Money talks, but it doesn’t always walk the walk, especially in digital marketing. In 2023, global digital advertising spending reached a staggering USD 626.86 billion, projected to reach 835.82 billion by 2026. (Statista)
With numbers like these, you’d think every campaign would be a home run, right? Wrong. A fat digital marketing budget might make you feel like a rockstar, but you’re more like a one-hit-wonder without a solid strategy.
Here’s what we’ll discuss:
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
The Role of Strategic Planning for Marketing
Five Benefits of Building a Digital Marketing Strategy
1. More Cost Effective Resource Allocation
2. Improved ROI Tracking
3. Targeted Marketing Efficiency
4. Optimized Budget Planning
5. Enhanced Marketing Effectiveness
So, how do you fix a bad strategy and protect your money? Let’s discuss.
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Sure, a hefty marketing budget can give you more reach, more clicks and maybe even more short-term sales. But what about the long game? Are you really getting quality engagement, or are you just flooding the market with forgettable ads?
Adam Draper, Thrive’s Digital Marketing Manager for Strategy, agrees with this. According to Draper, while “it allows you to learn lessons faster and gives you access to more options when building a strategy,” it’s not enough to guarantee a win in digital marketing.
Here are three signs you’re actually wasting more money with a bigger budget:
1. The “Spray and Pray” Approach: You’ve got cash to burn, so you decide to go all-in on every digital advertising channel you can think of. The result? Your message gets diluted, and you’re not reaching the audience that cares about your product.
2. Overwhelming Your Audience: Ever heard of ad fatigue? If you’re throwing big bucks to have your ad appear every five minutes, people will get tired of seeing it. They might even start to resent your brand. More isn’t always better. Sometimes, it’s just more. Think about quality vs. quantity.
3. Ignoring the Basics: With a big budget, it’s easy to get carried away with the latest and greatest marketing tech or trends. But you shouldn’t forget your website’s user experience or email marketing. The basics can deliver a better return on investment (ROI) than the shiny new tools your big budget can buy.
More money can buy you more ads, but it can’t buy you more love from your audience.
That’s where the whole “quality vs. quantity” factor comes into play. You could have the biggest budget in the world, but if your ads are as exciting as watching paint dry, you’re missing out on budget optimization.
The Role of Strategic Planning for Marketing
So, you’ve identified the pitfalls of a big but questionable marketing budget.
Now what?
The answer is strategic planning for marketing – the roadmap that guides your marketing efforts to ensure you’re not just throwing money into a black hole.
“Developing a marketing strategy allows you to properly align your goals, budget and marketing tools appropriate for reaching your audience,” said Draper.
According to the February 2022 CMO Survey, marketers are allocating 57.1% of their budgets to digital marketing and planning to up that by another 16.2% in 2023.
Those are big numbers, but without a strategy, you’re basically setting your money on fire. Strategic marketing is about making data-driven decisions, setting achievable goals and marketing ROI measurement.
“Giving you the information required to properly understand how each dollar you spend contributes towards achieving your targets,” Draper further explains.
“This allows you to see which channels, ad formats and methods are likely to be more effective at generating conversions.”
It’s not just about spending – it’s about spending wisely “at a price point that maximizes your return on investment.”
(Read more: How To Make the Most of Your Digital Marketing Budget in 2023)
What Makes a Good Digital Marketing Plan? Five Things To Keep in Mind
While the components vary from one company to another, there are five key components you must keep in mind:
1. Audience Segmentation
Knowing who your customers are and what they want is the first step in any successful marketing strategy.
Draper advised factoring your audience into your strategy, “why would they choose you and where can you reach them to deliver that message?”
This way, you can create marketing campaigns that are tailored to different audiences, targeting those who are more likely to convert. Use data analytics to segment your audience and tailor your messaging.
2. Content Strategy
What you say is as important as how you say it. A content strategy outlines the types of content you’ll create, from blog posts to videos and how they’ll engage your audience and drive conversions.
3. Channel Selection
Your strategy should identify the most effective channels for your business, whether it’s social media, email or location-based SEO. While each channel offers unique advantages, understanding which channels drive the highest ROI and deliver value to your customers is the key.
Circle back to the first two points to ensure your content works in harmony with the data you’ve collected and the strategy you’ve set. Testing different channels, content types and messaging will help you optimize your overall approach.
This feedback loop helps you make more informed decisions about where to invest resources in order to maximize ROI.
4. Budget Allocation
This is where your marketing budget comes into play. Your strategy should outline how much you’ll spend on each channel and what you expect to get in return.
“It’s important you understand the value of your customers and conversions,” said Draper. He also points out the importance of knowing how much of them convert and how much traffic is required to achieve your goals.
“This gives you a baseline cost you can use to analyze the marketing tools available to you and decide which tools fit your budget,” Draper said.
5. Performance Metrics
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven adjustments.
These components help companies overcome the common hurdle of not knowing where to begin. A well-defined strategy allows marketers to understand their goals and how they will achieve them and optimize targeted marketing budget allocation.
Five Benefits of Building a Digital Marketing Strategy
So, what exactly are the perks of having cost effective marketing strategies and resource allocation? Here are six benefits brands experience with a digital marketing strategy:
1. More Cost Effective Resource Allocation
An obvious perk of digital marketing strategies is that you get wiser with your money. Instead of spreading your budget thin across multiple channels, you can focus on the ones that deliver results.
This is smart marketing ROI measurement and resource allocation.
This is what this 3D image printing company did with their campaigns. Since they wanted to succeed in Amazon and other channels, they needed clarity on what KPIs to hit. After careful study and auditing, they realized that they needed to succeed in several KPIs, such as:
• Review velocity
• Full-price sales volume
• Ad conversions
• Contact Us form submissions
As a result, they generated 350.26% more sales volume and an increase of more than 451% in unit sales.
Case study: 3D image printing company
In the long run, this approach saves you money. You’re not wasting funds on campaigns that don’t resonate with your audience. Instead, you’re investing in marketing efforts with a more specific purpose, allowing you to track ROI more accurately.
2. Improved ROI Tracking
Digital marketing strategies also clarify your ROI tracking. Every company has a different goal, meaning the marketing effectiveness metrics included in your strategic marketing plan will differ.
Companies in the awareness stage are likely to track the following metrics:
• Social Reach
• Website Visitors
• Impressions
• User Engagement
Those in the conversion phase are likely to focus on:
• Revenue per Click
• Number of Customers Acquired
• Sales Generated by Specific Channels
Having the right cost effective marketing strategies and tools comes in handy when getting a clear picture of your marketing effectiveness. We’ve discussed some of these metrics here, here and here.
This helps you understand what’s working and what needs tweaking, empowering you to create data-driven decisions that boost your bottom line.
3. Targeted Marketing Efficiency
Remember the “Spray and Pray” approach we talked about? Targeted marketing is about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message. You can only do all these three things simultaneously with an intelligent, data-driven marketing budget allocation.
Coming up with cost effective marketing strategies helps you understand your target audience and segment based on various factors like:
• Demographics
• Behavior
• Preferences
Data-driven decisions are not just about the numbers and metrics – you also need to understand your customers’ motivations. Knowing who they are and what drives them allows you to craft personalized content that resonates with them.
4. Optimized Budget Planning
All the first three benefits lead us to one thing: a more optimized marketing budget allocation. With a well-thought-out strategy, you can allocate funds to high-performing channels and campaigns, ensuring budget optimization across the board.
Look at this ID card solutions company that wanted to generate more sales on Amazon. They identified two key metrics to measure their success and optimize towards units sold and advertising cost of sale.
With a strategy, the company generated a record-high 50.05% increase in sold units while decreasing its advertising cost per sale month over month:
Pictures From ID Card Solutions Company Case Study
A digital marketing strategy helps you create better processes for ROI tracking, measuring your performance and reallocating your budget to things that drive results.
5. Enhanced Marketing Effectiveness
No matter how large your budget, a lousy strategy simply won’t cut it.
What if you’re investing in many high-priced eCommerce campaigns but don’t know if they are actually driving conversions? Or maybe you’re spending money on content marketing but don’t track how it’s impacting customer engagement.
That’s why you need a strategic marketing plan – it gives you purpose, a roadmap and steps to measuring your success. So, if you’re committing a mistake now, you’ll know about it before too much of your budget goes down the drain.
Optimize Your Marketing Budget With Thrive
So, we’ve laid it all out for you: A bigger budget won’t fix a bad strategy, but a killer strategy can make any budget work harder and smarter. Whether you’re a small startup or a Fortune 500 company, the principles remain the same: strategic planning for marketing is vital to unlocking the full potential of your digital marketing budget.
Now, you might be thinking, “This all sounds great, but where do I even start?”
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency has been helping businesses succeed online. But we’re not about flashy gimmicks or empty promises. We’re a team that delivers actionable insights and measurable outcomes.
Stop wasting your money and start seeing results with Thrive today.
