Are you currently responsible for running a business and attracting new clients? You’ve got a long, hard road ahead of you. Unfortunately, marketing and advertising is much harder than most people initially believe. Many mistakenly believe that radio and television ads can always propel a business to wealth. This isn’t always the case. In some cases, the business may find it more effective to advertise online. However, you must first sit down with your team and figure out how much it is going to cost. Within this guide, you will find tips for preparing an online marketing campaign budget.
PPC Ads
First and foremost, you should consider whether or not you want to pay for online advertising. Most companies find it very beneficial to pay for PPC ads. Pay-per-click advertising is available from Google, Bing and a variety of other sources. It is fairly inexpensive when compared to other forms of marketing, but it may still be too expensive for some start-up businesses. If you’re going to give your company a big boost with PPC ads, you need to figure out precisely how much you can spend on these ads monthly.
Spending more will send more traffic to your site and vice versa. Stay within your means and never overdo it.
Analyze Your Free Cash Flow
You’ll also want to take the time to learn about your company’s free cash flow. This is generally the money you have left over and can use for various purposes. This money can be utilized for advertising and marketing. You shouldn’t use all of it for these purposes, but dedicated a large portion of the funds to marketing is a great way to expand your reach very rapidly. If you’re working for a large corporation, you may need assistance from an accountant to help you figure out the exact free cash flow for your company. After you’ve figured out the FCF, you can set a limit on your marketing expenses.
This will let you know precisely how much you can spend.
Stick With SEO Only
You don’t have to be an SEO expert to know that there are tons of marketing and advertising opportunities online. Unfortunately, some of these opportunities like pay per click and paid advertisements are extremely expensive and take time to pay off. This can quickly eat up your budget and might not even pay off. Of course, SEO is a time-consuming process as well, but you can virtually do all the work yourself and get your website ranked at the top of the search engine results without spending a dime in most cases.
Your Expenses Will Vary From Month To Month
Just like promotional or mass marketing, online marketing is constantly changing. These changes will definitely affect your marketing budget. So, you will need to be prepared to spend more some months and less other months. You will need to be a little flexible with your budget, since the expenses will be continuously changing. One thing is for sure you do not want to create an unrealistic plan that will prevent you from staying on budget. For instance, you do not want to plan your budget around promotional costs only. Instead, you will need to take a variety of costs into account, such as consumer testing and competitive analysis.
