Tips on Planning for your Marketing Budget

New business and the strategies you use to capture those opportunities are a direct result of your marketing. Setting aside a marketing budget and monitoring your success with it year over year can help you identify trends and strategies to maintain consistent growth. Here are some tips you may want to use as you plan your marketing budget for 2022. 

Be Methodical with Strategies

When you’re reviewing previous strategies or thinking about implementing new ones, taking the time to think them all the way through can save you a lot of difficulty down the line. Last week’s article on using the end of the year as a review to prepare for next year expands more on this. There are different steps you can take to decide if a strategy you’ve been using is worth continuing, and thoughts on how to select new strategies moving forward. 

Proof of Concept Before Ramping Up

Thinking about trying a new marketing strategy? After you’ve done the necessary fact-finding to select a potential new strategy you’d want to incorporate into your business, it’s important to walk before you run. Trialing a strategy by setting up a small, manageable, and trackable proof-of-concept run before you allocate more resources or effort from your part will let you observe the strategy in action. If it goes well, you can ramp up - if it doesn’t, you won’t have to deal with large losses.  

Know When You Can Expect Results

Spending your marketing budget is an investment in your business - it is integral when making an investment is knowing when you can expect to see returns on that investment. Depending on the strategy and your industry, the time until you see success can vary. If you’re too hasty and don’t allow enough time for your strategies, you’ll become frustrated or dismayed by your perceived lack of progress. This also means that you should have enough clients in your pipeline to maintain your business performance until the point where you do see those returns. 

Planning ahead for your marketing is vital to your business, and is one of the key factors that can take your business to the next level. By trying these tips, you’ll be that much closer to achieving your business’s full potential.