How to spend your marketing budget wisely in 2020

Setting up a marketing budget for your small business used to take a lot of guesswork. Simply trying out different marketing activities to see what works is now a thing of the past.

In 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses must adapt to new regulations. The unstructured approach to digital marketing by trial and error no longer works.

The US Small Business Administration suggests that businesses spend 7% to 8% of their total revenue on marketing. In this article, we’ll share how small business owners can learn how to spend their marketing budget to grow their business in 2020 and beyond. Specifically, this article will lay out the proposed formulations for digital marketing budgets.

Advertising costs (also known as advertising costs) on paid channels

Media spend is dollars spent on paid digital marketing channels; is the amount of money spent on displaying ads on digital platforms. This includes the placement of ads on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. It can also include PPC ad platforms like Google and Bing.

In these ads, you pay per click or view every time a potential customer sees one of your ads on these channels.

Companies should expect to spend between 20% and 40% of their total digital marketing budget on paid media channels. This is necessary to fuel your acquisition and retargeting campaigns.

The share spent on media tends to increase for B2C companies that need to spend a lot more money on displaying digital ads in order to reach more customers. For B2B companies, there may be a higher return on investment in content built on unpaid channels, as noted below.

Unpaid channel costs

Unpaid channels are channels where you don’t have to pay per view or click per customer.

Unpaid channels include all types of content marketing activities such as blogging (like this one), podcasts and newsletters, and creating engaging organic content for your social media channels.

Companies should expect them to spend between 10% and 30% on talent to create content on these unpaid channels. This amount increases if you are a B2B company that typically invests more in content to educate your audience.

note that unpaid channels do not mean that investing in these marketing activities is inherently free.

Unpaid simply means you don’t have to pay for every click or impression, unlike the paid advertising channels mentioned above. For example, after you wrote a blog article, the content is now on the Internet on a permanent basis. You don’t have to pay for every click to view the article; in typical digital advertising, you have to pay the platform every time you get a view or click.

For unpaid channels, you pay for talented people who create engaging content that resonates with your audience. The goal then would be to convert that audience into customers.

Specialist talent costs

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is where an expert optimizes your website for display on search engine result pages (SERP) and to optimize your online reputation. This is especially true for small businesses with a local presence, such as local dentists or restaurants. This ensures that your customers can easily find you online. It also helps you appear more prominently on search engines than your competitors, thus helping you make an appointment or visit in person.

For B2B businesses, you might also want to consider lead generation. Lead generation refers to a series of marketing processes that will help you gain leads (leads).

You should spend between 10% and 30% of your digital marketing budget on the needs of these professionals, which will cover activities such as keyword research, site analysis, and SEO audit.

Creative asset creation costs

Companies should spend up to 10% of their digital marketing budget to develop creative assets for their paid and free channels. This can be done by hiring freelancers on freelance platforms, or simply DIY (do it yourself) with free design tools like Canva.

Hire a Part-Time Digital Marketing Expert

As a small business owner, chances are you will want to be involved in all aspects of your business, from strategy to running your own Google advertising campaigns. This desire is understandable, but it is also likely that business owners will stretch too much.

This is why hiring a part-time digital marketing expert can often save you time and money. While it is possible to get self-directed training on the various components of digital marketing as described above, your time will be better spent on core activities and managing the various freelancers and experiences.

Due to the depth of knowledge required in each digital marketing vertical, it is highly unlikely that a digital marketing expert will be able to professionally perform all the steps outlined above – from SEO to content marketing and from ad design to launching paid ads. … Thus, it makes sense to hire different specialists for different components on a part-time basis.

Adapting to the new norm

Traditional marketing is increasingly being replaced by digital marketing. While some small businesses still see some benefits in traditional marketing, COVID-19 means we are now moving into a digital phase.

While traditional marketing can still play an important role in the lives of many people, small business owners need to learn digital marketing and adjust their marketing strategy to stay relevant in this era.

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