You know you have to make your Digital Marketing budget. You know that if you have not yet taken action, you are not considering all possible sales channels (whether you are a b2b or b2c business). You may also have tried but failed.
How much will it cost me to implement a digital marketing plan, how do I do it, do I pay for traffic, on which channels should I launch campaigns, do I create content, where do I start?
Knowing that resources are limited, it is very important to know how to allocate them. A marketing plan with higher spending does not necessarily have to be more effective.
In this article we will explain how to define a budget for a Digital Marketing plan. To provide some structure, we will touch on the following topics:
- The importance of creating a digital marketing budget
- Know how to structure this budget
- Define the budget step by step
- Web design and SEO
- Search engine advertising (SEM), socials and ads
- Social Media
- E-mail marketing
- Tips for establishing and executing a realistic digital marketing plan
The importance of creating a digital marketing budget
The digital marketing budget contemplates all the money or resources that you intend to dedicate to your plan during a specific period of time. Here it is very important to know where to invest your money to get the best results from your digital marketing plan.
In the end, we are talking about an investment like any other. What we are looking for is to maximize ROI (return on investment). If you are already executing a marketing plan and you are not getting the results you would like, there are two important causes:
- You are not investing well
- You are not investing enough
Later, we will talk about what is investment as such, since when we talk about investment the first thing that comes to mind are google or facebook campaigns, but we do not take into account, for example, the generation of content: this can be equally or more important than the other options, but as it consumes time it does not seem to have a cost in marketing. Obviously it has, since time is money.
Planning and executing the budget well is critical, especially in situations where we are not meeting short- and medium-term objectives.
Structuring a Digital Marketing Budget
If we start from the assumption that you have very well identified your buyer persona and that you know which channels they use in their daily life, thee recommend in this case that you analyze the competition. You have to take into account:
- What type of website do you have
- Which words are positioned
- Whether you campaign or not
- If you create content on social networks
- If you create your own content
- If you are given the option to subscribe to their newsletter
- If you have downloadables available to capture emails and then nurture them with your own content.
By studying the competition you get a general idea of what is the level of dedication of companies in digital marketing. Here are some tools that can help you to study the competition:
- Semrush
- To see the relevance of your competitors’ websites
- Which words are positioned
- If you run campaigns on Google Ads
- Facebook Ads Library
- You will be able to see what types of ads they make and how long they have been making them.
- Linkedin
- Whether they advertise and the type of advertising they do
- You can also view competitor data, such as their employees.
- Wappallizer
- Shows the types of tools used by the website (WordPress, Mailchimp, Klaviyo).
Once we know what our competitors are doing, we will know where we will have to devote more effort.
Web design
The most important piece and the one you should start with. It’s where the magic happens in the digital environment. You can’t afford to have a mediocre website and throw away campaigns. You will literally be throwing your money away.
In your budget, include resources to cover expenses such as the domain, hosting or maintenance of the same. Important; design the web according to the user and not from the company’s point of view. It is a classic to see websites of companies that convey the feeling of
“look, I am XXX and we are very good because look at the amount of things we do”.
Websites have to be designed with the objective of:
- Attract traffic from search engines, always taking into account the
mobile first
- Ensure a very good user experience
- Optimal loading speed
- With clear and intuitive messages that call for action
- With incentives to leave the mail by means of
ebooks
- In order to capture leads and generate conversions
But to put it bluntly…
How much can a website like this cost us?
Domain: approximately 10 euros.
Maintenance and hosting: about 100 euros.
What about the web? Well, regarding the web, the best thing to do is to consult with experts. The minimum price can be around 800 euros and the maximum price is unlimited. This is without taking into account a good copywriter, which could be around 700 euros.
From experience, we would say that a good website with a CMS such as WordPress and a good visual layout would cost approximately 3000-3700 euros.
Perfect, sounds good to me. What’s the next step?
Organic SEO positioning
Whether you’re just starting out or have been around for a while, SEO is one of the most effective ways to attract potential customers through search engines like Google.
For the SEO part (in general, without going into details), this job requires technical knowledge, some of them are:
- Adapting a good web architecture to be relevant for Google
- Generate content on a weekly basis
- Work the h1,h2,h3…
- Working with Alt attributes of images
- Generate a sitemap
- Upload to Google Search Console
How much can SEO work cost us?
A post of 1000 words (which is recommended) can range between 30 and 80 euros. On the other hand, the SEO audit part plus changes is usually between 40 and 200 euros per hour. At Cronuts we recommend doing 4 posts per month, and review monthly through Google Search Console what could be improved.
In short, the SEO budget of a small company can normally range between 1000-1500 euros per month.
Search Engine Advertising (SEM) and Social Ads
We have heard about it and it is the first thing we want to activate. Classic mistake, as we have already mentioned. The first thing to do is to create a good website and then think about how to drive traffic to it.
Here the range is enormous: it goes from Google ads focused on paying for certain words (SEM) to the famous Social Ads. Both strategies are usually carried out by a
trafficker
o
traffic manager
.
It is a very powerful tactic to bring in traffic. In fact, there are almost 4 billion people in networks. Why not be there?
How much can it cost us to launch campaigns?
Due to a resource issue, Google campaigns are a minimum of 200 euros per month, but on Facebook it varies. In any case, the
trafficker
will charge us:
- A minimum of approximately 300-500 euros per month.
- Or 15% of gross media investment.
As you can see, the amount of this expense can vary according to the objectives and resources allocated to the payment channels.
Social Networking
A very effective channel to reach your consumer directly. You can work all parts of the customer’s life; from reaching them, working on recurrence, creating community and even deriving traffic.
It depends a lot on the sector you are in; if you are a b2c, we recommend Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. If you are a b2b, Youtube and Linkedin. The key to success is to be selective and know in which one you want to be present.
How much can it cost us to have our nets taken away?
They require a lot of dedication, content and work if you want to achieve results. You will need powerful images, video and copy to generate this content.
An agency or
freelance
could be a good choice. It usually ranges from 100 and 1200 euros per month, depending on the dedication and the need to generate content.
Email marketing
This is the strategy with the highest conversion rate. The drawback is the limited number of emails we have to contact. It is very important to create automations that create a sequence and are focused on getting the user to buy or be interested in our services.
In order to obtain an email, we recommend the use of
lead magnets
in order to activate these sequences and try to maximize our sales.
Great, but what do I need for it?
How much can it cost to implement an email marketing strategy?
First, you will need an email marketing tool. There are many tools, such as Mailchimp or Mailrelay. If we had to marry one of them it would be Active Campaign (from 9 euros per month).
Implementing the automatic chains, plus the ebooks, can cost you between cost you between 30 and 150 euros per email. The most interesting thing is to find a profile that knows SEO and email marketing in order to package both items.
Bottom line: Digital Marketing Budget
Tips for setting a digital marketing budget and executing it
The smartest way to invest is, first of all, to go for the must-haves.
must
The web site must be well-structured and provided with relevant content. It is also very important to work on the copies, the lead magnets and email marketing automations. Finally, try to test the paid channels to see if the objectives are met and gradually increase the investment.
In the end, it’s all about maximizing ROI. To do this, you will need to assess the fixed and recurring costs you will have. Additionally, you will also have to decide whether to outsource services. It is very important to ask yourself if:
- You have the time and knowledge to perform each task.
- You have the money to outsource the services and have someone else do it for you.
At the end of the day, it is all about finding a balance between investment and return on investment. At Cronuts, we know that covering all these services is complicated, mainly because:
- It is very difficult to find the experts at a reasonable price.
- Interacting with all of them is a complex task.
It can cost a lot of time and money. That is why we provide a comprehensive service that covers all of the above and more. We encourage you to take a look at our SME services page.
