Marketing Plan and budgets are vital tools for any online business. The right marketing plan can keep you on target to reach your marketing goals. Without one, you might be going in the wrong direction; however, it is incredibly difficult to remain on track and that will drastically impact your success. Marketing Plan and Budget Important Concepts & Strategies Establish your long-term goals: Set your yearly goals, quantifiable (numerical) goals like total sales, profit, the amount of customers, and breakdowns by channel or product as necessary.
Create your marketing budget: The budget you create will serve as your guide to allocating resources to cover the estimated costs of your marketing activities for the year. When creating your budget, consider your resources, your target audience, and the estimated value of your marketing activities for the upcoming year. Marketing Plan and Budget Focus Marketing strategies are highly variable; therefore, it is extremely important that your marketing budget is flexible and able to change as needed. Marketing Plan and Budget Established goals should be the driving force behind your marketing plan. Your marketing budget gives you the resources to develop strategies, test new ideas, and implement them into your marketing strategy.
Marketing Plan and Budget Focus Marketing is an ever-changing field; therefore, you need to develop a marketing strategy that remains constant for the foreseeable future. The marketing plan should include the strategies you will use to adapt as the marketplace changes. For example, if you currently only offer products through print and Internet advertising, in five years you might want to expand your offerings to include social media and other internet mediums. To do this, set a budget for your marketing in proportion to the time it takes to implement each strategy. Marketing Plan and Budget For the Long Term Success of Your Business Marketing plans should be a long-term commitment.
Marketing Plan and Marketing Budgets should be setting long-term so you will be able to track your progress over time. A marketing budget is often called a task method; each activity in your marketing plan should be assigned a monetary value based on its importance. Once you know the monetary value of each activity, you can budget to buy the services or products with the highest relative value per dollar. Marketing Plan and Budgets Most marketing budgets are set at a fixed level that won’t change based on the market conditions; therefore, you won’t be tempted to invest more when the investment potential is low.
Marketing Plan and Budgets Most marketing budgets are set long-term so you will be able to track your progress over time. A marketing budget is often called a task method; each activity in your marketing plan should be assigned a monetary value based on its importance. Marketing Plan and Budgets When setting up your budget, make sure to set each activity’s relative importance. To ensure the greatest chance for success, set marketing budgets at realistic levels so you can monitor how the activities are performing.
Marketing Plan and Budgets The final component of a detailed marketing plan is effective implementation of the budget. Your plan will not succeed if you don’t execute the activities required of you in a timely manner. The most successful businesses are those that use effective budgeting practices to schedule the costs of their strategies and achieve the desired results. You can also learn more about effective budgeting practices by registering for a free brief e-book, “How to Create a Marketing Plan That Works.”