The 4th Quarter is upon us, which for many businesses means laying out the plan for the upcoming year’s finances. Rather than stressing about how to make it all come together, try a new approach this year. Look beyond the budget line items and build your success on a creative plan.
Here are some helpful tips to ensuring that your marketing team has the budget it needs to do your job well and produce successful results for 2014.
Goals Produce Results
It’s hard to convince your boss that the expenses you’ve laid out are going to produce results if you aren’t sure what the goals are to begin with. Ask questions about where the business is headed in the coming year.
- What are the year’s sales goals?
- What are the goals for new sales versus customer retention?
- What expectations/changes are expected for the marketing department?
Team Building
Broaden your horizons when it comes to team building. As you create your budget, get the sales team on board with you by helping them understand that an effective marketing budget will make their lives easier as well. A united front between marketing and sales will make it easier for you to defend why certain expenses may be crucial to a successful budget.
Spending Money to Make Money
The old phrase, “You gotta spend money to make money,“ is not a new concept, but it may be helpful in proving why cuts to your budget would be harmful in the long run. Clearly lay out in your proposed budget how the expenditures will affect projected revenue. It can be beneficial to higher-ups who don’t realize the significance of certain expenditures to see within your budget how certain cuts would affect revenue.
Don’t Lay All Your Cards on the Table
Marketing is a fluid entity, always changing and evolving. Especially in today’s fast-paced internet marketing world, it is not always easy to see how your marketing plan may change throughout the course of the year. Lay out in your budget that there are certain areas that will need to be re-assessed throughout the year. By indicating that success in certain areas would justify an increase in budgeted amounts, you can tie your marketing plan to a profitable performance.
By creating an effective strategy and utilizing a new approach to your budget-building ideas this year, the stress of formulating a marketing budget can be greatly minimized.
