In all businesses, the marketing team is given a budget that must be allocated among specific Aspects and in turn their related marketing activities, such as television advertising, newspaper advertising, sponsorships, online advertising, and events. The marketing team determines the effectiveness of these advertising channels in enabling the team to reach its target audience and the available budget is divided among these channels accordingly.
The following items should be considered with regards to the budget allocated to Digital Marketing:
Amount of Budget Allocated—This represents the financial resources that Digital Marketing has been allocated by the Marketing Strategy team to use in order to achieve specific Digital Marketing targets. It is usually a specific figure, but sometimes tolerances may be defined to account for anticipated needs and changes. With the allocated budget, the marketing team has considered such things as who the customers are, how they do business and interact with the company, the creativity and costs associated with executing campaigns, and the current consumer perception of the company or brand.
Rationale for Budget Allocation—This involves specifying and documenting the reasons for the budget allocated, which reduces the possibility of irrelevant factors such as personal preferences or politics playing a role in the allocation process. Articulating and documenting the rationale for a particular resource can also save time when new employees join the team or existing team members question certain initiatives.
Availability of Allocated Budget—The manner in which the allocated budget will be made available to the Digital Marketing activities is also defined. Information such as the process for accessing funds, the approvals needed, and the increments in which the budget will be made available during a time period are specified.
The overall budget allocated to Digital Marketing sets an upper limit on how much can be spent for promoting a product, brand, or service through digital media. Therefore, it is an important input for determining which Digital Marketing channels should be used and how much should be spent on each of the selected channels to achieve their respective targets.
Here is an example of Allocated Budget:
When a company has a minimal budget for Digital Marketing, it may decide to focus more on encouraging customers to visit its website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rather than spending money on paid advertising. Likewise, it may focus on engaging with customers through different social media platforms, blogs, and forums and growing its contact list for e-mail marketing rather than allocating funds to purchase lists.
