How to Create a Marketing Budget in 2024

You need a solid plan so that your year is as successful as possible, and this includes creating a marketing budget. After that, you need to make sure that your marketing budget in 2024 is as best used as possible. This means knowing where to advertise your brand and when. If you aren’t sure where to start or want to revamp your efforts this year for your 2024 marketing budget, then you’ve come to the right place. This guide will outline how to create a marketing budget and where to focus your budget for the best results:

The Full List of Marketing Costs

When it comes to building a marketing budget that is effective, you always have to start by understanding the full list of marketing streams and strategies you have available. Knowing your options will help you pick out the best options for your brand and help you allocate your marketing budget more effectively:

• Paid Advertising – Paying to have your ad in print, OOH, or as a video ad in front of content.
• Pay-Per-Click – Have your ads available on search engines, and only pay if someone clicks on it.
• Social Media Advertising – Market your content on social media channels
• Sponsored Content – Having a brand, influencer, or publication talk about your brand for a fee
• SEO – SEO services are long-term marketing and search engine strategies designed to improve your visibility online

Paying for ads alone isn’t the only expense you need to think about. These costs will also add up and need to be considered when creating a marketing budget.

• Cost of staff, freelancers, and outsourced agencies
• Cost of content
• Cost of software
• Cost of your website

How Much Should be Allocated to Your Marketing Budget?

Ultimately, your marketing budget will be up to you. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to try to keep your marketing budget around 10% of your revenue. In 2022, the average was 9.5% for B2C companies, for example, and 13% for B2B companies. This, of course, is the average for a regular year. If you are just launching or are revamping, then you may want to add more to your budget.

How to Build a Marketing Budget

Do you know how to make a marketing budget that works with your business? Have your previous efforts gone way out of budget, or not given you the results you needed? Knowing how to allocate budget and who to give that budget to will make all the difference. That’s why you need to know how to create a budget for a marketing plan on a campaign, monthly, and yearly basis.

Audit Your Existing Budget

Knowing how to set a marketing budget from the start is useful, but if you already have one, then you first need to audit your previous years and do so heavily. A good way to do this right from the start is to see which efforts had a positive ROI. This means that the money you earned in sales, subscriptions or hires offset the cost of advertising.

Choose Which Channels to Focus Your Budget On

Which channels and marketing types you focus your budget on will likely change on a year-to-year basis. For example, if you are revamping, then you may want to add the budget for an SEO audit. This audit can then inform your website revamp and boost your efforts across the board.

SEO

SEO management is one of the better investments you can make for your business. Yes, it’s a long-term investment, but it’s also one that boosts the user experience your customers have when engaging your brand online, and also works to increase your visibility. Here’s a quick breakdown of the services an SEO consultancy can offer:

1. Technical SEO Audits – Technical SEO audits ensure your content goes further by making it readable to search engines and AI tools.
2. On Page SEO – On page SEO improves the content and user-friendliness of your website. It’s particularly useful when optimising landing pages.
3. International SEO – Find your niche and improve visibility on a global scale with international SEO.
4. Enterprise SEO – If you have a massive business and website, work on improving the on-page experience and visibility of that content with Enterprise SEO.
5. Link BuildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. – Increase your visibility and backlink profile with link building
6. Blogger Outreach – Blogger outreach means getting in touch with bloggers or influencers and forming a direct partnership. You can then post sponsored content on their publications.
7. SEO Management – SEO management is a great choice for those who have already ramped up their SEO strategy and need to just make consistent progress. Agencies tend to work with you, so you can adapt how much you set aside in your marketing budget sheet by year.
8. White Label SEO – White label SEO is great specifically for marketing agencies or content companies looking to boost their own service offerings, without bringing on extra staff. It can help you keep your staff costs low.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing costs are key when it comes to learning how to create a budget for a marketing plan. Some costs are upfront, others, like PPC, can end up being a huge cost with little return. The secret is to create your ideal customer template, and then work out each step of the buyer’s cycle so that you can create a message that really clicks with your target audience.

OOH Marketing

Setting a marketing budget for your OOH materials can be difficult, because it can be hard to track how much ROI the campaign is receiving. A good way to track is to encourage participation, like with a discount code. Also include in your marketing budget proposal where you want ads, and why, to help keep track of which areas and OOH source fetches you the greatest returns.

Remember to Retarget

Knowing how to put together a marketing budget for first-introduction campaigns is one thing. Putting together a budget for retargeting efforts is another. The good news is that it’s usually more cost-effective. Someone who bought from you once is more likely to buy from you again, and, therefore, is more cost-effective to market to overall, making retargeting a key part when it comes to learning how to create a marketing budget plan.

How to Create a Marketing Budget Spreadsheet

The best way to keep track of your budget, optimise it for the future, and make sure you’re keeping to the budget is to use a spreadsheet. There are plenty online, from full-scale tools to templates you can use with Excel or Google Sheets. Choose the one that’s most appropriate for your business.