Ah, the marketing budget. It is one of the victims of a growing startup or even an established business that is already doing well with referrals. It can be challenging to allocate budget towards actively marketing your business, especially when the ROI is not directly visible from the get go. Regardless of what you can afford for your marketing budget, it is critical that you stick to it.
Here are five suggestions to help you deliver an effective marketing project while staying on budget.
#1 Define the objective you want the marketing project to achieve
Say you want a logo for the Facebook Ads campaign for your business. Here’s an example of a well-crafted objective for the design of the banners: “The banners must appeal to individuals who are about to retire or are retired, are 65 or older and have a net worth of $1.5 million or more.” Failure to properly define your objective will almost certainly produce a less effective result. Even if you stay within budget, you’re getting less bang for your buck. In other words, you haven’t exceeded your budget, but the money spent hasn’t produced the best possible result.
#2 Make sure everyone agrees on the project’s scope and the services to be provided
Once you define your objectives, you need to spell out the arrangement to any agencies, team members or stakeholders in the project. Nothing will bust a budget more quickly than failure to include services or tools you haven’t budgeted for but now need. Even worse: because of the type of project, the additional services cost more as an add-on than they would have cost if provided initially.
#3 Take some of the project in house
If you can fulfil some of the project in-house without affecting your business’s productivity, then you should. We recently designed a website for a mortgage broker. We provided the broker with fully functional, individual page templates. To save money, the broker had their in-house IT manager put together any additional pages, a task we usually perform. Because the IT manager had time to provide the services as part of his regular workday, the broker saved some costs.
#4 Establish a long-term relationship with your agency/external service provider.
This relationship will provide the agency with an in depth understanding of your culture, your business and your clients. When you hire this agency for new projects, they already know a great deal about you, your team and your business. You’ll spend less money educating the agency about the project than if you hired someone new.
#5 Don’t mix a tight budget with a tight timeline.
This is probably one of the biggest mistakes we see. Businesses mixing a tight timeline with a tight budget. With a tight timeline, you may require undesirable short cuts and overtime, decreasing the finished product’s effectiveness and increasing your cost. Remember, it takes time to deliver quality marketing projects.
At Shuttle Digital, we work closely with clients to help them stay on budget. This produces satisfied clients who achieve their marketing objectives without spending more than they expected to spend. PLUS we are truly digital. Our team work from all over Australia and the world which means we have less overheads and we can make the most of your marketing budget.
