Online marketing budget planning
How to plan your 2023 marketing budget according to the latest online trends?
We’re in the midst of planning next year’s marketing budget, everyone is increasingly pressed for time and in the current economic climate it’s more important than ever to make the best use of the scarce resources available to us. With so many options online, which one should you choose? How to allocate your marketing budget properly? What are the current online trends? Which tool is right for which purpose? What should I consider?
We’ve looked at the industry’s key statistics to answer these questions.
Why is marketing budgeting important?
It is not difficult to see that without planning, we are shooting sparrows with a cannon. We have plenty of options, but our time and resources are limited. So a conscious budget plan will force us to think about our priorities and allocate the money we have between the many channels. In addition, over time, we can keep track of where we are against our planned targets, what is performing well and what detail needs to be rethought?
Conscious marketing budget planning
Marketers and business leaders know that digital marketing is the future of their business.
Unfortunately, to make a digital marketing strategy work, it’s not enough to create it once, you need to keep up to date with the latest trends. This is an industry that is evolving at a tremendous pace day by day, even hour by hour, and businesses need to adapt to these changes if they want to remain competitive.
Ultimately, we need to spend our marketing budget on activities that will help us achieve our goals. But what do we want to achieve in 2023?
- To increase sales?
- Grow our email list?
- Increase brand awareness?
- More customers?
- Better customer relationship and follow-up?
- More effective customer retention strategy?
These are just a few of the countless other destinations. But how do we choose between them? Obviously all goals are important, but we must prioritise. It’s worth reviewing your marketing activities in previous years and looking at where you have lost hard-won customers, as that is where you need to intervene. What has worked and what hasn’t and why?
We also need to identify our business objective. Knowing the projected revenues for 2023, we can determine the number of enquiries and sales needed to achieve them. But whatever our business goal, our website is one of the most important tools we have to achieve it, so we need to invest time and money in developing our online presence.
So what should our digital marketing budget be in 2023? One that promotes growth and helps us outperform our competitors.
But should we really spend money on marketing in a global recession?
The short answer is yes.
The longer answer is that it is even more important than usual not to neglect this area, because in order to grow your business when the economy is not performing well, you need new customers and to retain existing customers. We have written about this in more detail in this article.
What are the global trends to consider?
It is common practice to set the marketing budget as a percentage of turnover. This figure varies between 5 and 25%. If a company’s goal is to maintain its market position, it typically allocates between 2 and 10% of its planned revenue to marketing. If the goal is growth, perhaps the launch of a new product or service, the same range is 15-25%.
This percentage allows the company’s marketing activities to be scaled to growth objectives and build an appropriate funnel to support sales.
As a general rule of thumb, B2C businesses should spend at least 10% of their annual revenue on marketing.
Today, 58% of CMOs report that their internal teams lack the skills to execute their strategy. High turnover and skills shortages are forcing many to look for outsourced marketing partners, particularly in the areas of marketing data and analytics, customer insights, customer journeys and marketing technology.
Key aspects of the 2023 marketing strategy
1. The amount of time consumers spend online has increased a lot compared to recent years.
Due to the pandemic and related closures, consumers have become accustomed to using the internet to shop as well as search, and this has not changed with the resurgence of personal working and shopping. We have written more about the related statistics in this article. This digital transformation will fundamentally shape our marketing strategy for 2023. In recent years, paid search and social media sites have provided the opportunity for growth.
2. The effectiveness of digital marketing is determined by the number of enquiries you receive.
Businesses are spending more and more time understanding and tracking their results. Reporting and analytics platforms are being used to accurately measure the effectiveness of advertising.
One example is Google Analytics 4, which is a key task for businesses to implement.
3. Digital marketing costs are constantly increasing.
In search marketing, ever-increasing competition and demand is driving up prices and this increase is expected to remain permanent until 2024. Ongoing search engine optimisation will become increasingly important to keep the fees per click as low as possible.
4. Analytics and ROI measurement are a priority.
Thanks to the digital transformation, we have more and more data available electronically, which is increasingly challenging to clean, organise, maintain and reuse effectively. Aggregating information from the myriad of data sources available is a huge task that requires professional skills and software knowledge.
We need to manage our CRM data in one place with the information we extract from social media, the knowledge we gain from email marketing and the facts we accumulate on our website.
Curious about your company’s ROI/ROAS data? Find out easily with our free calculator.
5. Collecting first party data
With the rapidly expanding GDPR regulations that everyone must comply with, Google is phasing out third-party cookies, making it increasingly important for companies to collect their own information and data about customers and prospects.
6. Content marketing strategy
Keeping your customers informed about news and updates about your product, service or company is an important element of customer retention and brand loyalty. Video content is increasingly in demand and we need to share up-to-date news and updates with our followers on our social media platforms. Existing content needs to be constantly updated and refreshed to ensure that consumers are exposed to current, real content everywhere.
7. User experience
Google is increasingly focusing on user experience when ranking websites. Core Web Vitals is a catch-all term for core web experiences such as loading speed, interactivity and visual stability. If you haven’t heard of this term before, it’s definitely worth looking into.
8. Automation
The technical possibilities are endless when it comes to automation. Automation can help you improve the efficiency of your sales process and therefore your marketing.
9. CRM
Nowadays, a good customer relationship management system can not only manage the contact details of our customers, but also store characteristics of potential customers’ behaviour: how they found us, what emails they opened, what content they consumed, what forms they filled in before choosing us.
10. Conversion optimisation
A good conversion rate plays a huge role in achieving sales targets. It is useless to drive sufficient traffic to your website if those visitors do not subsequently perform the actions you want them to perform. They don’t make a purchase, subscribe to the newsletter or request an offer. By analysing the customer lifecycle, we can find the critical points and increase our revenues with a well-developed conversion strategy.
Marketing budget planning step by step
1. Analysis of the current sales funnel/process
2. Determine the digital costs
3. Review of previous year / period results
4. Study international trends, statistics
5. Competitor analysis
6. Setting targets
7. Establish the methodology to achieve the objectives
8. Determine the online tools to be used
9. Determine the expected costs
10. Drawing up a marketing plan
Pro tips
- All our decisions should be data-driven
- Measure the results
- Pay attention to ROI
- Constantly optimise the system
- Work with a professional team
Concluding thoughts
As you plan your marketing budget for 2023, keep in mind that all your tools need to work as a whole to deliver the right customer experience, satisfaction and therefore the expected revenue. Every dollar of the available marketing budget must be spent in a way that achieves the goals we have set ourselves. Let’s rely on the data and statistics we have. The future lies in digitalisation, so if you feel that there is room for improvement in this area, don’t hesitate to go down this road.
If you need help in developing your digital marketing strategy and want to entrust your company’s success to a good team of experts, don’t hesitate to contact us.
If you need professional support for your digital marketing activities, do not hesitate to contact us!
Sources used
https://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/how-much-budget-for-online-marketing
https://www.rickwhittington.com/blog/budget-for-digital-marketing
https://www.launchteaminc.com/blog/marketing-budget-planning-for-2023
https://www.truelogic.com.ph/blog/maximize-your-digital-marketing-budget-in-2023