns that will take place over the course of the year. Your marketing strategy will serve as a roadmap for your budget, enabling you to allocate it effectively across the various campaigns.
3. Assess prior marketing campaigns
When allocating your marketing budget, it’s important to look at past campaigns to see which ones worked and didn’t work. You also should determine how much of an impact failed campaigns had on your previous marketing budget and ROI. With this information in hand, you can make better projections and allocate marketing funds to efforts that have proven successful in the past.
4. Determine marketing channels and tactics
Choosing which tactics and channels to use before allocating your budget is important. Prioritize channels and tactics based on effectiveness. Then allocate your budget based on what you’ll need to leverage each one successfully. For example, radio advertising is ideal for increasing brand awareness and recall in local audiences. To be effective, we recommend a 21/52 advertising plan, which airs 21 radio advertising spots per week during all 52 weeks of the year. Having the budget to achieve this - and to integrate other channels and tactics - is key.
5. Review and adjust budget
When maximizing your budget for growth, it’s important to analyze the performance of each campaign and make the necessary changes to achieve maximum ROI. Each campaign performs differently, and underestimating how much you may need could hinder the campaigns you run over the course of the year. Monitor the key metrics you identified when setting your goals, and review performance on a consistent basis to make the best budgeting decisions moving forward.
Effective allocation of your marketing budget is essential to driving business growth. Taking these steps to maximize your budget provides a clear assessment on what needs to be done, helps define viable marketing goals, and sets the business in motion on how to effectively plan for the year. Learn more about Zimmer and how working with them as a marketing partner can help with budgeting and put your brand in position to succeed.
