Internet Research Pro

Set an online-marketing budget that aids growth

During tough economic times, budgeting your marketing dollars becomes a critical aspect of the planning process. And online marketing is playing an increasingly important role in the allocation of those marketing dollars.
Research shows that companies that maintain their marketing budgets during an economic downturn come out of it better than those that don’t. So the following tips are worth noting as you prepare your 2009 online-marketing budget.
1. Outline expected results. Link your company’s marketing initiatives, strategies and tactics to financial outcomes.
Show how:
•Your online marketing plan will directly affect sales. Tactics may include paid search, search-engine optimization, online-media buying and e-mail marketing.
•You will engage your online audience and generate interest and demand that results in generating a lead. How will you engage visitors and get them to respond to your offer? Tactics may include paid search, search-engine optimization, online-media buying and e-mail marketing.
•Exposing your brand will result in greater recognition and adoption, resulting in greater engagement and, ultimately, more sales. Tactics may include paid search, online-media buying and social media.
2. Identify threats. Identifying any threats to your strategy should be highlighted but not magnified.
Threats can take root when your marketing tactics are not integrated, sales and marketing are not coordinated, and performance is not measured or evaluated.
So it is important to reinforce the following:
•An integrated plan. Show how complementary tactics yield even better results. For example, illustrate how combining search marketing and online media can yield higher returns when integrated successfully.
•Marketing support through the entire sales process. Ensure that all parts of the sales function are held accountable to their target conversion rates.
•Analytics. A unified measurement tool is vital to showing expected outcomes. For example, your Web analytics platform should be able to tell you how an opt-in e-mail marketing campaign directly affects sales on the Web site.
•Evaluation and testing. Allow room in your budget to evaluate your tactics and test new online marketing approaches. Set aside about 10% of your online-marketing budget to test new hypotheses and emerging tactics that may yield better results for your business.
QUICKINFO
OUTLINE THE RESULTS YOU EXPECT
•Show how your online marketing plan will directly affect sales.
•Show how you will engage your online audience and generate interest and demand that results in a sales lead.
•Show how exposing your brand will result in greater recognition of your company, ultimately resulting in more sales.


Eric Dudley is founder and president of WebsiteBiz, a Charlotte-based Internet marketing agency. He can be reached at (704) 338-1794 or www.WebsiteBiz.com.

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