Answering the How Question In Digital Marketing Planning
By now that you know what are you want to achieve, for who, with what creatives and on what channels, now you need to set the costs and time frame of the strategy. This last stage is crucial as it will define the marketer’s capacity to invest money and time into the planned strategy.
Working within a budget can be challenging and thus will impact the previous planning elements. Smaller budgets will need to focus on high impact, low-cost channels, and creatives, while larger budgets will be able to scale and invest in high impact, high-cost channels.
Let’s see how budget and timeframe shape your strategy:
Budget as part of how question in digital marketing planning
Developing a solid marketing budget is an important part of creating a plan of action that is realistic and will help improve revenues.
The global marketing budget is usually set at the organization level based on previous spending, current company needs and goals. The marketing department might push a number that they have planned based on their yearly action plan, but at the end of the day, the budget will depend on the organization’s disposable income and priorities.
Once the budget is set, the marketer’s role is to divide that budget across all efforts, by prioritizing based on past experiences, objectives, expected ROI. The budget will also be a starting point for defining measurable goals by understanding how much is put in and how much revenue this will generate by newly acquired customers.
Timeframe as part of how question in digital marketing planning
Finally, the last consideration that will tie all the previous elements together is the time frame. Creating a plan is necessary to spread the marketing strategy across the appropriate period and cover the buyer’s journey over time.
Defining a time frame can be done in multiple ways. marketers can work around a specific date that makes sense, such as a product launch, an event, a bank holiday, or any seasonal event. It can also be spread across the entire year with the main event but focusing on being present for longer periods of time.
The time frame will depend on the objective and audience, but also on the business reporting period. If the product team is launching a new product and wants to create awareness, the marketing goal for this period will be centred around the product and using branding campaigns and channels, instead of focusing on increasing the sales of the previous product. Multiple marketing goals can be addressed in the same period, but this depends on the available resources, budget, and employees.
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