Do you wonder where your marketing dollars go? Are you left scrambling to cover unplanned events? Are you missing opportunities to promote your business due to under investment? Can you tell which marketing investments provide a return?
Creating a marketing budget can help. Know where you money is going and measure the results by following these easy steps.
Step 1: Review last year’s expenses and create categories of expenses. Some examples may be tradeshows, website maintenance, newsletters, advertisements, public relations.
Step 2: Develop a calendar of events. Every business has programs and events that occur at regular intervals. Your marketing dollars are typically spent around these events. Use a 12-month calendar and write down when these events occur. Jot down approximations of any marketing investment.
Step 3: Using your expense categories and calendar of events, develop a spreadsheet that forecasts your budget. Spreadsheets let you encode formulas that do the math for you making updates accurate and easy. Often times, a company’s projected revenue dictates a percentage of the company’s overall budget that is allocated to marketing. This is your target expense total.
Step 4: Track actual expenses against monthly, quarterly, and annual expense targets. Tracking actual expenses allows you to make adjustments in timing or reallocate dollars while staying within overall budget targets. Actual expenses are also a factor used in equations for calculating return on investment.
Step 5: Use charts and graphing tools for a quick at-a-glance dashboard of category and overall budget performance. These are effective tools for communicating key performance indicators to management and other stakeholders.