Helping Lancashire businesses: Organising an effective digital marketing budget

Investing in digital marketing is an excellent idea for your business. Digital marketing can be effective for start-ups and established businesses. Of course, depending on your goals, your marketing strategy will need to be adjusted.

Managing director Tom Smith, of Complete, an award winning UK digital marketing agency based in Blackpool, outlines how to create an effective digital marketing budget for your business.

Digital marketing is any form of promotion for your company online. This online promotion can be through a website, online advertising, or social media platforms. Many goals can be achieved using digital marketing.

Which digital strategies are right for my business?

It can be challenging to determine which strategies are the best for you, especially as a start-up. As a full-service marketing agency, we will work closely with you to assess your goals and identify the services that can help you reach them. Sometimes, one digital service may be enough to help you reach your goals. However, in other situations, combining a couple of services may accelerate your growth even further.

Depending on your goals, we’ll suggest the best online marketing strategies for you. For example, if you want to increase the number of leads you receive, we’ll use our innovative lead-generation techniques. If you want to increase your website traffic, we’ll suggest SEO techniques.

Organising your marketing budget

A marketing budget contains all the information your company has spent and plans to spend on marketing. When creating a digital marketing budget, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s entirely up to you how much money you spend on marketing and how often you review your plans. It’s important to remain open-minded when planning your marketing budget, as things may need to be adapted throughout the year.

You may also make changes to your marketing based on special events, so these will need to be accounted for. Budgeting before a project begins allows you to assess all of the resources involved and means you can effectively measure your investment as a result of digital marketing activities.

Each digital marketing budget plan should outline the marketing spend too, which is everything your company has already spent on a marketing strategy.

Creating an effective marketing budget

• Identify your business goals – write your goals down so you can revisit them and see what you’ve achieved.
• Consider your financial position – continuously monitor your finances so you can see your return on investment.
• Time to research – research will allow you to establish whether your projected spend is realistic.
• Find an agency – choose an agency with a proven track record. Look at their website and reviews.
• Finalise the campaign – make a plan with your chosen agency. Once approval is gained, the agency should complete the project to a high standard.

A great marketing agency will keep a close eye on your campaigns. They will consider your digital marketing budgets, timeline, goals and target audience at every stage. This helps to ensure that your online marketing budget remains cost-effective. Each month, they should provide you with results from your campaign so you can see the value of your digital marketing efforts.

At Complete, we provide all clients with live monthly data reports so that you can see exactly how your campaigns are performing.

We hope this blog has been helpful. As a full-service agency, we’re always happy to support you with digital campaigns for your business. Contact Complete to see how we can support you.

About the contributor Tom Smith is the managing director of Complete and Complete Dubai, both full-service marketing agencies. Tom is an expert in website design, SEO, lead generation and paid ads. He’s passionate about supporting businesses with their online growth. Complete offers a wide range of digital marketing services, including website design, eCommerce, SEO, PPC management, social media marketing, graphic design and more. Its team supports businesses of all sizes across a range of industries.

Complete is a member of Boost & Co, which includes additional public and private sector organisations that can help businesses grow. 

Boost is helping Lancashire businesses. We have a range of funded support programmes and a team of business advisers you can talk to. To speak to someone from the Growth Hub about business support, contact Boost online or call 0800 488 0057.