Over our 20 years of being a UK digital marketing agency one of the most common questions asked in our consultations is which area of one’s digital marketing strategy requires the most time and attention, or which is the best value for money.
Many times, we have seen businesses pour thousands of pounds of time, effort, and ad spend into strategies unsuited for their business models. Developing a cost-effective marketing strategy isn’t easy, but with our tips, here is how to plan a budget best suited for your business.
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The first step is to have a clear understanding of your goals and what digital marketing tactics are best suited to achieve them. This allows you to figure out which strategies to invest in and which to prioritise most.
For example, if one of your goals is to increase traffic to your website, think about the means to achieve that. Tools like Google Search ads, SEO content, and influencer marketing campaigns can increase traffic, but not all businesses benefit from all three. A deep understanding of the browsing habits of your audience is crucial to choosing the right channel to increase traffic. If your audience primarily browses social media, your social media ads would take priority over SEO or Google Search Ads for bringing in traffic.
One of the most effective strategies for calculating your budget is to look back at the previous year. How well did your ppc marketing campaigns perform? Did your social media strategy bring in a lot of leads? Which area performed poorly, and is it something that would improve with more time and money?
Google Analytics 4 is perhaps the most essential tool here for helping you understand these areas, as it automatically collects demographic data. Your campaigns can also be set up to feed data into Google Analytics, letting you know exactly how many key events occurred as a result of an advert or via organic search.
Your advertising/marketing platforms will also have their own set of analytics for you to analyse the effectiveness of campaigns. One of the quickest wins to cutting unnecessary costs is by taking the axe to PPC marketing campaigns that just aren’t bringing in sales or leads. You can always return to these with better insight in the future and set yourself up for success.
Evaluating past performance also allows you to more easily allocate budgets to parts of your digital marketing strategy that are highly successful. For example, if your email campaigns are bringing in lots of sales and leads, then upgrading your email marketing platform could be the next step.
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The cost of digital marketing isn’t just from running ads or partnering with influencers. Software, time, and resources all contribute towards your costs. The cost of PPC marketing is the amount of money charged per click, as well as the time your staff spent setting up the ads, creating the visual assets, and optimising those ads as they run. Your costs may also include your subscription to creative software or image licensing fees.
This brings us to the return on investment. Depending on your business and its model, certain strategies almost always guarantee a high return on investment, such as email remarketing for ecommerce businesses. Others are a slower burn, where the return on investment is more for brand awareness than direct sales.
Ideally, you should prioritise your budget for tactics that bring in the best return on investment for the lowest costs. Then, when you have time and money to spare, you can allocate resources to the tactics less efficient on ROI, but equally important for your business.
As an award-winning UK digital marketing agency, we understand that few businesses have the time or budget for marketing software or professional photographers. Fewer have the resources to hire a dedicated marketing specialist. That’s why we created our bespoke consulting services and flexible digital marketing packages to allow businesses to pursue marketing tactics that don’t break the bank.
If you need help focusing your marketing in the right areas, or cutting down your marketing costs without sacrificing precious strategies with high return on investment, talk to us in a free consultation to see how we can help.
