How To Figure Out Precisely How Much To Spend On Online Marketing In 2017

Posted by Jake Baadsgaard

“Put together an online marketing budget.” It seems like a simple enough task, but when you get right down to it, planning a marketing budget is definitely easier said than done.

If you’re like a lot of people, when you finally get around to working on your marketing budget, you might fumble through your notes with sweaty palms, cross your fingers and hope that everything works, since you’re basically just following your 5th-grade home economics instructions to “Describe your usual weekly/monthly/yearly expenses.”

Alternatively, you may confidently throw out promising figures, but have no strategy to make them happen, like a magician shouting “See how I saw our budget in half! But don’t worry folks, the profits will magically remain unharmed!”

But a marketing budget is neither a description of last year’s spending, nor is it fiscal hocus pocus. Or at least it shouldn’t be. A good marketing budget is a detailed plan meant to help you maintain profit and achieve specific aims.

This kind of budget is not only easy to explain and justify, it actually makes a difference—driving an entire year of campaign choices.

How do you build this kind of budget? Let’s take a look.

Money MattersA marketing budget is not a description of your normal spending—it’s a plan for better spending. And, just like any good business plan, your marketing budget needs to start with your revenue goals.
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Now, this may not be the way you’re used to handling your marketing. Most businesses (and marketers) tend to focus on metrics such as impressions and clicks, but a budget is a financial statement of money in and money out. Clicks in and of themselves don’t make you money, they cost you money.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2016/12/27/how-to-figure-out-precisely-how-much-to-spend-on-online-marketing-in-2017/#469242905229