How Big Should Your Digital Marketing Budget Be?

Whether you’ve just started your small business, or you’ve recently taken over your family enterprise, you are likely wondering how big your digital marketing budget should be.
The fact of the matter is that marketing has been around since the dawn of business and has taken many forms in order to adapt to its own evolutionary process.
What we mean by that is, before the age of printing flyers, newspapers and magazines, people were standing outside their business literally shouting out their promotions to innocent passers-by.
Since then, we have had televisions blurting out super salesy adverts while we wait for the 8 o’clock movie to start and giant billboards along the highway with some catchy phrase designed to grab our attention.

Online Marketing
Today, without even needing to walk out our front door, we have the entire world at our fingertips. This is true in many ways, but especially true when it comes to marketing.
By now, anyone who is the slightest bit techno-savvy knows that digital marketing should be a fundamental part of any business strategy because it has the ability to reach thousands of people all over the world.
However, the question we are answering today is not “do you need digital marketing?” but rather “how big should your digital marketing be?”.
Your Unique Budget
As a business owner who is competing in a potentially saturated market, you might secretly be wondering “how much do companies spend on marketing?”.
We are going to stop you right there and tell you that trying to keep up with the Jones’ may not be the best way to go about this.
Many business owners think that the more money you throw at something, the more effective it will be in producing results, or that results will be instant and long-lasting.
In some cases, this may be true. However, with digital marketing, a “slow and steady wins the race” approach is often the way to go.
How to Prepare a Marketing Budget
We’re not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to develop an effective digital marketing strategy. We just want to highlight the correlation between the strategy and your budget.
In order to determine your digital marketing budget, you first need to establish a marketing strategy.
This requires you to first and foremost, figure out what your business goals are. Do you want to create brand awareness? Do you want improve lead generation? Whatever your goal is, it needs to be clear and concise.

Marketing Budget Breakdown
Once your goals are set out, you can start looking at how you want to allocate your digital marketing budget.
There are various areas of digital marketing which all require some budget allocation:
- Branding – build and strengthen your online brand presence
- Content Marketing – create useful, relevant and compelling content for your users
- Online Advertising – depending on where your audience spends their time, Google Ads and Social Media Advertising
- SEO – make sure Google is so impressed with your website that it places you at the top of the search results
- Social Media Marketing – social media presence helps increase organic interactions which can lead to more traffic to your website
- Email Marketing – newsletters and consistent email marketing can encourage more leads to move successfully through your sales pipeline
- Social Media Management Services – Let us manage your social media assets
- Website Design – Complete web design, hosting and development services
Bear in mind that these areas are part and parcel of an effective digital marketing strategy; we don’t recommend paying attention to only one or two.
Instead, look at them as a single unit that, when used together and correctly, will inevitably bring you results.
Digital Marketing South Africa
Regardless of the size of your digital marketing budget, our team of digital wizards can still produce great results. In fact, effective marketing does not happen overnight, even with an unlimited budget.
Conversely, a smaller budget does not mean that our efforts will be less effective, it may just take a little longer to reach the top.
The bottom line is that digital marketing should be an integral part of your overall business strategy, no matter what your budget is.
So, don’t be shy, contact us, tell us what your budget is and let us develop a specially designed, holistic marketing strategy for you.