When your marketing strategy reaches the end of its calendar year, it’s time to review your results and set your marketing budget for the year ahead.
Setting an effective marketing budget is an important task for every business and it should be reviewed annually to make sure you are getting the most value out of it.
Here are some tips to help review your next marketing budget:
1. Analyse your previous marketing budget
Analysing your previous marketing budget might seem obvious, but do you know what to look for?
The first thing to do is compare your previous marketing targets against the results and see how they performed in terms of return on investment (ROI).
Break your results down into the different marketing activities, so that you can see how much of your budget was allocated to each category and how they performed individually.
Look at how much capacity you have for new business or products, weighing up whether you need to sell more products and if there are opportunities that still exist in your market.
It also helps to look back and determine what the average cost of a lead and a sale was for the year.
Consider who has been carrying out your marketing strategy, how many hours are spent on marketing and whether there are enough resources allocated to it.
Think about how your market or sector has changed since the start of the strategy and whether the assumptions that you made at the beginning still stand.
2. Set new goals
After reviewing the results of the previous year, it’s time to get down to business and set your marketing objectives for the coming year.
Start at the top level of your strategy and assess whether your general marketing goals are still the same as the prior year.
For example, are you trying to grow your sales or keep things consistent this year?
Perhaps you need to adjust your goals to changing market forces or set goals to help you get ahead of the rest of the market.
Other strategies may include better educating prospective customers, pushing into new markets or introducing new products and services.
From here, adjust your budget allocation to your marketing activities accordingly – add new activities or cut underperformers from the schedule.
When you’re planning out your future strategy, don’t forget to note any mistakes made in the previous year and any lessons learned along the way.
3. Prepare for unexpected costs
Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how well you plan something, there is always the possibility of a surprise change of plan.
Your marketing budget will face unexpected situations too, so it’s best to be prepared.
Creating a cushion or an emergency fund in your marketing budget can help tackle those surprises, whether you set aside a little bit each month or arrange a one-off lump sum from the start.
Alternatively, get a rough idea of which budget items you can sacrifice to reallocate funds in the case of an emergency.
Want to get more value from your marketing budget?
Each business has different marketing needs and there is no standard approach to setting a marketing budget, however there are key factors that will help you reach a figure that works for your business.
If you need help forming a marketing strategy or need some advice on your marketing budget, Assemblo can help.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne that can help with a single aspect of your marketing plan or oversee an entire strategy and act like an outsourced marketing department.
To learn more, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via our contact form below.