How To Build A Strategic Marketing Budget For Small Business

We like to say around Deksia, “you wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. Why build your business that way?” A strategic marketing budget is integral to building your business blueprint. A smart budget based on measurable variables and data helps you allocate your marketing spend towards the areas that will be most effective for your business. 

Some key things to remember when building your marketing budget are:

• What your industry typically spends on marketing.
• What your marketing goals are.
• How much you currently spend on marketing.

Explore these ideas and more by reading the advice on how to build your marketing budget below.

Identify your industry metrics

To get started on your marketing budget, we first seek to understand your industry.

A great jumping-off point is asking, “what is the typical marketing budget within my industry?” Determining how much other businesses in your industry spend on marketing will help us develop your marketing budget allocation.

Define your goals

To achieve your goals, we must evaluate and understand what your goals are. 

Do you want to increase revenue for your business? Are your goals geared toward newer, better hiring and cultivating a great company culture? Understanding your company goals will streamline our marketing focus and take the track your business needs to be on to succeed.

Know your numbers

We take a look at your company data and statistics across the board to understand the measurable developments of your business. A numerical form of measurement helps us get an idea of where your business is. Some key questions we ask are:

• How many clients did you serve last year?
• How much do your clients spend annually?
• How long do clients stay with you?
• How much are your target clients worth?
• What percentage did you grow in revenue last year?
• How much did you spend on marketing last year?

Breaking down the current metrics of your business helps us evaluate where you should put your marketing budget allocation. What areas would benefit from marketing spend? Where do opportunities lay for growth?

Getting a real and measurable sense of where your company stands will help in developing a marketing budget based on honest insight.

Audit yourself

A brand audit is a comprehensive examination and assessment of your brand assets and how advantageous they are to your success. An audit allows you to understand what assets are working well, which assets need improvement, which assets you should eliminate and which have the potential for effectiveness.

To properly audit yourself, start by making a list of all your brand assets. This list should encompass:

• Design Assets
  • Logos, color choices, typeface, etc
• Written Communication Assets
  • The written content/copy for materials like emails, brochures, web content, and more.
• Digital Assets
  • Social media content and photography, infographics, hashtags, etc.

Performing this comprehensive evaluation will help you understand who you are as a brand – and where you want to go. An honest assessment of your brand assets will direct your marketing allocation in the right direction.

Want to build a marketing budget for your business? Check out Deksia’s Strategic Calculator to spend wisely. Build your business with a blueprint. Build your blueprint with a budget.