Monday, November 02, 2009

Get More Out of your 2010 Marketing Budget

It’s that time of year again, next year’s budget. You’ve probably been working on next years budget already and wondering how you are going to squeeze more dollars for marketing to achieve your sales goals. In today’s environment marketing budgets are usually being slashed. However, there are ways you can stretch your media dollars.

First, take a look at what your competitors are spending. Research keywords that your competitors are paying for and track their spending over an extended period of time. This information could confirm your keyword spending direction. Spyfu Kombat is a paid keyword research service that lets you track historical keyword analyses. If keyword spending is major part of your budget this tool may come in handy for you.

It probably goes without saying, but if you can demonstrate the value of marketing dollars spent now it goes a long way when asking for more or validating why you should keep your current budget. Your agency should be helping you with ROI reports through out the year. If you don’t have a way to calculate your current ROI this should be the first thing you do.

Other valuable investments should be made in testing tools and content. These areas will get the best bang for your buck. These two areas are often over looked and under valued.

eMarketer’s October 29th article “Bad Campagin Worse than None at All” illustrates what happens when you have a bad campaign. The same is true for bad landing pages. Invest in either purchasing testing tools or starting with some free tools and learning how to effectively use them. If your budget doesn’t allow you to purchase testing tools start with Google Website Optimizer.

Good content is another great investment. How to articles and press releases with great content can give you long-term return. We are still getting traffic from articles and press releases we posted over three years ago. Invest in getting a professional writer to help generate great content.

Another investment with long-term return is email marketing. Continue to build your email list. Yes, having thousands of followers on Twitter is great, but the best impact we’ve seen is in email marketing. We’ve seen people on email list for several years who finally take action. This is especially true for companies with long sales cycles.

The trend has been lately that budgets from off-line marketing have been going into online marketing. We’ve seen the same thing. However, don’t give up on the off-line. Having a well integrated marketing approach is your best strategy. Using tools wisely, testing and the right measurements will get you the best marketing ROI in 2010.

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