8 Must-Have Budgeting Templates
To effectively manage your marketing expenditure in 2023, it is vital to have a practical and accessible marketing budget. Establishing strategic and channel orientation, meeting commercial objectives and key performance indicators, and tracking your success are all important components of a successful marketing strategy. However, if you are not tracking your return on investment (ROI) per channel, it can be challenging to comprehend how much money has been spent to achieve a result. To assist in this process, we have created a Digital Marketing Strategy Planning Toolkit with 8 Integrated Marketing Budget Templates.
How much money do you have set aside for marketing?
According to the latest CMO Survey, marketing spending is expected to increase by 11.7% in 2023 and 13.6% the following year. The survey indicates that digital marketing spending will be the biggest part of the budget, taking up 57.1%. With the competitive market in 2023, it’s more important than ever to track and forecast your marketing spend. If you can’t prove that a tactic worked, it’ll be even harder to justify the expense in the face of global inflation. That’s why our 8 different budget templates are here to help marketers in manufacturing companies streamline their planning and optimize their digital marketing strategy.
1. Budget Summary & Monthly Tracker
If you want to ensure you’re getting the most out of your marketing budget, you must know what percentage of your budget you’re spending on which channels. That way, you can quickly figure out which marketing activities are giving you the best return on investment. Plus, if you can see it all in one place, you can easily predict when your marketing mix might change.
2. Acquisition Marketing Budget
Keep an eye on your online and offline channels to ensure you’re getting the most out of your acquisition marketing budget. If you have an acquisition budget, you’ll need to monitor the basic digital channels and the bigger budget tactics like TV, radio and direct mail. Compare the cost of each channel to each other and adjust your budget if your priorities change. You can also look at month-to-month spending to spot trends. Don’t forget to factor in seasonality in your budget. For example, if you’re an online store, you might want to put more money into December when you can get the most out of the demand for your products.
3. Creative Marketing Budget
Getting management to agree to be creative can sometimes be tough. The key is to keep track of the long and short-term effects on your brand. You must also keep track of your creative budget because it’s a key part of content marketing. If you have a variety of designs and formats, you can share more content on social and other digital channels. Plus, repurposing can help you save money. Track your creative spending by keeping track of freelance work, the tools you need, printing costs and licenses. If you can, look for deals for bulk purchases or use special incentives to get buy-in.
4. Content & SEO Marketing Budget
Marketing content isn’t just about writing an article or blog post. If you’re one of the big players in content marketing, or you’re looking to expand your reach, you’ll need to think about larger-scale implementations of content and the costs that come with it. These might include image licensing, content marketing, international content translators, copywriting, video production, and auditing.
5. Public Relations & Marketing Budget
One of the biggest areas of marketing that many people overlook is PR. It’s also one of the most integrated areas of marketing, so you’ll want to make sure you get the most out of it. It can be prohibitively expensive to submit your company or agency for an award, and a lot of us would love to get free PR, but that’s not always the case. Our tracker spreadsheet shows you the total cost of all the PR and events you do, from agency management to product launch PR.
6. Marketing Research, Insights & Tools Budget
Do you know how many tools and licenses your company needs? There’s a vast selection of digital marketing tools for marketers to use across all digital channels. Marketing tech can help you track visitors, get leads, convert, personalize, manage them, and keep them on your brand through the customer journey.
But how can you track all the different marketing tools and how much they cost each month or year? Do you need to get management’s approval for a social listing tool but can’t show you have enough money left? Or are you subscribed to so many tools that all track the same thing? A spreadsheet allows you to see what percentage of your marketing budget is going to each channel – that way you can figure out which one is getting the most attention and make the necessary adjustments.
7. Marketing Team Budget
If you’re a company, you’ll want to invest in your staff and give them the training and support they need. But how do you allocate the budget? Is it per team, per person or is there a certain amount each month that staff can use when they need it?
It’s also important to keep track of how much you’re spending on staff training versus hiring new staff. Maybe you’re considering spending more on training an existing member of your team and it’s more cost-effective and good for your staff development than hiring someone new. Our marketing budgeting spreadsheets can help you keep track of all your digital channel marketing budgets and track performance and ROI. But other costs come with running your marketing team, like staff travel and event travel. Plus, you’ll need to consider bonuses and staff entertainment to keep your company running smoothly.
8. Website Marketing Budget
At the end of the day, what’s the cost of running your company website? Is it something that’s tucked away, doesn’t make it into your marketing budget, or is managed by a senior team member that the rest of the team doesn’t know about? Think about budgeting for things like server and hosting costs, website domain administration, site integrations, ongoing SEO and content strategies, and even staff training.
Using Planning Tools To Track Your Marketing Budget
Want To Boost Your Marketing Strategy In 2023?
You can use our pre-made marketing budget spreadsheets for your own manufacturing business. Learn more about how you can use our framework to map your customers’ journeys and get the most out of your budget. We’ll help you figure out the best way to spend your budget, so you can focus on what’s most important to your customers. Plus, our integrated marketing structure will help you make the most of your data and insights, so you can make the best decisions about your marketing strategies.
Get started today by signing up for your free Digital Marketing Plan template!