Ask any marketer, and they’ll tell you that they have no shortage of ideas for your brand. Creative brains are often spilling over with zany brainstorming that will ensure your brand is known.
What is in short supply, unfortunately, is the budget to carry out those plans. And that’s where people often get stuck: how much should a company be spending on marketing?
The answer is always, that depends. It depends on what your current reach is in your market, whether your brand performs better with pay-per-click advertising or monthly eNewsletters, and how much room you have in your budget.
Stop Thinking in Terms of a Straight Line.
Generally, the answer isn’t as simple as paid or not-paid advertising; leads tend to convert to buyers best when companies don’t attempt a straight line to a sale. In fact, 72% of consumers say that a more integrated approach to getting familiar with a brand is more in line with their preferences.
What Is Integrated Marketing?
An integrated marketing plan allows a multi-channel approach to engage with consumers. A multi-channel approach is based on the idea that consumers are doing more research before they talk with a salesperson, and that research involves many different sources of information. They may search your company on Google, read about your products in a blog, and chat with friends on social media about their experiences with your brand before they make a decision.
In addition, on average, only two percent of visitors to your website will convert to a sale. How you increase that number depends on how well you execute an integrated marketing strategy.
How Do I Know Where to Put My Dollars?
Every company has a limited marketing budget, and the key to knowing how to allocate those dollars is rooted in data. You need to send the right message to the right people at the right time. If you’re funneling a large percentage of your budget to Facebook, for instance, but your audience spends their time almost solely on LinkedIn, you may be delivering the right message but to the wrong audience.
Using reliable data to understand who your target market is, where they spend their time, and perhaps most importantly, what needs and wants they have, is critical for managing your marketing budget well.
You’re Not Finished Without Data, Either.
Even once you’ve determined that your audience spends time on Instagram, Facebook, and opening eNewsletters, you need to gather important data about how they’re responding to your marketing. You need to know if contests on Instagram perform better than polls on Facebook, and if including industry influencers makes your eNewsletter more effective. Measuring the impact of an integrated marketing strategy is important for knowing whether you’re marketing in the right ways to reach your audience.
A sound, integrated marketing strategy based on data makes it easy to know precisely how much marketing is enough. You’ll have a clear idea of how you should allocate those marketing dollars based on performance data.
To launch an omnichannel strategy that always delivers exactly enough marketing for measurable growth, contact DirectMail.io for more information.
