Businesses often come to us with ambitious goals. Often though, they are unsure as to how to achieve these, and how to budget their spend across various sectors.

Research by Ascend2 from December 2016 shows that the top brand objectives in order of importance are: increasing sales revenue, generating more leads, increasing website traffic, improving lead quality, improving brand awareness, automating more processes, and obtaining adequate budget. However, the report also showed that obtaining adequate budget to meet these goals was the greatest barrier. Therefore, it’s important for businesses to set realistic aims, and plan wisely. Read on for some of our tips!

 1. Select goals

Instead of setting too many goals at once, it can be more beneficial to decide upon 2-3 main goals as a starting point. You might settle on three main goals- these could be driving traffic to your website, generating awareness for your brand, and driving sales, for instance.

 2. Budget

For your marketing budget, we’d usually recommend allocating around 5-10% of your total revenue for this area. You will then need to align your budget with your two to three objectives above. What does it take to achieve each of these goals? All of these have several common denominators- they might involve spending on marketing, paid advertising, PR, creative branding, and your app and website. And then within each of these five areas, there are sub-categories to consider. Your marketing spend might include content marketing, publishing tools, paying your freelancers, and so forth, while paid advertising might include paid social media, PPC advertising, search and display, and more. As you can see, there’s an infinite amount to consider, so at this stage we’d recommend dividing each budgeting goal into a separate spreadsheet.

 3. ROI

This is where identifying your audience’s behaviour comes in. Will you gain more exposure for your brand, drive more visits, and ultimately convert if you prioritise content marketing for instance? Are your customers more receptive to organic branded videos and images, or have you seen greater success through paid advertising? Or perhaps you’re in need of a website or app redesign- after all, it’s a wasted effort trying to generate leads when your site design and usability is lacking!

 4. Be proactive

There are certain marketing tasks you can take on yourself, including spreading news about your products or services through word of mouth, and by networking at relevant events. However, we always say that a “DIY’-approach can only take you so far, which leads us to our final point…

 5. Get help

Planning your marketing and brand-building tasks can be an overwhelming process, and financially draining. We understand this, which is why we’ve designed a new service specifically to help. Now, you’ll be able to lease our services by paying in monthly instalments, letting you work out exactly what you need and when.

What are your top business priorities this year? Do you find it difficult to align your budget with your strategy? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital  and share your comments on our Facebook page.  And as ever, we’re here to help should you wish to take your business that extra mile. Please do get in touch with us: info@wearethepractice.com