How to Allocate a Budget for Digital Marketing

How to Allocate a Budget for Digital Marketing

 

We all know that money is essential to assist in the growth of any business. So, it’s important to stick to a well-informed budget across all areas of spending in your business. However, sometimes it’s not clear how to allocate that budget, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

Companies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on marketing each year. This article will help you discover how to allocate a budget for digital marketing to yield better results, whilst still having the freedom to invest in newer methods of marketing.

Identifying your marketing goals

Without a clear digital marketing strategy and budget, you can easily lose out on finding and keeping the customers that you need to keep the business growing and thriving. It is wise to first zoom out and look at what it is that you want to achieve so that the next steps you take are well-informed and goal orientated. What does success look like for you?

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are short-term goals that are a specific measure that helps indicate the success of a business’ specific goals. Before allocating a budget toward your marketing plan, it’s vital to identify what those goals are. Are you looking for:

–         An increase in the traffic to your website?

–         An increase in the growth of subscriptions?

–         An increase in brand awareness?

–         An increase in the retention on video content?

–         An increase in revenue from your digital marketing efforts?

There are so many different areas to look at when determining your goals, but once that is clear, then the allocation of each penny you spend will have a purpose behind it. As a profit orientated company, return on investment (ROI) driven decisions will be the leading tenet to bringing both you and the customers you serve the most value.

 

Research and Competitor analysis

 

The next steps in allocating budget for digital marketing is carrying out market research by comparing the budget spend of competitors in your industry. The general marketing activities of those in your industry tends to be a clear indicator as to what areas should be invested in. Are your competitors investing heavily into search engine optimization? Are they investing in an NFT campaign to stay ahead of the growth of WEB3? They might even be looking into focusing their budget on video campaigns and other forms of content creation.

Find out what works for your competitors and how they are currently allocating their budget. However, before copying and pasting their total marketing budget plan, make sure to identify their goals and whether they align with yours first. There’s no benefit in allocating your marketing budget based on your competitors marketing budget when you both have different finish lines in mind.

 

How to allocate a budget for digital marketing: 70/20/10 approach

 

After going through the process of identifying your own goals and then carrying out competitor research, you probably want to look at implementing practical strategies in allocating your budget. A well-known way to break down your marketing spend budget is something called the 70/20/10 method.

70% of your budget should be spent on the long term strategies that you know will yield back a return on investment. These are the basic strategies that already work. For some, this could be used on social media marketing, content marketing, and so on.

20% of your budget should be spent on investing in newer strategies that you haven’t used to grow your audience before. You never know what methods can bring back a better return on investment if you never try.

With that last 10%, you could use this to take a lot more risks and test cutting edge methods. For instance, you may look at doing paid social media ads, or start creating content for a newer social media platform that you have never used before.

You could even use that 10% to start investing in marketing software such as marketing automation platforms to help clean up your marketing across all your channels. This automation will help you manage every aspect of every campaign all from one place, creating a swift and easy process.

 

How to allocate a budget for digital marketing: Keep it flexible.

 

An advertising expenditure forecast created by Zenith found that ‘Digital advertising will account for over 60% of global ad spend in 2022’. In this economy, it’s impossible to ignore digital marketing and advertising without it resulting in getting left far behind. The digital landscape is constantly evolving and growing on the day to day regardless, so, it’s vital to be able to stay flexible and open-minded when allocating budget and revenue on marketing.

Consider changing your budget plan month to month or quarter to quarter instead of sticking to a rigid, yearlong budget plan. Remember that, even though you are in control of where the money goes, your customers and industry dictate what’s right to spend money on.

Areas of marketing to consider:

–         SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

–         PPC (Pay per click ads)

–         Email Marketing

–         Social Media

–         Web design

–         Influencer marketing

–         Digital Events and PR

–         Digital assets and NFTs

 

Staying flexible enough to be able to mould to the best ways to market is a key to allocating your budget. At Bark Street Digital, we are digital marketing experts that specialise in SEO based content, social media management and Web design. If your business is looking for guidance in these areas, contact us today for a consultation and we can look at aligning your marketing strategies with your goals.

 

How can Bark Street Digital help?

 

As you will now be aware, determining the allocation for your digital marketing budget is important for business growth. Our online marketing team can help you get started and guide you step by step so that you can understand your customers better and make significant changes to your business. 

We specialise in both business to business and business to consumer marketing strategies.

We can help you implement both inbound and outbound marketing techniques to help you retain customers and reach new audiences. 

If you have any questions, please get in touch by calling 01204 263028 or by completing our Contact Us form.

You can find out more about the services we offer at Bark Street Digital by checking out the Our Services page.

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A practical framework for how to Allocate a Budget for Digital Marketing

A useful marketing strategy is a set of choices rather than a long list of channels. It identifies who the business most wants to reach, what those people need before they can act and how each activity supports a commercial objective. That focus keeps time and budget directed towards work that can be evaluated and improved.

Start with the customer and the commercial goal

Write down the specific customer you want to attract, the problem they are trying to solve and the action you want them to take. This prevents how to Allocate a Budget for Digital Marketing from becoming a disconnected task. Review the language customers use in calls, enquiries, reviews and search data. It often reveals concerns that a generic keyword list misses.

Next, define the commercial outcome. More traffic can be useful, but qualified enquiries, booked appointments, suitable applications or sales are clearer measures of value. Agree what a good enquiry looks like and make sure the page or campaign answers the questions that usually prevent that person from acting.

Build evidence and clarity into the experience

People need reasons to believe a claim. Use accurate service details, transparent explanations, relevant examples, genuine reviews and clear contact information. Avoid unsupported superlatives. If evidence is not available, explain the process and the standards used instead of inventing a result. This creates a more trustworthy experience and gives the content substance.

Structure also matters. Lead with a direct answer, then develop the detail under descriptive headings. Use examples where they improve understanding, connect related pages with useful internal links and remove anything that exists only to repeat a phrase. A reader should be able to scan the page and still understand its main recommendation.

Measure, learn and improve

Create a simple baseline before making changes. Record the relevant visibility, engagement and enquiry measures, then review them on a regular schedule. Look for patterns over time rather than treating a single week as a verdict. Where possible, compare lead quality as well as volume so growth does not come at the expense of relevance.

Improvement should be deliberate. Test one meaningful change, such as a clearer proposition, a stronger answer to a common objection or a simpler enquiry path. Keep what helps and document what you learn. Revisit the content when services, customer questions or evidence change. This approach keeps how to Allocate a Budget for Digital Marketing accurate and useful without chasing every short-lived trend.

Common mistakes to avoid

Do not copy a competitor's plan without understanding its audience, authority or budget. Avoid publishing vague content that could belong to any business, and do not hide the next step behind unnecessary friction. It is also important not to confuse activity with progress. A full calendar or a longer report is not valuable unless it supports better decisions and better-fit enquiries.

Finally, allow enough time to learn. Strong marketing compounds when useful pages, clear messages and reliable measurement work together. Review the strategy regularly, but do not abandon a sound direction because of normal short-term variation. The objective is a dependable source of visibility and demand that supports the wider business.