A Guide to Your 2016 Marketing Budget We are now entering the marketing planning and budgeting season. 2015 was the year that Content Marketing finally matured as a major player in the marketing industry. Find out what you need to know to be ready in 2016.
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A Guide to Your 2016
Marketing Budget
We are now entering the marketing planning and budgeting season. 2015 was the year that Content Marketing finally matured as a major player in the marketing industry. Find out what you need to know to be ready in 2016.
new dawn media
LEAD GENERATION IS IT
Marketing departments need to set themselves up for success in 2016 by conducting an effective marketing and budgeting planning process in Q3, and not wait until Q4. Where does one start? The major Social Media platforms - LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter - are becoming more multifaceted, providing new hyper-local targeting and better analytics… but it is not where you should start.
“As a former Marketing Director (client side) myself,
I am fully aware that planning and budgeting are a huge part of a
marketing planning challenge every
year.”
- Chief Content Marketing Officer, New Dawn Media
Last year I predicted that authority in content, partnerships, and intimate events would be leaders in the Content Marketing realm. This year new trends are emerging, and should be factored into the 2016 budgets and programs. People and financial resources for Content Marketing management are becoming more demanding, as organizations finally see social media marketing succeed and realize they need to produce content for those channels that bring in an ROI. All of these things require Marketing Directors to consider their marketing budgets in another way for 2016.
INTRODUCTION
Content marketing has matured in the marketing industry this year and has now become the largest player in the field. As a marketing expert I am fully aware that planning and budgeting are a huge part of a Marketing Directors and Marketing Executives’ challenge every year. I am often asked: "How should we approach marketing planning and budgeting for 2016 and how much should we spend the budget?" Content marketing has matured
in the marketing industry this year and has now become the
largest player in the field.
There are so many things to consider between paid, owned, earned and shared media and how those things are bringing in leads immediately and in the future pipelines of your business. When considering a balance that works for your business, knowing how these four things work together is critical.
Performing a complete audit and gap analysis defines where you can change your positioning among the competition and provides a discussion to be had with your product development department on what new products and services the marketing department can capitalize on for the new year in marketing opportunities, as well as, revenue opportunities.
You want to see where they have been marketing, what appears to be working for them and learn from them and counter-attack their moves.
Here are ten things every business – especially
technology businesses -
should be doing to plan and budget for 2016.
1 Audit the Competition
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Audit the Competition 1 It is important to note how these percentages represent the total marketing investment, not
just advertising or media spend. Your research should include things like marketing staff,
customer relationship management, investments paid to agencies and other outside
suppliers, advertising costs, media spend, etc. Companies seeking to grow market share
will likely be on the high side of these averages vs. firms planning for modest growth, which
may be on the lower side. Additionally, the competitive nature of a certain marketplace will
influence where a particular firm falls among these average figures. Most companies who
hire a marketing agency for the first time and have tried Content Marketing unsuccessfully
usually have not done proper market research and a competitive analysis, gap analysis or
media consumption research of their target market. Which means any marketing efforts
that have been done usually have been shooting blind and therefore, has wasted valuable
resources as a result. Prevent failure with thorough research, so your plan is informed.
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According to Forrester Research, B2B marketing budgets have increased from
2013 to 2015 to the 7-9% range. B2C budgets from 2013 to 2015 are hovering
around the 9% mark. Based on these results, we see that B2B marketing spending
has increased over the past couple years, whereas B2C marketing spending has
actually dropped a bit. Conclusions from the 2014 report reveal that 29% of total
marketing budgets were allocated to online/digital channels. Search engine
marketing or Content Marketing continued to capture the largest share of online
spend at 47% or about 14% of a company’s total marketing budget. Online display
advertising (banner ads, re-marketing & re-targeting) captured the next biggest
share of the online spend at about 34% of total online spend and about 10% of the
total marketing budget. Social media investments were estimated at 6% of total
online spend and a bit less than 2% of the total marketing budget.
Guess what?
For 2016, the average firm will allocate 30% of their marketing budget to online
marketing, and is expected to grow to 35% by 2019. Once again, Content
Marketing (SEO) will capture the largest share of online spend with online display
(banner ads, online video, etc.) taking the second largest share. Social media
investments will continue to grow as an overall share of online spend, but will
only represent about 15% of the total online spend, most likely due to the social
media investment being part of the content marketing investment.
Forrester and other analytics firms can give you valuable information about your market. However, hiring an
independent analyst can be a cost effective alternative.
A July 2015 report from Qvidian found that 78 percent of B2B professionals worldwide say content is very important to the effectiveness of the sales process.
Incorporate Market Research 2
Review Your Past 3
The previous marketing year programs should go under review. This allows you to visibly see where the company has spent marketing dollars, where these funds
have performed, and where they have failed to perform.
Google rewards content publishers who create authoritative,
meaningful, and valuable content.
How your company looks at SEO will be something you need to adapt to in 2016. Long-tail searches have the potential to result in more high-quality traffic and sales for companies down the road, giving you more focus on the customers who want to find you and ensuring you can reach the customers you want to target. It is not an illogical concept.
Companies need to understand they need to put themselves out there in order to be found. If you are not publishing content daily, then no one will see you on organic search results. That’s SEO, and that is the number one tactic necessary to ensure your search results for target customers you want.
Why make the
same mistakes
twice?
Armed with your knowledge of what the competition is doing alongside
your previous campaigns, you can now meet with the product/services
teams, and the CFO, to establish the company goals. If you have an
analytics person that can provide data riddled stacks of stats, all-the
better. They should be detailed, specific and revenue oriented (number
of prospects in the pipeline, lead valuation of each prospect, number of
prospects changing vendors from market research, current and
projected market growth, impact of new prospects entering the
marketing, competitive gain of the projected market) and more.
4 Establish Company Goals
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Define the Marketing Budget 5 Many companies are behind on providing a good customer experience in their Content Marketing initiatives. They sometimes forget the sales funnel does not end at the sale! Be sure to include any marketing initiatives for customer marketing and for the up-sale, referrals and advocacy opportunities. Outstanding customer experience is now a requirement of your Content Marketing efforts, but more importantly should have an allotment in your budget.
Social media credibility has a huge impact on company success and this can be displayed through customer journey
roadmaps. Marketing departments require ongoing investments in sales automation, social media resources, research, Content Marketing, earned and paid media that bring in immediate clicks, web traffic and more. A very delicate marketing mix based on several factors already discussed in the previous chapters should define your marketing budget. No matter what, keep in mind your budget should be defined by how you can best reveal that you are there to tend to your customers needs through content from your experts.
Outstanding customer
experience is now a
requirement of your Content
Marketing efforts.
Cost Reductions & New Technologies 6 What can you automate to create efficiency? What can you
outsource to reduce costs, and increase conversion/engagement?
Is enhanced collaboration with sales going to improve conversions?
What content was not used by sales or never viewed by
customers/prospects? Can it be repurposed? Do you have enough
Sales Enablement content or awareness marketing? Do you need to
train the sales force on how to access and leverage your best
content, and utilize it in their social media channels?
2016 will see the emergence of Multi-
location Content Marketing.
This means training for sales staff, company wide, in Content
Marketing tactics.
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1. This may be the aspect of the sales funnel that is your weakest. Building relationships in social media and in personal emails when corporate drip campaigns are happening at the same time is something you want coordinated delicately. Calling a prospect because they downloaded your eBook is not necessarily your most qualified lead is an example of that.
2. Marketing and sales integration is now a
2016 focus and there are many technologies that can help with training
and automation.
For those that have a large sales team, this pain point can be remedied with a proper Multi-location Content Marketing Strategy.
Review Sales Staff Success 7
3. This is a bit of a continuation of number five, but merits its own chapter. I can’t stress how important it is to review the ability of your sales team to ensure they are not performing old school sales tactics like cold calling or nurturing the same old lead for months on end. Nurturing is what Content Marketing does, so the sales staff can focus on relationship building. There are many sales people that do not believe, understand or hold proper training in how a modern qualified lead develops today. The sales goals and past years' performances need to be considered for marketing budget planning considerations.
2016 will be the year of
Content Marketing Sales
Training.
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One of the biggest tricks of the digital marketing
industry is to join forces with others to form
powerful partnerships. By doing this you will be
able to reach a larger audience and with clever
partnership choices you could access thousands
of like-minded individuals who could become part
of your company’s fan base.
Many companies do not rely on Channel Partners
for revenue generation. This means they may be
missing out on at least one third of the company
revenue through referral based marketing alone.
Yet, many of these programs are not funded well
or do not have an experienced marketing person
to provide content that is needed for partner co-
branded opportunities. Consider the partner
marketing needed for marketing distribution.
Partners 8
Content Distribution Strategy
Partner programs are part of your:
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As a content marketing expert I would love online marketing to be solely successful in organic search alone, but boosting content distribution through paid channels is undeniably successful. That is why we partner with PPC agencies. With proper amplification strategies a PPC campaign is much more successful than when using PCC alone. In fact, PPC campaigns need Content Marketing to be effective.
Of course, once we have figured out the right mix, it is only a matter of time when Google disrupts our efforts again by adding a new algorithm. Remember, your clients are looking for value, and they intentionally consume content to find it — not advertisements alone. And the rise of ad-blocking features is increasing the importance of organic content even more.
9 The Power of the Mix
Content Marketing should be your first step to build a following organically, by sharing your expert knowledge with your audience, and positioning yourself as an industry leader. That way, you’ll build your own audience of brand advocates who help move your content (and company) progressively.
The Content Marketing Institute found that the most advanced content marketers
have strategic amplification programs as part of Content Marketing efforts, with a
growing focus on paid social media ads, promoted posts, native content, and
content discovery tools. You can see the B2B and B2C breakdown below:
The Power of the Mix 9
In the
entertainment industry, when
marketing content itself, as in TV and films, this is exactly
how books and films are
successfully sold.
Getting Budget Approval 10
Compare your budget to other companies of
a similar revenue size, and a similar marketing evolution. Then show the CFO what you have
come up with. Reveal how the marketing
strategy increases the overall company bottom line. Getting the CFO on your side
first, before going to the COO and CEO, will
help you a great deal. Once you have backing from the financial department, you can then
sell the rest of the executive team on what is
involved in creating and executing this
marketing strategy and plan. What will it take
to succeed (budget, people, capabilities,
resources, technology) and what the
company needs to approve and do to
support your marketing plan.
By presenting the real revenue opportunity you are in a better position to secure the required resources to a
successful 2016.
We are more than happy to help companies with
their 2016 marketing planning and process. An
outside perspective can be very useful to inside marketing teams. Your biggest challenge will be
addressing the historical issues from the previous
year with the CFO. History does not always reflect the future. The market is always changing,
whether it is your industry or in the marketing
landscape, so it is important to reflect that change in your numbers. Make the planning and
budgeting process your chance to shine. More
so than last year, marketing technologies and automation are proving effective at bringing
together more efficient marketing tactics to
achieve better results. Again, if you can prove your competition and the industry at large are
increasing their Content Marketing budgets and
the company will fall behind if you simply use last years numbers you, have a logical argument.
Bringing together the data from credible sources
and your own audit should help you determine your 2016-marketing budget practically.
Having quality content and making sure it is speaking to the pain points of your
clients and in the right way, in the right context, made for the channel it will be
searched in, is all very important, but distribution beyond the regular social media
channels and your email list is also very important. You will need to find multiple
avenues. As mentioned above, partners is very important and advocacy from your
customer base is also key, but getting a Content Marketing company that knows of
other key link-back opportunities is also key. It’s hard to stay up-to-date on the
latest trends that are happening in Content Marketing if you have not already been
watching it. As Content marketing experts, it is what we live for.
BONUS: Distribution
For example, Facebook has been trying to get into the news game and now going for publishing by releasing Instant Articles https://instantarticles.fb.com/. This new ad platform on Facebook encourages marketers and publishers to run articles and native ads directly on the wall. Facebook says the Instant Articles platform was created “to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience, and to monetize new opportunities.
For your 2016 marketing
plan and budget, it’s crucial to find a marketing
agency that knows the latest trends in Content
Marketing.
CREDITS CREATED BY
DAWN WILLSON As Chief Content Officer at New Dawn Media, Dawn provides consulting, strategy and full Content Marketing agency services through her agency. She has been helping organizations and partners grow their businesses through Content Marketing since 2008. She is the editor of Shine, New Dawn Media’s blog for Content Marketing.
new dawn media
www.ndawnm.com
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At New Dawn Media we know your
marketing efforts should result in leads and
sales. Learn more about how online/digital
marketing methods such as Content
Marketing, analytics, display advertising, web
design and content strategy can help you
achieve your sales goals today.
A Guide to Your 2016
Marketing Budget
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