Often, companies have an idea of what tactics they need before they get started on their marketing strategy. They decide to run all these tactics and, not too far down the line, they realize that it’s quite expensive to run them all – especially if some of them are ineffective or not necessary. As we have made clear in our previous series of podcasts, we don’t recommend selecting tactics until you have a strategy in place. Once you have settled on your strategy, you can then mobilize a selected set of tactics – some for immediate impact, and others for the long term. This strategic process allows you to hone in on the tactics that really work for your business, and then you can set a tactic-by-tactic budget. You will have a much better idea of what resources to allocate to each one of the channels you’ve selected.
What tactics you choose will depend on your business goals, but there are some general rules as to which ones would be considered long term and which ones work best for that initial impact. Content marketing and SEO are channels for which we would always recommend you set an ongoing, monthly budget. Beyond that, you would work with various short-term channels, often in a supplementary role. For example, you might use social media to push your content, or you might use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for a certain time period.
Setting your budget for each channel and tactic ultimately comes down to your business goals – as pretty much everything else does! You set your business goals, your marketing strategy grows from that and you then select the tactics that will serve that strategy. With your business goals and marketing strategy guiding you, you can then work out which tactics to use, when and how – and then you can refine your marketing budget for each of those tactics.
