Optimize Your Digital Marketing Budget

Digital marketing is a complex subject. Made up of many parts and pieces it’s tough for business owners to understand and even tougher to create strategies that will work efficiently. In such a noisy digital world, we’re being pulled in so many directions and told we need to complete a variety of online marketing tasks to be successful. Social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, Remarketing, Local Targeting, Pay Per Click Ads, Content Marketing, Reputation Management, the list goes on. Trying to do too much often leads to overspending and disappointment. If this sounds familiar, don’t worry. We have some excellent ways to optimize your digital marketing budget so you can get back on the path to success.

Know Your Goals

It’s critical that you have a complete understanding of what you are trying to accomplish this year, in three years, and even 5 years from now. This gives you a solid foundation on which you can make concrete decisions. The truth is, not all digital marketing tactics are required to meet your goals. Heck, some goals don’t even require marketing at all. Start by sitting down and outlining your goals. From there investigate then implement marketing tactics that support those goals. In the end, you’ll be spending your money much more wisely.

Review Your Current Strategy

Would it surprise you if I told you 100% of the clients we’ve worked with that had an existing digital marketing strategy were spending a portion of their digital marketing budget on something that wasn’t working? Pay per click ads targeting the wrong area. Facebook ads not reaching their target market. Websites optimized for keywords no one was searching. Even companies targeting customers outside of their service area. We’ve seen a lot.

Whenever we talk to these clients we always find this happens for one of three reasons. They didn’t understand the strategy they were using. They were trying everything hoping something worked. Or they were so busy they blindly trusted someone else to bring them results. Don’t fall victim to these things. Instead, review your existing marketing strategy and make sure you understand what it involves. If you don’t, ask questions. Any reputable marketing agency will thoroughly explain your strategies and answer your questions.

Focus on What Works

Not all marketing tactics were created equally and not all of them perform the same either. During your campaign, you should be tracking the ROI and overall success of your tactics individually. What were the results of your last Facebook Ad spend? Did it move toward your goal? Was it worth it? By doing so you can easily see which tactics are doing well and which ones are not. To optimize your budget, simply start cutting or reducing your efforts in the tactics that are not doing well. If you want to take it a step further use the funds and time acquired from your tactic reductions to boost the ones that are performing well. Continue to do this every couple of months during your campaign. Constantly improving your budget and overall performance.

Use Marketing Tools

The capabilities and information within marketing software have continued to grow over the past decade at a surprising rate. Use this to your advantage. From marketing automation to social media management to keyword research there are programs to help you in every step of your marketing process. Many of those programs can even automate tasks helping save you time and effort. But be careful. With such a wide variety of tools available it’s extremely easy to purchase a bunch that you don’t need. Take some time to research the tools before you buy them. There is plenty of information online to get you started. From there talk to experts or other business owners to gather their experiences. Finally, most software has a free trial or demo. Take advantage of those before you decide.

Stay Consistent and See It Through

All marketing takes consistent effort over time to yield results. We’ve seen a lot of companies waste money and time bouncing around from strategy to strategy hoping one of them works. Don’t do that. Stay consistent. Most marketing doesn’t work overnight. When you quit or change strategies without giving them time to play out it adds confusion to your brand message. Others that see your marketing will wonder what happened and maybe question if you’re a reputable company. After all, if you didn’t see your marketing through, what will you do when working with them?

We use the strategies outlined above with all our marketing clients and truly believe they are the quickest way to see success with your digital marketing strategy. There are other aspects we will explore in our articles, though we feel these are the most important. I understand some of them can be complex or difficult to understand. If you find yourself unsure and questioning your current digital marketing budget, ask for help. Uncertainty and lack of understanding is by far the most common path toward wasting money.