Digital marketing has taken the business world by storm with its measurability and ease of access. You can run an effective digital marketing campaign without spending a lot of money, while meeting your marketing goals and KPIs.
Switching to digital marketing doesn’t mean you have to give up offline marketing. With a good and comprehensive strategy, the two can actually work very well together. You just need to know how to set up both campaigns, and that process starts with splitting your marketing budget.
Start with a total budget
Before you can determine how much you want to spend on online and offline marketing, you must first determine the total marketing budget available. There are several ways to do this, but the general rule is that you spend 10% to 15% of your gross income and allocating them for marketing.
If you have gross sales of $100,000, you have a marketing budget of about $15,000. If you want to be more aggressive with your KPIs, you can increase that budget accordingly. The same can be said if you want to stay on the conservative side with your marketing.
Of course, the rule here is just to give you a starting point. You are free to allocate more (or less) for marketing purposes; it all depends on what you are trying to achieve.
Learn from past campaigns
Data is your friend when it comes to building marketing campaigns, and there’s no better data source than the campaignS you to have already run in the past. Learn from the results you get from digital and offline marketing. These results tell you what your average return on investment (ROI) is for each marketing tool you use.
Based on the ROIs of different marketing campaigns, it is easy to measure the effectiveness of each tool. Next, you’ll want to spend more money on the tools that will give you the best results.
Choose a holistic approach
As mentioned earlier, online and offline marketing actually work well together. By combining the two, you increase the results of both marketing campaigns. For example, amplifying your offline promotional offers on social media will drive traffic to your locations.
The reverse is also true. You can promote online activities, social media accounts or even your website using offline merchandises. It is certainly a good idea to allocate more money to the production of custom pins and T-shirts.
You don’t have to spend a lot to ensure that both offline and online campaigns run side by side. For example, you can display information on TV screens in your physical store, allowing customers to follow you on social media or visit your website for special offers.
Review and refine
In today’s market, a marketing strategy can be fluid. Instead of sticking to one strategy all year long, you now have the opportunity to evaluate your marketing campaigns as you go. Online marketing tools come with their own analytics tools. There are also more ways to measure offline activities.
Review both marketing approaches regularly to see if they are producing the results you want. Adjust the campaigns as the results are analyzed. You can refine your marketing budget and reallocate resources accordingly also.
It’s even possible to perform real-time analytics, especially if you have the right tools for the job. With applications like Brand24 you can extend your monitoring reach and record offline campaigns and online conversations.
Ultimately, separating your marketing budget is about ensuring you get the best results from running marketing campaigns. The more you learn about how potential customers respond to different campaigns, the more carefully you can manage your marketing budget.