Calculate a Digital Marketing Budget That Makes Sense for Your Company

Digital marketing isn’t for just one “type” of company. It offers significant flexibility, making it ideal for businesses both small and large across every industry and vertical; however, it involves a lot of planning and strategic thinking before jumping in. Digital marketing expands your reach and, when utilized correctly, the possibilities are practically endless.

But, even with endless possibilities, it is important to identify:

• What are your core business objectives?
• Who are you targeting?
• What is the competition doing?
• What is the return on investment (ROI) you need to make digital advertising viable?
  • Be aware driving sales can be easier to calculate ROI vs. the value of brand awareness
  • Does your offering have a higher lifetime value or is it a product-based, one-time sale?

In some instances, even a small budget (if deployed properly) can go a long way when it comes to providing results.

In order to determine the budget that makes sense for your company, we suggest the following exercises.

• Identify your Business Objectives – It is important to identify what the goal is for your campaign. If you want to generate online sales, the campaign will look a lot different than if your desired outcome is lead generation or to build your brand.
• Conduct Market Research – A key to understanding how your campaign should be structured, and as a comparison point with which to measure the campaign’s success, it is imperative to conduct a competitive analysis and benchmarking study of your competitors.
• Identify & Prioritize your Target Audiences –Messaging and calls-to-action will vary based on the make-up of your different audience segments so it is important to understand:
  • Who they are (even create personas for your unique audience types)
  • Where they spend time (what is the right channel to reach them?)
  • What messaging and creative will resonate (the beauty of digital advertising is that we can be more personalized and have more one-to-one relationships with users through digital)
    • What do we want the user to do – what is the action we want to drive?

Remember, in some cases the value of different audiences will vary, so it is key to prioritize and understand the level of impact these users can have for your organization

• Map your Sales Cycle – What are you selling?  What is the profit margin? Is it easy to transact online? Are you selling primarily offline with a consultative approach? What is the value of a customer? One-time or lifetime? Understanding these questions is key to constructing a map of your sales cycle.

Once this exercise is complete, we can begin to visualize an equation that is right for your business – rooted in the data / metrics – and will have the most impact on your audiences. Here at Media Genesis, our marketing team has refined this process. We conduct these exercises, tailored specifically to our clients, to identify the following equation:

• (Value of Customer) / (Cost of Acquisition) = ROI

For example, if the lifetime value of a customer is $5,000, and it costs you $500 to acquire that customer then you have a 10x return on investment.

• • Often when we reach this level of understanding within digital advertising, it becomes easier to dial up the spend as the math simply makes sense for the business.
  • Digital marketing is so auditable, which provides clarity as to what a marketing budget is providing the business in terms of return on investment.

This Seems Like A Lot

If you are thinking to yourself, “this seems like a lot,” we understand. A successful marketing campaign takes a lot of work to set up and constant oversight and optimization. But there is good news: you don’t need to do it alone! Media Genesis would be happy to walk you through your options and help you determine the digital marketing route that is best for your company. We have years of experience across multiple verticals and we would love to put that knowledge to work for you.

For more information on how we can help, or with inquiries about digital marketing in general, reach out to us by phone at (248) 687-7888 or by email at inquiry@mediaG.com.