Creating an effective marketing strategy is vital in optimizing revenues. But getting there requires careful planning and some spending, especially for business-to-business (B2B) entities.
Planning a marketing budget can be quite tricky. You might end up spending too much and still get unsatisfying results.
Here’s how to maximize the impact of your marketing strategies while managing your marketing costs.
How Much Should Go To A B2B Marketing Budget?
According to a 2018 CMO survey, companies across all sectors spend an average of 11.1% of their revenues on various marketing strategies.
B2B companies generally spend lower than the average; 9.2% for product manufacturers and 8.9% for B2B service providers.
These figures, however, vary according to the needs of a specific business entity.
For example, start-ups would need higher marketing budgets to increase brand awareness, with new companies spending double the average costs to expand faster.
5 Steps In Allocating B2B Marketing Costs
Entities should customize B2B marketing costs and strategies to achieve the most significant impact with manageable spending.
Performing the following steps is key to maximizing your B2B marketing budget.
1. Set Your Marketing Goals
Setting clear goals is crucial as it helps provide a path to your business’ success. Your organization should always align marketing strategies with your goals depending on which stage you are in, your business setup, and which industry you belong to.
A few of these objectives may be the following: increasing revenue, promoting marketing qualified leads, raising brand awareness, recruiting more subscribers, etc.
After assessing your current performance and their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, you can determine your marketing needs.
2. Align Your B2B Budget With Your Objectives
Now that you have a clear idea of what you need to improve on and which areas you can explore, identify which marketing strategies are likely effective in achieving them.
Instead of writing all your business goals in a year, consider being more specific and dividing them within a particular time frame.
For instance, you may want to have a 5% increase in sales for the first quarter and a 10% increase by the end of the year. Being more specific can help you project your budget better.
3. Identify Which Marketing Strategies Are Proven Impactful
Because of the significant role of digital technology in the modern era, most companies have shifted to digital marketing methods.
It may be a daunting task for newly formed businesses to determine which schemes work, but with careful planning and due diligence, you’ll be able to learn a few methods that work for you.
In 2020, global marketers identified both content marketing and marketing automation as the most effective digital strategy.
The two methods tied in the first place at 17.4% each. Big data (15.3%), artificial intelligence (12.9%), and social media marketing (7.8%) complete the rest of the top performers, according to Statista.com.
Other digital marketing methods include conversion rate optimization, paid search marketing, mobile marketing, and search engine optimization.
4. Create A Marketing Plan
Build a marketing activity plan after creating your objectives and identifying which marketing methods you’ll utilize for your business.
Each campaign should lay out the marketing strategies and key performance indicators for every goal.
Doing this can help maximize your budget by using targeted campaigns and, later, specific marketing strategies.
There’s one caveat, though; apart from aligning business objectives and marketing strategies, businesses must know their potential audience or market well to make the plan more effective.
5. Determine How Much Your Planned Marketing Campaign Costs
There are a few ways in which businesses can successfully implement their marketing campaign.
Depending on the complexity of the strategies and the organization’s current resources, an in-house marketing team, individual freelancers, or a digital marketing firm can run specific marketing campaigns.
Each option has its advantages and downsides, so study each option carefully.
- Freelancers: Hiring these individuals can reduce your marketing costs, being that you’ll pay them on a project basis. Some professionals, however, may have to be paid more because of their advanced skills and experience.
- In-house: If you have a team of marketers, you don’t need to spend too much on your campaign, as your team members will be responsible for running your marketing campaign.
- Digital marketing company: A professional team of marketers may cost higher than the other options, depending on how long you’re hiring them for. In terms of results, though, a marketing firm can deliver the best results.
The Bottom Line
While businesses can look at their competitors to analyze how they’re handling their marketing campaigns, it’s always best to customize each strategy based on their needs and objectives.
An established company will have different needs compared to a start-up company.
Developing a clear and specific strategy helps organizations maximize their marketing budget. And as marketing strategies aren’t static, they should be visited and reviewed periodically.
Each scheme must be evaluated and tweaked or improved, as necessary.
Jonathon Spire
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