Once a mere department design used to promote ideas, marketing is now an integral part of the traditional sales funnel and forms the foundation for business growth. This means marketing needs to be thinking about how salespeople would interact with prospects in the early stages of a sale.
This kind of thinking creates programs and activities that drive higher-value leads to sales. In this new environment, planning your marketing budget is essential to understanding what types of and how many tasks your team can undertake.
Business and Campaign Objectives
By design, your marketing budget needs to align with your business’s and sales team’s goals. This makes it easier for your team to focus on delivering value and creates the highest level order of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
With your business objectives articulated, setting up campaigns and campaign objectives becomes much easier. This will vary depending on the type of business and your desired goals. For example, if your broad goal is customer retention, you’ll want to focus on campaigns that keep your customers satisfied and successful in their own endeavors. Without a clear, driven path, it’s difficult to keep track of your progress and how the new strategies you employ are affecting your company’s growth.
Content Creation
Content will most likely occupy a large portion of your marketing budget. In this context, “content” refers to blogs, social media campaigns and posts, videos, infographics, emails, and so on. These all play an important role in developing your brand, along with your SEO strategy and ranking. In short, content helps drive prospects to engage with your company, which is essential to converting them into customers. Many times, your content needs will exceed your in-house capabilities; in that case, outsourcing may be a cost-efficient and resourceful option.
Paid Advertising
Organic reach is an important part of knowing your place in the market, but paid advertising can give you a leg up where needed. Nowadays, social media presence is key to brand growth and awareness; it not only establishes you as a player in the market but also converts prospects into paying customers faster. Digital advertising is easy given the large number of channel options, including social media platforms and big box stores, but it also provides a variety of targeting options to cater ads to your exact business needs.
Development
Depending on your company’s needs, your development budget can vary drastically. You have to consider the development of your website, automation, and integration. And there’s a lot that goes into these activities: email campaigns, website design and hosting, SEO strategizing, social media tools, research, and more. Discussing your development needs with an outsourced marketing team is the best way to make sure you’re not missing any important parts. With multiple team members who specialize in each area, a strong outsourced marketing team can ensure your company’s development needs are met and budgeted accurately.
Public Relations and Events
Trade shows, conventions, and conferences are great opportunities to show customers and prospects your value on a more personal level; they also give you the excuse to talk more about why your solutions matter. Public relations costs can vary widely in this area, depending on travel expenses, registration fees, and other considerations. Hosting your own event can become more complicated, with venue rentals, refreshments, promotions, and other fees, but can be hugely beneficial to organizing a large number of prospects in one place.
The Numbers
You may be considering in-house marketing for your company because you know your needs best and are uneasy about sending off marketing tasks to another team. While these concerns are certainly valid, leading marketing initiatives on your own can be more overwhelming than you think. However, the final numbers from creating and maintaining an in-house team can grow larger than expected.
Imagine how your accounting team works: they have desks, computers, office supplies, office space, storage, insurance, repairs, training documentation, telephones, and much more. These are called uncontrollable expenses, as they can vary greatly each month. All of these accommodations will need to be a part of your marketing team; you’ll also need to include new salaries and whatever other benefits you offer. If an employee leaves, you are stuck with lowered productivity until you are able to train a new employee to work at the same level as your past employee.
With an outsourced team, you can turn your marketing on and off like a switch—no issues with employees or balancing budget numbers. It’s simply bundled into a monthly, controllable cost that encompasses every task you need to complete. While you focus on running a successful business, an outsourced marketing team will work behind the scenes to generate a steady flow of prospects for sales and work with your clients.
Contact us to learn more about what goes into a marketing budget and how you can utilize an outsourced team to achieve your overall business goals.
