For many small and local business owners drafting a digital marketing budget is actually more of a hurdle than jumping into marketing itself. This is understandable because when you’re new to the industry there is so much that you don’t know, you may not even know what to ask.
Digital marketing can include search engine optimization (SEO), paid media like Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and so much more. An established digital marketing agency like Rise Local can help you understand the digital marketing strategies available to you and offer insight into which methods perform best in your industry. Once you start a campaign and website rebuild it’s also important to monitor metrics to ensure your investment is converting. This will help inform where you put your marketing money in the future. For example, if your clientele responds well to social media and blog posts, then you should focus on that rather than pouring money into animated explainer videos and TV advertising.
The Dallas digital marketing experts at Rise Local can help develop an effective strategy and explain your baseline needs and costs. Then, once we get you ranking we can incorporate additional services to drive sales leads and help grow your business. Keep reading to learn more about how to create a digital marketing budget. Once you know how much you want to spend and what goals you have for your business we can help you make it happen.
Identify Marketing Objectives
The first and most important thing you must do is identify your marketing objectives. Establish your goals before you start throwing your money at advertising. Do you want brand awareness? Loyalty? Or do you just want to see an increase in sales? Once you know what results you hope to achieve with your ad spend, we can formulate a personalized digital marketing plan to drive those results. This will also influence what platforms and mediums we prioritize.
Review Success of Previous Campaigns
This step is for people who have already experimented with digital marketing. Maybe in the past, you were highly satisfied with your advertising campaign results. If this is the case, we’ll lean into that platform and continue utilizing that marketing strategy. After all, if something isn’t broken, why fix it? However, it’s also possible that you weren’t happy with previous digital marketing results or even previous digital marketing agencies. That’s more than okay. We don’t always find the right fit on the first go around. The information is still useful to us though. Even losses help us better understand your target market and pivot to create content and marketing strategies that will resonate with them and increase quantifiable sales. When analyzing previous ad campaigns there are some key questions you should consider:
- Which channels drive the most leads?
- Which channels have the most engagement?
- What types of media/advertising perform the best?
If you’re new to the digital marketing game you can still identify some of this information. Ultimately, you will save time and money if you just track your competitors. Are they relying on SEO or PPC? Which mediums do they prefer? How have their ad campaigns been performing? When you do some research about your competitors you can avoid making beginner mistakes and hash out the perfect digital marketing budget for your company.
Plan a Campaign and Content Needs
One thing you should consider when creating a digital marketing budget is if you just need help with on-page SEO, hosting, and ad campaigns or if you also need help with content creation. Some companies have the resources and staff capacity to take nice photos and videos, create infographics, write copy, and create any other essential media components. Others don’t. If you’re one of the latter make sure you have the budget to hire one of our field producers or put a staff member in charge to manage those needs. Or you can also rely on Rise Local’s expert content creation team to craft high-quality branded content for your website and various social media channels. We have field producers, copywriters, and graphic artists on our OpStar team experienced at building your media locker full of fresh content.
Plan a Digital Marketing Budget
Digital marketing should benefit your business, without breaking the bank. For optimal results, you should expect to spend about 7-15% of your total revenue on digital marketing services. 9-10% is right about where you want to be. It’s important to know your budget constraints ahead of time, so you don’t bite off more than you can chew. As you start to see results you’ll have more income to expand on services.
Bottom line: If you’re making significantly more money from a campaign than you put into it, lean in and don’t restrict yourself. The goal is to fill your gap in company resources to total monthly income potential first. If you are not maximizing your existing capacity you should not be focused on visibility and market-share. Your budget should be tied to your service area or office location expansion opportunities, your fleet or vehicles, and the staff you have or can quickly hire to support your endeavor.
Benefits of Digital Marketing for Local Businesses
There are numerous benefits of utilizing a digital marketing agency. Digital marketing services cost less than traditional marketing services, offer a higher ROI, drive higher-quality sales leads, offer the potential to go viral, have measurable results, and messaging can be personalized to fit different customer segmentations. If you’re ready to invest in digital marketing and get fresh eyes on your website, contact us right away. Rise Local is passionate about offering our proven digital marketing services to small businesses and local businesses across the great state of Texas.