How to maximize your marketing budget

It seems that the mist of Covid-19 is finally starting to clear. The pandemic hit marketing budgets hard across all industries. With all the uncertainty of the last couple of years, it’s difficult for marketers to plan and prepare effectively.

However, marketing budgets haven’t quite bounced back to their previous state just yet. Marketing teams are still grappling with a tightened belt, so it’s essential to pick up some tips for maximizing the budget you do have at your disposal.

What is the average marketing budget?

It’s difficult to provide a single marketing budget example because the numbers can vary hugely depending on the industry and organization size. Most organizations use a revenue percentage to allocate a marketing budget year on year.

According to a recent report from Gartner on 2022 marketing budgets, organizations allocated 6.4% of their revenue to marketing in 2021, down by 11% from the year before.

With marketing budgets down, now is the time to figure out how to do more with less.

How to spend your marketing budget

When you’re working with tighter purse strings, the key to figuring out how to budget for marketing expenses is identifying top performing channels to maximize your marketing ROI.

1. Increase the granularity of your budget analysis

Between internal headcount, ad budgets, outsourcing, events, and technology, there’s a lot to consider in your marketing budget.

It’s hard to pinpoint inefficiencies in your spending with only a broad overview of your budget allocation. The more granular you go on your marketing budget breakdown and analysis, the better you’ll be able to identify leaks through which marketing spend is needlessly flowing.

Rather than relying on a generic marketing budget template, invest your time in building a budget breakdown that gets into the nitty gritty of your spending, goals, and ROAS.

2. Focus on refreshing rather than creating

Many marketing teams will have a whole host of old content and assets at their disposal. While they may be outdated now, it doesn’t mean they should be shelved. Refreshing old campaigns is far more cost-effective than creating new ones from scratch.

For example, you can refresh an old piece of content and re-publish it. Or identify an ad campaign that performed particularly well and re-use its creative elements to build new campaigns.

Marketers who find themselves strapped for resources or lack the budget for external support can achieve a lot by taking this retroactive approach to content creation.

3. Ensure your budget decisions are data-driven

According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 50% of marketing teams say data management and marketing analytics will be of top importance to their programs in 2022.

This is a critical component of maximizing the impact of your marketing spend. With the right technology at your side, you can create an attribution model that shows you how your budget is impacting the bottom line of the business – down to the last penny.

From there, it’s easy to decide how to allocate budget for digital marketing. You’ll know which campaigns and channels are more worthy of your spend than others.

4. Automate your marketing operations

Your operations are the key to efficiency and maximizing ROI. The faster and better your team can work together and execute campaigns, the better. So it’s no surprise Gartner found that operations earns 11.9% of marketing budgets – the second highest allocation just behind digital commerce.

If you’re looking to maximize the impact of your marketing spend, take a look at your marketing operations. The ability to automate tasks and data analysis can save your team hours of click-heavy administrative work.

5. Go next level with your MarTech

Knowing how to budget for a marketing campaign requires in-depth understanding of optimal performance metrics. But a 2021 report on the marketing technology stack found that over half of marketers don’t have the data needed to fully understand which campaigns are effective.

When it comes to performance marketing, technology is the answer. With AI beginning to make a tangible impact, invest in technology that helps you pinpoint where your campaigns are working and how to optimize them for enhanced results.

Predictive tools for effective marketing spend

Every spend in your budget should be an investment into the performance and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. With Lytics’ Decision Engine, you can leverage machine learning to digitally transform your marketing, increase the lifetime value of your customers, and automate your conversion rate optimization.

From delivering compelling content and ads to the right people to creating finely tuned audience segments, Lytics’ Decision Engine works with your first-party data to save your team time and money.

Check it out for yourself! Try Lytics for free for 30 days with our free trial.