We don’t know about y’all, but here at EMB we can’t believe it’s already almost November! Where did 2018 go? As the year comes to an end, many relax, but the wise prepare for the year to come. If you are interested in the continuous upward growth of your brand, then you are most likely planning out your marketing budget for 2019, though if you have not done so yet, no need to fret. This blog post will not only help you begin the brainstorming process, but also force you to answer some challenging self-evaluating questions.
Where are Other Companies Spending Their Marketing Budget?
There are a few key concerns when gauging where you should allocate more or less money into your marketing budget, the first being what are other companies spending their marketing budgets on? Which form of marketing is the most popular and yields the most significant reaction from my targeted audience? According to Forbes, we should expect to see more money being spent on influencer marketing and content marketing to help continue to build relationships and add value to them in 2019. This assertion correlates well when read in conjunction with articles that provide data displaying that 82 percent of businesses will increase their digital marketing budget by 50 percent.
Simply put, companies are spending more of their marketing budget on digital marketing as opposed to paper and print marketing, and more specifically, budgeting for more visual content with fewer words. The trend is to follow the traits of the audience, 85 percent of whom are watching videos on a daily basis. Specifically, how-to videos have been said to increase conversions on a webpage by as much as 80 percent.
Are My Marketing Efforts Working?
This question is a difficult one to answer if you do not necessarily know how to track your progress. One way to do it would be to look at how many sales you generate in a month compared to the amount you spend monthly on marketing. This equation may be harder to use for a business that has not quite started rolling in dollars, but still very well may be experiencing a return on their investment via the new relationships they are forming and the traffic they are generating. Other things to look out for when determining whether your marketing efforts are actually working are: lead generation, brand awareness, engagement, lead nurturing, sales, customer retention and building an audience through subscriptions. Furthermore, analyzing where your traffic is sourcing from will help you determine where the money you spend is leading people back to you the most; whether it be postcards, e-mails, videos or blog posts. Once you have an idea about the way in which people are finding you, you can then begin to focus more on those avenues in the hopes of continuously increasing traffic.
Preparing for a new year is a necessary evil, and allows even the best of the best to take a moment to reflect on their highlights and downfalls. Fortunately, this daunting task can be made easy with the help of tools such as this free 2019 Digital Marketing Budget Calculator. With the upcoming year just on the horizon, do not be afraid to adopt the “out with the old, and in with the new” mentality. Staying on trend is the name of the game. Visit our homepage to learn more about how we at EMB can help you strategize your 2019 marketing plan.
