“There is no budget planning that fits all, plan wisely according to your needs.”

According to the digital Marketing Dialog Survey, the majority (63%) of marketers now see digital marketing as having a high or very high level of strategic importance within the organization. Moreover, more than three-quarters of the respondents (78%) said they planned to increase their budget for digital marketing. The main reason is that respondents stated that digital marketing programs are gaining traction because they are less costly, quicker, more comfortable to implement, quantify, and analyze than traditional marketing campaigns. Knowing the importance of digital marketing without the right knowledge on how to properly allocate your marketing budget is faulty. Without the right budget, you may not be able to appropriately execute the marketing strategies and tactics that can attract and retain customers and clients.

First thing first, building a marketing budget plan starts by setting a standard percentage of revenue (3%-5%). The percentage varies depending on your business/startups objectives; how much the company needs to grow and how many potential clients or customers that they want to equate. An excellent digital marketing budget plan revolves around points below.

Software, Platform & Tools Budget

Digital marketing involves many activities, including a hundreds of option of software, platform or tools that marketers can use to support their activities. These are some common software or tools that are usually become an expense priority in annual budget plan:

  • Website
  • Design & Development tools
  • Communication tools
  • File Management tools
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Landing Page & Form
  • CRM system

Marketing Team Cost

A marketing team is most likely to be considered as the front-line of the business/startups. The team should consist of a marketing strategist, content writing, and a graphic designer/web developer. Hiring those key roles certainly can cover your marketing business activities, but your marketing team possibly contains more experts, it depends on the company’s goals, needs and budget supports. You can hire them as employee (internal team), contractors or freelancers. Each has a different payment method, detailed below.

Hiring Freelance

Every business will always need some support; hiring a freelancer can be one of the ideal solutions. A Freelancer usually won’t be paid as high as the jobholder, which can be very beneficial for the company. Being said, a company should first built the core team before they hire a freelancer. Freelance comes as an option to be paid per hour or per project. Freelancer is cheaper and offer you more flexibility, but on the other side is also has a riskier output due to the nature of their flexibility.

Hiring Agency

Hiring an agency can be useful if you are objectively searching for growth over the long-term. Most agencies have the knowledge and training resources already, that will eliminate the unnecessary cost. By hiring agencies, it will cost your business/startups more (compared to hire a new employee), but less risk since new employee would cost you the learning curve. Agency can be instrumental in completing the task effectively and efficiently. Hourly/daily pays are what the agency will ask.

Hiring Consultant

Consultant offers expertise in specific areas and will help your team put the processes and boundaries in place to perform them without their help eventually. They can also be a boost to current department growth and learning. Hiring a consultant can be an excellent solution to give unique perspectives and guidance to the business/startups. A consultant usually involves through half the project or even the entire process that can be paid per hour or milestone depends on the initial agreement.

Paid marketing revolves around SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SMM (Social Media Marketing). Investing in SEM means that you’re paying for the spotlight in any search engine; for example, Google’s search engine result page. Paid SMM also uses your ad dollars to pushes messages to highly targeted audiences. Almost every social network like youtube and Instagram offer the type of ads to a selected user. SMM differs with SEM because the ads resonance without any needs of the user to search the needed keywords.

Knowing how to execute digital marketing budget plan properly isn’t enough. Every business/startups should understand that there is no simple theory about what’s right or wrong, but you should come with the question of “What do I need and what might be useful for my business/startups?”. Just beware on hidden cost and remember where your priorities lie.

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References:

https://search.proquest.com/docview/209426530/64810E4277E24BDCPQ/7?accountid=44931

https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/what-to-include-in-your-marketing-budget-1

https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/what-to-include-in-your-marketing-budget-talent

https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/what-to-include-in-your-marketing-budget-paid-ads