Marketing has always been an important part of doing business — and this is a fundamental truth for brands of all sizes and in every business segment. Because let’s face it: When done well, marketing attracts customers … and without customers, businesses go out of business.
An effective way to overcome the unique challenges of the era
In 2022, as we (hopefully) emerge from the grasp of a global pandemic, marketing may be more important than ever. Restrictions and lockdowns have resulted in fewer in-person opportunities for brands to communicate with consumers, driving a need for businesses to connect with them in other ways. And of course, marketing is among the top options for making these critical connections with both actual and prospective customers.
Further, consumer behaviors have evolved over the course of the pandemic, moving more and more shopping and purchasing activities online. For brands without a strong digital presence, effective marketing tactics can help lure more buyers back to traditional purchase avenues such as in-person store visits and over-the-phone orders. (Developing a stronger digital presence is, of course, another top priority for these brands … but that’s a topic for another discussion.) And for brands with a strong digital presence, marketing presents an opportunity to leverage these evolving consumer behaviors to boost their online business.
A range of reasons to build a marketing budget
As we turn the page on 2021, consider these six reasons it’s crucial for your brand to create a marketing budget for 2022:
1. Marketing helps you grow your business…
When it comes to finding new customers — and helping them find you — there are few better ways to get the job done than with a well-researched, well-thought-out and well-executed marketing plan. Further, marketing is also one of the most effective ways to turn existing customers into repeat customers, and over time build brand loyalty and even brand advocacy in these consumers.
2. … and stand out from the competition.
Of course, when your business employs effective marketing tactics to get its messaging out to prospective customers and to stay top of mind with existing ones, it helps you stay ahead of competitors. And for most brands, the competition is always looking to steal customers away — and is likely using its own marketing tactics and budget in an effort to do just that. Needless to say, if your business can prevent this from happening by maintaining and nurturing its customer connections, its bottom line can benefit.
3. Budgeting helps you assess your near-term marketing goals and can provide direction for your marketing efforts.
Creating a marketing budget gives your business a powerful opportunity for introspection, forcing stakeholders to actively consider the company’s top goals for the near future and gauge the importance to the brand of, for example, gaining new customers and retaining existing ones. Things like deciding how much to spend on advertising can also help your brand set its top priorities, which can drive your marketing efforts and, more broadly, your business strategy moving forward.
4. Budgeting helps you more effectively allocate your marketing resources.
Strategically building a marketing budget can also help your brand put careful, up-front thought into deciding the best ways to allocate its marketing resources — including both its money and its time. Would certain advertising platforms be worth larger financial investments for the audiences they might most effectively reach? Other platforms may cost much less money but require larger investments of time — would they be worth it? The process of creating a marketing budget allows you to think through these impactful questions and more, and the finalized budget can serve as a road map to how to best allocate your brand’s time and money for marketing purposes.
5. The budgeting process fosters inter-departmental collaboration by bringing stakeholders together for planning.
Because they typically have altogether different day-to-day responsibilities, many business’s various departments often find themselves siloed in their work. But the creation of the best marketing budgets requires input from a number of different departments.
For example, while the marketing department is charged with figuring out what consumers value, operations is in charge of delivering that value — so consultation between the two on the marketing budget is key. And while the marketing department is likely to prefer allocating as much funding as possible to its marketing efforts, the finance department typically controls the purse strings. In addition, the marketing budget can be used to address a range of different departmental needs extending beyond the marketing department itself — such as advertising aimed at overcoming staffing shortages for HR.
Thus, because of the substantial impacts it can have on all of your brand’s departments, the creation of truly effective and comprehensive marketing budgets requires inter-departmental collaboration and coordination. And this presents a great opportunity for the various departments to put their heads together and work as a collective — with all departments and the company as a whole benefitting from a well-planned and executed marketing budget.
6. A budget can provide benchmarks for assessing your marketing results.
As your marketing plan is implemented and its execution advances, the marketing budget you’ve created can provide a great way for your brand to measure the success of its efforts. By examining the marketing goals outlined in the budget and comparing them with your results, you can determine which advertising platforms and tactics have been meeting and exceeding your marketing goals, as well as those that might have fallen short — then reassess your strategy and make adjustments as needed.
Could your brand use the help of a team of seasoned marketing professionals to maximize its marketing budget and effectiveness in 2022? At The Brandon Agency, our team of certified brand strategists and data-driven marketing experts has a wealth of experience boosting marketing-budget ROI for our clients. Further, TBA’s fully integrated marketing firm can cover the full spectrum of your brand’s marketing needs, including brand strategy, web design, creative, media, e-commerce, analytics, social media, SEO, conversion rate optimization, and more. To get started with help ranging from a simple website analysis to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost the performance of all of your marketing campaigns, contact us today.
Ed Lammon
Managing Editor of Agency Content
Ed Lammon is the Editorial Director of Blog and Long-Form Content for Brandon. A native of Enterprise, AL (home of the world’s only monument to an insect), Ed is a 1998 Journalism graduate of Auburn University (War Eagle!). When not working, he enjoys travel, hiking, telling dad jokes, and hanging out with friends and family (particularly around campfires, at concerts and at tailgates).