Let’s address the elephant in the room. Numbers are your business. So, we’re not telling you how to do your job.
But a marketing manager can lack experience in finance, and an expert in finance can lack experience in marketing.
With that in mind here are five tips to make planning and managing marketing budgets easier for your accountancy firm.
Manage marketing budgets in five simple steps
Follow these simple steps to take control of your marketing budget.
#1 It all starts with goal setting
Setting goals should be your priority. After all, how can you budget unless you understand your aims? Nail this process and you’ll be able to allocate money in the right proportion to run campaigns and complete other activities.
Goals might include:
- Setting a marketing budget for advertising
- Running a series of interactive webinars
- Investing in new promotional material
- Hiring an agency to write content
#2 Clearly define your strategy
Step one furnished you with a list of actions. Next, you must decide how to achieve those goals and how reliant you are on each.
If advertising is your priority:
- Which platforms will you use – Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube (perhaps native ads)?
- In terms of managing your marketing budgets, how much will you spend on these platforms?
- Are there cheaper ways to showcase your services – for example:
- Running campaigns in the local or national press
- Devoting more time to posting on social media
#3 Download a marketing budget template
No instructions are necessary here. After all, tracking expenses is your speciality. Just ensure you find a marketing budget template that aligns your expenses with the goals set out in step one.
There are plenty of free marketing budget templates. Hubspot and Smartsheet are good places to start or, of course, you could create your own using a program like Microsoft Excel.
#4 Clearly define your marketing budget
Having defined your marketing activities, it’s time to commit them to your template. This will fill in the gaps to form a spending proposal.
Beware: by listing marketing expenses you’re bound to encounter surprises.
These might include non-negotiable:
- Retainers or subscription costs
- Agreements with third-party vendors
- Exhibition or conference fees
Managing marketing budgets is about planning spending in advance and sharing that plan with decision-makers so you’re never caught out.
#5 Centralise your marketing expenditure
Imagine a situation where one person – perhaps the CFO – handles credit card payments. Meanwhile, it’s down to individual team members to file expense reports for ad spend, subscriptions, travel, and other activities.
To successfully manage marketing budgets, it’s essential to centralise your payment methods into one easy-to-access location so your firm can track expenditures in real time to prevent unwelcome surprises later.
Need a helping hand with your marketing?
Then talk to us. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we can handle everything from copywriting and advertising to website ideation, design, and social media strategy. Book your free consultation today
