Every year during planning season, marketing teams emerge from planning meetings wondering how they’re going to find success in one key area: getting the best return from their available marketing budget.
It’s not hyperbole to suggest that this is one of the most significant challenges marketers face today. All budgets are constantly being scrutinized; we need to be able to show how marketing, when done well, is a growth driver and not just an expense.
So how can you make the most of your marketing budget? It starts with these three tips.
Tip #1: Begin With Business KPIs
This may seem obvious, but the only way to ensure that your marketing dollars are having a business impact is to first understand what that business impact needs to be. Is it increasing market share by X% in a specific segment? Doubling customer retention rate? Growing sales pipeline value? All too often sales teams will focus on sales goals, marketing teams on marketing goals, product teams on product goals, and so on without ever connecting on how it all works together to impact the ultimate business objectives for the year.
Once that is identified and aligned on as the north star, you’ll be on the path to marketing budget optimization by tying your activities back to how they help — either directly or indirectly — to accomplish your business objectives. Understanding this connection is critical to optimizing your marketing spend, as discussed in our guide on measuring and optimizing B2B marketing ROI.
Tip #2: Prioritize
How often have you attempted to prioritize your planned initiatives and found yourself with a list of a dozen No. 1 priorities? The harsh reality is that there can only be one top priority. You could have a top three or a top five, but they can’t show up as 1a, 1b, 1c, etc. It’s common to want to try to do just a little bit of everything so that no initiative goes untouched. But in the end, you won’t move the needle the way you want to.
Effective marketing strategies are born from being intentionally focused. Go back to those business KPIs. What will be the most impactful thing you could do to help achieve one of those goals? Put your effort, energy, and resources behind that. Everything else should be secondary.
Tip #3: Avoid Over-Shifting
The ability to be nimble and adapt is important. But so is recognizing when to stay the course. During the annual planning process, as you’re defining business KPIs and prioritizing which initiatives to pursue, you should also work as a team — marketing, sales, product, support — to build parameters around when a change of approach could be beneficial. Otherwise, you may react to temporary micro-trends in a way that moves you off target and uses resources inefficiently.
You should still seek to be agile and always keep an eye on digital marketing trends in particular. But using your business objectives to guide you helps ensure that you won’t hop from one thing to another on a whim without a clear vision of how it will help you succeed.
We’re Here To Help With Marketing Budgets
Maximizing marketing ROI can feel like a struggle, but the battle isn’t yours to fight alone. Our team at Two Rivers Marketing has the experience and expertise to make your budget go far. Reach out today and let’s get started.
By Two Rivers Marketing
By Brad Olson