Where to spend your marketing budget
Business growth consultant Daniel groves explores where startups should spend their marketing dollars.
When you’re looking at your finances and growing a business, there are many areas fighting for your budget. It can be difficult to know where to spend your money and where you can save it. I talked about it how to develop a financial team, but what about marketing?
Marketing is grappled with operations, accounts, sales, and many other areas that are important when running a business, with the goal of securing that budget. So presenting a strategic marketing plan and a proposed budget means that you are more likely to be able to scale within your means, while still operating with a marketing strategy that delivers results and makes it easier to map your growth. In this article, I’ll outline the best areas to spend in your marketing budget, and areas where you can be smart and cut costs when scaling a startup.
What is Marketing?
Simply put, marketing refers to the activities that promote the product, service, or goal of the business. Marketing is a big department and is responsible for many promotional channels, both online and offline. From email to social media, press and branding, and even website and SEO sometimes falls under Marketing.
So there is a lot to consider when creating your marketing strategy. It can also seem overwhelming to factor in all communication channels, as part of a startup budget. Therefore, it is important to understand the return on investment (ROI) of each channel and to set yourself key performance indicators (KPIs) that prove your results.
Allocating and managing your expenses when scaling a marketing plan for a startup will help you keep track of what is performing and what is not. You will then be able to adopt a pragmatic approach and be flexible; a big advantage when working in a start-up is not to be tied to processes and to be able to define your own strategy.
Where to spend your marketing budget
With so many facets of marketing to consider, here are our suggestions on the best ways to spend and invest your marketing dollars to get the best results and encourage the growth of your startup.
Contents
Nail your content marketing strategy is one of the best (and most profitable) ways to spend your marketing dollars and drive organic traffic to your business. While social media can also fall under the content umbrella (more on social media later), it can also cover blogs, articles, and other content written on your website.
Conduct SEO research and make sure you create compelling, keyword-rich content on topics that interest your audience. Also related to branding, having a strong tone of voice present in all of your content means that your audience can get to know the brand personality, thus increasing the chances of them connecting with you.
Social media
Social networks are important, it is undeniable. New platforms and trends emerge frequently. But don’t feel like you have to jump on all of them. Each platform is used more by certain demographics, so make sure you have a good understanding of your target audience. It can help you strive to create content that works for this platform and resonates with your audience. For example, if your audience is B2B, focus your attention on LinkedIn, rather than wasting time and money producing content for communities on TikTok. On the other hand, if your audience is younger, focus your efforts on TikTok or Instagram, and save time by avoiding Facebook or Twitter.
Although this does come with costs, the use of a social media planning tool can help free up valuable time that could be spent in other areas of the marketing team. By planning ahead, you can focus more on creating content or finding hashtags that can better inform your marketing efforts.
Email advertising
Sometimes overlooked, email marketing is actually one of the best marketing tools in terms of ROI. According to the DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2019, the return on investment of email marketing was approximately £ 42 for every £ 1 spent in 2018. Of course, that doesn’t mean that sending out a newsletter will give you these great results. Creating emails that are even open is an art in itself, not to mention emails that convert. Consolidating email flows, segmenting audiences, and performing A / B testing can help inform your email marketing strategy.
Build the perfect marketing team
Part of scaling a start-up is building a strong team. This is especially important in your marketing team. You may need to consider whether you want to hire a team or work with freelancers. If you want to build a team, do you want people with extensive marketing experience, or do you want to hire for more defined specialist roles?
Each path has its merits and its faults. Bringing in a younger team, including graduates or early-career professionals, could bring enthusiasm, ideas and knowledge of social media trends and platforms. But it might take some time to train the juniors. Although this allows you, together, to find their strong skills and develop them. Having a more experienced team can cost more upfront, for example, if you are working with consultants. However, it could mean that your strategy starts off on a solid foundation, as it will be built on years of experience.
Final thoughts
Growing a startup can be scary, and marketing can seem like a minefield when it comes to budgeting. Putting in place an informed marketing strategy with measurable results and presenting it with a tight budget can ensure that your investment not only generates a return on investment, but creates a marketing team and a continuous example of future growth.
Prioritize organic content, like blogging, take a thoughtful approach to social media, and understand the importance of a strong email marketing plan, as well as build a marketing team that can help you achieve your marketing goals. , will mean that scaling your start-up is less stressful and more efficient.
