How Much is Required for Small Businesses to Invest in Online Marketing?

October 03, 2017

Deciding an online marketing budget for your small business may look easy to you. But; getting returns from the same is something which most businesses are wary of. Therefore; creating an intelligent budget becomes more important than finding ways to spend it.

According to the 2017 State of the Inbound report, 40% of the respondents felt that proving the ROI of their email marketing cost was the biggest marketing challenge they were facing. Normally it is considered that the marketing budget is highly determined by what exactly we intend to achieve out of it.

However; incase if you are not sure about that we tell you how to determine how to much to invest in online marketing.

Online Marketing Budget Requires Analyzing Your Sales Funnel

Most important thing it requires you delve deep into understanding your sales funnel. This will help in tracking the results in terms of revenue generated from prospect stage to the customer stage.

You can get this information from your CRM or your automation software. However; asking the following questions would help you in deciding how to do the same.

What is the number of visitors to your site this month?
Number of leads that you are generating?
How many of these leads are actually converting into opportunities?
Opportunities which finally closed in the form of new deals for you?
Estimated value/revenue of each deal that you crack?

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Operational Cost Estimates

The operational online marketing prices of your business may eat up a lot of the profits. On an average, you may have to keep the following overheads moderate before finally deciding how much to invest in your marketing plan.

The time and cost taken by your labour to deliver the contracts taken.
Is your internal staff well equipped to handle all the work that is coming their way?
Is it possible that you need extra people and what is the estimated cost of the benefits that you would have to provide to them?
In case you are unable to handle all your online marketing needs; do you think outsourcing it to any digital media companies will solve your problem?
The internet marketing costs of doing this may be higher when you compare it to in house handling
How much are you going to lose by not investing in b2b digital marketing

Business Goals

At the time of setting up your business, you may have figured out of setting it up. These business goals are important in understanding how much money you would need to invest in different outsource digital marketing overheads.

Three important factors that you need your attention here would be:-

Exactly what are your business objectives for the quarter?
Are there any objectives that you have set for long term duration of a year or three years?
How many of the contracts available with your team need to be delivered promptly in order for you to achieve these goals.

On an average, for any small business with revenue less than 5 million to allot 7-8 %of the same to online marketing and PPC Cost. This budget would be ideally divided between SEO cost on website development, blogs, internet promotion as well as campaigns.

Never make the mistake of formulating your budget only after all the other online advertising costs have been covered. Because; this may limit the scope of your growth. An SEO specialist can prove helpful in setting up the exact cost of your requirements.

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Investment Perspective

Often seen that company heads decide upon the amount of money that they would want to put in for brand marketing. It is important that they know the importance of having a dedicated online marketing budget.

Stage of Growth

When you want to market online there can be two situations and your choice of the budget would clearly depend on them.

Focus on your website marketing services as you can clearly use it to your advantage at this point.
Use search engine optimization company to get knowledge on solving queries to enlighten customers on the latest trends.
If you are yet in the planning stage of your business you could opt for a long term marketing schedule.
Generate and publish intelligent content and use it to keep generating new business once you set up completely.
An internet marketing firm knows better how each stage planning can be done best.

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Digital Marketing Trends

As per a survey by Forrester Research in 2016, it was expected that an average firm would dedicate 30% of its marketing budget to online marketing modes, a number which is supposed to grow to 35% by 2019.

Trends in the online marketing industry keep on changing very frequently and it is advisable to keep adapting to them.

To take advantage of the internet marketing advertising benefit most businesses just jump into the fray without a properly devised strategic plan. It is advisable to first understand what works well for your customers before finally deciding which plan to choose.

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Conclusion

Marketing is an important part of every business and failure to properly implement your budget on the same would make your customers drift off to your competitors. Ever since the entry of online marketing services, the focus of businesses is moving from traditional modes to the digital ones and best digital marketing agency would help you in understanding the difference.

If you wish to jump on the band wagon, make sure to set your budget as per the factors mentioned above. Contact a reputed outsource online marketing service provider who can guide you better in setting up strategies and hence get maximum returns from them.