A digital marketing budget is made up of different types of investments and we often don't consider these when creating our annual plan. This can cause them to go outside of an established limit, not to achieve results due to lack of funding and to completely derail the tactical plan. It is important to start by establishing the strategic course of digital marketing to determine beforehand what is required to achieve the expected objectives. For that you must always start with the definition of a strategic plan .
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The definition of your budget should start from this strategic plan, clearly knowing what you need in each area. The amount of your investment will vary, of course, based on your first analysis: what is your level of maturity in the digital environment? From here we start to define two critical variables, the optimal level of maturity and the rate at which we are going to achieve it. We cannot have a too slow pace hoping that that defined time to reach an optimal level of maturity is not going to move, on the one hand. On the other hand, we cannot have a too fast pace without considering a large investment, especially having a long way to go (when the level of maturity is low).
Many things affect, as you can see, but I want to list the main components that make up a digital marketing budget.
1. SPECIFIC SKILLS (HUMAN RESOURCES)
Specific skills are required to be able to manage and implement a tactical digital marketing plan. It is clear, of course, that at the beginning we will not have specific roles for each action. There may be an expert for an endless number of categories within digital marketing (you can not imagine how many roles there are), however, we can start by having the necessary basic skills. A person can, at the beginning, have several roles (the famous use of multiple hats) and not be an expert in all but gradually develop knowledge.
You have two options: develop a team internally or outsource it. They are two extremely different paths that achieve the same goal, each direction has its advantages and disadvantages. It can also be a mix of this, where at the beginning you are accompanied and developing together with an external team (expert) and eventually you internalize it.
In my point of view, you can start with 5 basic roles (these can be mixed in the same person, but my goal is to emphasize that this is not a task for a single person).
- Strategist (Normally the leader of the marketing department), it is important at the management level to have developed the capacity for "Support and Managerial Convincing" of the maturity model.
- Content Marketer this is a full time role and no, the marketing team leader does not have time for this. He is a person experienced in creating content.
- Marketing Coordinator this person is responsible for the execution of the tactics.
- Web Designer / Developer to be able to continually improve your site and adapt to the needs of your users.
- New Business Development ( Business Development Rep.) This person must be able to collaborate in the marketing department effectively in order to capitalize on the effort in managing prospects and translate them into sales.
Finally, something to consider. When you are looking to outsource, you should consider that there are still internal roles that you should consider. Outsourcing a team through an agency must become an alliance. Usually what they can bring to the table is a package of tools and technology that you will not always be able to hire from the start. Which brings me to my next component.
2. DIGITAL TOOLS
The digital tools could be a chapter by itself (I think in fact all the components could be but I will try to summarize it in the best possible way).
Integrating an investment amount for your platforms requires first knowing what tools your team currently has and which ones will really allow you to do certain things:
- Run
- To size
- To integrate
Something that you should also consider is the capacity of your team. What specific skills do they have and which ones they can develop in the short, medium term to really maximize the use of the platforms they select.
There is a world of technologies within marketing, sales and services to connect with each other. In fact, the Martech conference focuses on talking about all the new technologies that have emerged year after year. Starting as Martech 5000 is now Martech 50000. Hence the premise of building a martech stack , which will allow you to gain visibility into how all the departments of the organization connect with their technology to really achieve the execution of your digital strategy.
They can be tools from MailChimp, Unbounce, some simple Wordpress plug-in, Zoom to even something more robust like Salesforce.
On the other hand, there are “All-In-One” tools or platforms, which are the famous suites that contain a bit of everything. There are different types of platforms in this area, which are those that within the same platform already have all the modules or suites that have their add-ons or tools that are integrated to work as one.
Some examples of these are HubSpot, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Eloqua, etc.
3. ADVERTISING OR PPC
Advertising is often thought of as the main channel or the main component of the execution of our digital marketing strategy. We do not actually consider this channel to be one that we should regard as an accelerator. We do not always require such a large budget to really be doing digital marketing and in fact the goal is not to depend on it. If it is always important because it allows you to position yourself, and in digital channels unlike traditional advertising media, you always have a way to analyze and measure the return on investment.
It is important here to analyze and learn about the channels of greatest interest to our audience. Knowing our audience is the first step to be able to do PPC effectively. This is not just turning on and placing an ad on google ads or facebook ads and hoping it works. Here we must consider 3 things:
- Who are we addressing
- How We Get Your Attention
- Where we want to take it
4. CONTENT
The content can be integrated within the HR component, however it is important to break it down as one in order to gain visibility into the amount of content that we are going to produce. Especially since this is not always (in fact never) an activity that can be carried out by a single person.
We must consider designers for everything that has to do with graphic elements, editors, writers, video production, etc. Are we going to produce everything in-house? What type of content are we going to outsource and what type of content are we not? What will be the way in which we collaborate if we subcontract it to be able to transfer internal knowledge? Frequency of publications, among other things, are what we must consider to build this investment amount.
5. Maintenance of your website (Growth Driven Design)
Your website is never finished. That is something that not many people are willing to accept. How often is the ideal to redesign a site? I'm going to tell you something, as often as possible. This is why your site is not an external tool for marketing, if you do not think that marketing should have the ability to edit texts, add elements, new sections or menus, you are wrong. Your website is no longer the way it used to be, it is no longer a digital brochure that simply said who you are. Now this is your salesperson working 24/7 and just as your salespeople must become experts and be constantly learning about what you can do to help them, so must your website. This should answer all the questions that your potential buyers ask.
One of the benefits that you obtain when outsourcing to an agency is that it already has a journey with other clients to start. Especially when you are in an early stage of maturation consider this. The agency also brings technologies that can be part of your martech stack that we often put aside for the cost-benefit of using it only for one organization. An example is keyword analysis tools, digital positioning, collaboration, etc.
They are different paths but they are still good, it all depends on where you want to go, how you want to get there and when.
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Pakistan's biggest real estate developer
Pakistan's biggest real estate developer
Pakistan's biggest real estate developer ever