With the end of the year approaching, not only are the holidays approaching, but also the time when every B2B Marketing Manager must face the challenge of planning, creating, coordinating, presenting and, above all, convincing about their budget for the following year. It is by no means an easy task and, for this reason, we have asked several people who are part of our community to give us their opinion on.
how to create the Marketing budget for the next year:
Set your goals before you think about your budget (Joy Joelle)
joy joelle – b2b marketing budgeting tips
It’s important to set a plan with ambitious goals , even if they can sometimes seem out of reach. Setting high goals means you have to go one step further to achieve them . That’s why you need to define your goals before you think about your budget .
As for the budget , do a reverse funnel , analyze future numbers vs. last year’s numbers , and do the math! That way, you’ll see how much you have to spend to be able to reach your goals . It’s also a safer way to get your budget proposal accepted by the C-level.
Flexibility is the key (Flo Broderick)
Flo Broderick
We might already consider that we are approaching a more normal scenario for our buyers , but it is still difficult to know what things will look like in the first quarter (with trade shows and conferences, for example).
We still need to decide what our big bets are and budget accordingly
Being able to change direction and have alternative sources of leads will be very important to feed our sales team with enough prospects . If you have a global marketing budget, it’s also critical to get feedback from people on the ground in each country , as we’re seeing very different behaviors and trends in different territories (such as North America).
Performance, efficiency and innovation to define your budget (Gina Gulberti)
For me there are 3 fundamental concepts that must be taken into account when defining the annual budget of a marketing department: performance, efficiency and innovation .
Analyzing the performance of a marketing strategy during the previous period and identifying those channels or tactics that offered the best specific database by industry results would be the starting point for effectively allocating the budget in order to achieve greater growth in the coming year.
Team efficiency or productivity
Is also essential and many times help them become supporters we must not only focus on numerical results, but also on understanding which resources could be automated or scaled more efficiently thanks to a larger budget allocation for tools, saudi data outsourcing of services, etc. In this way, you can free up your team from operational or mechanical tasks so that they can dedicate more of their time to strategy , thinking about new tactics or research.
And finally, I think innovation is absolutely necessary in any marketing department. I think allocating the budget exclusively to campaigns or to the day-to-day marketing activity is a mistake. In an environment as changing as that of digital marketing, learning or training the internal team is a medium-long term investment that is worthwhile.
Link the budget items to an objective and a reference baseline (Oriol Lampreave)
Budget season is a good time to look back and see what has worked – and especially what hasn’t – over the past year.
How effective is the awareness campaign that is eating up half of the PPC (Pay Per Click) budget? Can we really measure what it is bringing us? If the answer to these questions is not a resounding Yes, then it may be time to redistribute it in another direction. The budget is finite, but the uses we can make of it are not.