What's your strategy for managing a marketing budget?

Managing a marketing budget is a crucial skill for any non-profit leader, especially in times of uncertainty and change. How do you allocate your resources, measure your impact, and adapt to your audience's needs and preferences? In this article, we'll share some tips and best practices to help you develop and implement a marketing budget strategy that aligns with your mission and goals.

1 Assess your current situation

Before you plan your marketing budget, you need to have a clear picture of your current situation. This includes your revenue sources, expenses, cash flow, and projected income and costs. You also need to evaluate your marketing performance, such as your reach, engagement, conversions, and retention rates. You can use tools like SWOT analysis, SMART goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as set realistic and measurable objectives for your marketing efforts.

Add your perspective

Tyler Evans

Managing Partner @ Aligned Ventures | CAPS, Multifamily investments
Report contribution
For us, we typically allocate a budget in our proforma. We consider the end goal in mind and apply realistic conversion rates. For example, with our main advertiser, we typically get one actionable lead per $150 spent. We turn it into an equation, plugging in the amount of leads that we need and our conversion rate on the leads and setting the budget based on those estimates. Another thing that we do is a split test to find the highest leverage activities to reach our targets in the most effective method possible.

Like

2 Prioritize your marketing activities

Once you have a clear understanding of your current situation, you can prioritize your marketing activities based on your goals, audience, and resources. You may want to focus on different aspects of the marketing mix, such as product, price, place, and promotion, depending on your specific needs and challenges. For example, you may want to invest more in developing or improving your product or service, or in finding new channels or platforms to reach your target market. You may also want to allocate more funds to the most effective or efficient marketing tactics, such as email marketing, social media marketing, or content marketing.

Add your perspective

Michael Buchalter

Connecting brands to consumers through impactful experiences | Named Retail 40 Under 40 List & Symbol Creative Award Nominee | Former Adidas Comms & Marketing
Report contribution
It can be intimidating to try to create a marketing budget plan, at its highest level, I remind myself that our budget is the implementation of our strategy (which is just where we are going to dedicate our resources to try and achieve our results). This helps me focus on what the priorities should be. If its not going to help us achieve our goal, cut cut cut...

Like
W. Bruce Hutcheon, MBA

Open to sell
Report contribution
Begin with the end in mind. My customer my product my market reach all factor in the Process. Share knowledge with finance, sales, distribution and production to get out of your sand box

Like

3 Create a marketing budget plan

After you have prioritized your marketing activities, you can create a marketing budget plan that outlines how much money you will spend on each activity, when, and why. You can use a spreadsheet, a software, or a template to help you organize and track your marketing expenses. You should also include a contingency fund for unexpected costs or emergencies. Your marketing budget plan should be realistic, flexible, and aligned with your overall organizational budget and strategy.

Add your perspective

Kylie Wallace Cowan 🌱 🌸

CEO of Seedling Giving 🌱🌸 and UPCYCLE ♻️🛋️🌎
Report contribution
First I start with testing different marketing channels eg paid digital ads, SEM, PR, event activations, print copy ads, radio, outdoor etc. Then I work out what key channels are producing the best ROI. Then I split up my budget into buckets based on a % of spend. I like to monitor ongoing and scale up and down during a campaign based on what is working. After a campaign I also work on a report and also pull data from google analytics and my EDM platform to assess what are the 30% of things that have driven 90% of the sign ups/sales. Then I develop a new strategy on how to do that 30% - 200% better

Like

4 Monitor and evaluate your marketing budget

Once you have implemented your marketing budget plan, you need to monitor and evaluate your marketing budget regularly. You should compare your actual spending with your planned spending, and check if you are meeting your goals and KPIs. You should also collect and analyze data and feedback from your audience, stakeholders, and partners, to see how they perceive and respond to your marketing efforts. You should use tools like dashboards, reports, surveys, and analytics to help you measure and communicate your marketing impact.

Add your perspective

Michael Buchalter

Connecting brands to consumers through impactful experiences | Named Retail 40 Under 40 List & Symbol Creative Award Nominee | Former Adidas Comms & Marketing
Report contribution
Getting ROI on your investment can be one of the most challenging aspects. Ensuring that you have KPIs that are realistic and mutually aligned on by all parties before starting makings monitoring and evaluating on the backend so much easier.

Like

5 Adjust and improve your marketing budget

Based on your monitoring and evaluation results, you should adjust and improve your marketing budget as needed. You may need to increase or decrease your spending on certain activities, or change your tactics or channels, depending on your performance and feedback. You may also need to revise your goals and KPIs, or explore new opportunities or challenges, depending on your external and internal environment. You should always keep learning and testing new ideas and approaches, to optimize your marketing budget and maximize your return on investment.

Add your perspective

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Add your perspective

What's your strategy for managing a marketing budget?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Assess your current situation

2 Prioritize your marketing activities

3 Create a marketing budget plan

4 Monitor and evaluate your marketing budget

5 Adjust and improve your marketing budget

6 Here’s what else to consider

Nonprofit Management

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

More articles on Nonprofit Management

More relevant reading

What's your strategy for managing a marketing budget?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Assess your current situation

2 Prioritize your marketing activities

3 Create a marketing budget plan

4 Monitor and evaluate your marketing budget

5 Adjust and improve your marketing budget

6 Here’s what else to consider

Nonprofit Management

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

Explore Other Skills