When it comes to business, a lot of people find themselves operating with a marketing budget slightly or significantly lower than what they would like. In this type of situation, whether we are talking about small business budgeting or the marketing budget of a much larger company, every penny counts.
Taking your budget into consideration and allocating available funds accordingly is just one piece of the puzzle, especially for small businesses. However, tracking your marketing spend will make things operate effectively by allowing you to maintain visibility on what exactly is happening so you can make the necessary adjustments to your budget.
The type of data you should be tracking:
- Social media; as well as the amount of money spent, you should record statistics such as follower numbers, interactions with your posts, referral visits to your website etc, in order to analyse performance across platforms.
- Offline marketing initiatives; this will help track target audience responsiveness.
- Lifetime value of clients; this is important if your business is more dependent on long term clients than new clients.
- Acquisition cost of new clients; this comes down to how much of your marketing budget you are willing to spend in order to acquire a new customer.
- Marketing cost; this helps you narrow down on how much you are willing to spend on things like campaigns.
Keeping track of your marketing budget is important especially for a small business’ finances. It helps you in measuring and tracking your marketing success so you can have a clear picture on whether your marketing strategies are working or they still need some polishing. This helps you figure out what exactly is working for your business and what is not. It helps you visualize your entire marketing outlay so you can figure out where your marketing budget is getting lost and where your money is most efficiently used. It helps you narrow down who your target audience is and ensure you are reaching your target audience through the right channels.
John Wanamaker said “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half”. Now wouldn’t you like to know which half of your marketing budget goes to waste so you could make the necessary adjustments that would work better for your business? My bet is you would. Tracking your marketing budget is how you find out whether you are meeting your marketing objectives or not. After all, as they say, it’s hard to know if you’ve won the game if you don’t keep score.
If you need any help with budgeting for your business small or large, get in touch with DLR Accountants. Our friendly Colchester-based team provide first class accounting services and expert advice all across the country.
