How to Create an Effective Digital Marketing Budget

With the continuing growth and development of technology, our everyday life and behaviours are becoming increasingly digital and steadily moving more online. This is particularly evident in online shoppers, with worldwide e-commerce retail sales seeing year on year growth, and with 2018 alone seeing a 23.3% increase from the previous year. Because of this, companies are investing more and more in digital ad spend and seeing consistently positive return on investment.

As online advertising continues to become more of a necessity than an option, developing the right digital marketing strategy is absolutely vital. The first step in achieving this? Investing your digital marketing budget in the right channels. There are multiple factors that come into play when considering this, including the type of your business, what your goals are and who you are targeting. Let’s take a look at the different channels!

Content marketing is a very popular online marketing channel, with many companies now considering content marketing to be their number 1 priority. This form of marketing is essential for brand awareness and consideration, and is very effective in acquiring potential new leads and customers early on in the buying/acquisition stages. The purpose of content marketing is to attract and appeal to potential new customers by producing online content that is engaging, useful and offers value to these targeted users, creating awareness and authority for your company in the process.

Paid search is an important channel for acquiring online sales and conversions and is an effective method further down the buying funnel. With paid advertising, marketers tend to see more instant and short-term results than with content and SEO; on these channels you’re more likely to garner long-term benefits further down the line. Within paid search/biddable media you’ll also need to consider additional digital marketing spend in terms of Google Ads and social media advertising, which varies depending on who you are targeting and where/how much you want to appear and be visible online.

Learn how we effectively budgeted and reduced our client's cost per conversion by 40% with a targeted search strategy in our latest case study. 

Search engine optimisation acts as the foundation or base component to any digital marketing strategy and involves optimising your website to improve organic ranking, and ensure that you are visible online within search engine results pages (SERPs). Allocating budget in this area is more of a long-term investment where you begin to see results later on, but is a necessity for all digital marketing strategies. Whilst there are other digital marketing channels and options for online marketers, these three are the most prominent, effective and widely used across most companies and industries.

Deciding how to allocate a digital marketing budget comes down to understanding the different channels available and how they can be beneficial to you. It’s then simply a matter of deciding where you want to invest based on what you’re aiming to achieve, and which channels best fit your business and goals. It is important to note however that there’s no right or wrong channel and that these areas tend to work best together. You’ll therefore most likely require a combination of all three in order for your digital marketing strategy to succeed. Generally, it’s wise to allocate part of your budget to all or most of these channels and not to invest too heavily or lightly in one area, regardless of your business type.

If you require further advice or services within any of these areas, our digital marketing experts are happy to assist. Contact us today, or keep reading our blog for further digital insights from the specialists at Zelst.