What Should Your 2018 Digital Marketing Budget Be?

It’s no secret that planning your business’s finances for the upcoming year isn’t always easy. Digital marketing budgets in particular tend to confuse many business owners who are trying to decide how to spend their money in 2018.

Where should I be spending the most money?

How do I know if I’m spending too much or not enough?

These are common questions we get when it comes to creating a marketing budget. And while not everyone should be spending the exact same amount, we can help you determine how much of your budget should be going to digital marketing strategies, and how to apply what you learned from your 2017 campaigns to your 2018 strategy.

Let’s start with what data is telling us.

Reports from Forrester Researchand eMarketerfound that in 2018, the average firm is expected to allocate 41% of their marketing budget to online mediums, growing to 45% by 2020. This proves the importance of investing in various digital marketing methods, and gives you an idea as to how much of your overall marketing budget should go toward online campaigns like PPC, SEO and email marketing.

When you’re assessing how successful your 2017 digital marketing efforts were, there are several questions you should ask yourself to determine how this year’s campaign went. Your answers to these questions will then help you establish your 2018 digital marketing budgetand show you where there’s room for adjustments.

When planning your 2018 digital marketing budget, ask yourself these questions.

This is the most important question to ask yourself. If you’re putting money into your business’s marketing strategy, you should definitely be able to say how much you spent in the past year and what your return was. For starters, you shouldn’t be spending more than you’re making.

Comparing the amount you spent on marketing versus your ROI from those marketing efforts will tell you whether or not your money was well spent. From there, it’s up to you to determine if your current digital marketing strategy is worth it or if it’s time to make adjustments.

Take a look at where your money seems to have been wasted the most. Was your cost per acquisition too high due to a costly PPC campaign? Or did your SEO strategy not help you show up in the right places? Not every digital marketing campaign is the same, so what works for some businesses might not work for you. It’s important to keep that in mind if you see one area lacking.

Because the world of digital marketing is always changing, there’s a good chance adjustments will need to be made frequently. If you don’t keep up with shifting trends and how your business is being affected, you could be wasting your marketing budget.

While it can be easy to focus on the negative parts of your business—which you should still address—you should also look at what strategies worked out the best. Did your social media presence help you get more website traffic? Was your local listing the source of most of your phone calls? These are the areas in which you should keep investing.

If a particular strategy or two are working better than others, consider using the money you spent on the unsuccessful campaigns and reinvesting it in your more successful ones. Instead of spending more money, you’ll just be spending it more wisely.

These are all questions you should be able to answer for yourself so you know how well you did this year. Too often, we get customers who come to us from a different digital marketing company and say they have no idea what their current company is doing for them, what they have done or how it’s impacting their business.

If you don’t know the answers for these questions off the top of your head, talk to your marketing team about your strategy. It’s important to understand how and where your money is being spent, and any digital marketing company should be able to explain these answers to you.

Hopefully, you’ve now determined your cost per lead and cost per sale for all of your digital marketing avenues. From there, you can budget how much you need to spend to get the same or better results next year.

Your budget won’t be the same as everyone else’s, so we can’t tell you the exact amount you should be spending. But by analyzing your 2017 results, you will understand where your money is going, whether it’s getting you quality leads and if it’s worth it. Then, you can adjust your strategy and determine how you want to allocate your marketing budget for this upcoming year.

And if you still feel you’re spending too much money on your digital marketing after assessing your results, you might want to consider a different strategy or company.