How Is Your 2013 Marketing Budget Shaping Up?

It is no secret that during budget-planning season, marketing teams are often faced with the challenge of how to achieve more with less.

In these time of austerity there is an increased scrutiny of marketing budgets. So it is no surprise that every dollar, pound or euro allocated toward marketing efforts needs to be attributed to direct results that directly impact the company’s bottom line.

Every campaign and line of marketing spend must clearly demonstrate that much-loved mantra of “return-on-investment”. Will it generate new business leads? Does it help to cross-sell to customers? Will it improve the overall customer experience?

As marketers, we need to not only thoroughly question every new item of spend. We also need to look at what we are already doing – those basics that we often overlook. Are we doing things efficiently? Do the processes we have in place make the best use of the time and resource we actually have? Are there some simple changes that could make a big difference to results? Sounds good. But where can those quick wins be found? Here’s some starting places:

1. Make your website watertight so that every visitor counts. Add call to actions, and make sure you are able to confidently pass qualified leads to your sales team.
2. Generate content that can be used and recycled shamelessly! Think cross-channel for everything you produce. Whether it’s a one-pager that you post about, then turn into a mailer, then add as gated content on the website. Or an event where you generate vox-pops, turn into research and then add as content to social channels – make sure content is top of the agenda for 2013 and it is used globally.
3. Nurture brand ambassadors as they could be a huge source of the content you need. Every organisation has subject experts who could really elevate your thought-leadership strategy, but don’t know it! Look at topics you want to ‘own’ and start to reach out to the people in your ecosystem who can talk authoritatively on them. Then find out what they can do to support outreach – whether it is a detailed white paper or simply answering relevant questions in LinkedIn discussion groups – it is all crucial content generation.

There are more insights and tips in our latest white paper ’10 Proven Ways to Stretch Your Marketing Budget’.

By focusing on some key areas you can achieve more effectiveness with your marketing and see results quickly. Oh, and that may even help you justify the spend to bolster those campaigns and channels next time!

By Sarah Wincott, from: http://blog.lewispr.com/2012/12/how-is-your-2013-marketing-budget-shaping-up.html