The marketing budget can be a big task to take on especially when you don’t have much knowledge on how it’s done. It make seem like there are more needs than there is money to allocate to these various advertising avenues things can get out of hand when business owners are trying to establish marketing budgets. This is why a plan has to be considered carefully.

Listed below are 5 Basic Approaches for Setting Marketing Budgets.

• Review your previous marketing results

Review in detail your campaign analysis by marketing channel and find out if there is any campaign that might not be performing well. Also, check if you are spending too much of your budget on one particular channel as all this will be the basis for your new budget allocation. This is why you should review each channel and decide if it is worth continuing. You might have other places you can reallocate that budget too.

• Review your marketing mix

The next thing is to determine if you have a solid channel mix and consider your channel mix by cost and resources. Also, you should avoid putting all your eggs in one basket which is one mistake many online marketers makes; so know how much time exactly it will take to create an email campaign versus a postcard mailing. Imagine if you were only marketing on a social network and they suddenly banned marketing. Once you have allocated your budget to the best performing activity, consider apportioning money to new channels that be cheaper in the longer term.

• Test run and learn

Before you go all out, it is very important that you allocated a small amount of your budget and did a test run and learn activity. If you don’t continue to innovate, then you might be risking sales over the longer term.

• Cost control

Because you have it does not mean you should spend it; so look for other channels that are lower in price and sometimes free of charge. If you do need to print marketing materials, try and gain economies of scale such as printing three months of stock to obtain discounts.

• Do Research

It is essential to set aside marketing budget to carry out research projects because customer research is critical to your business. Research is a step that is often missed in marketing to try and build it into your plans. Well if you have vast knowledge in customer you will know this doesn’t have to cost anything as you could simply call up your customers and ask them what you want to know or you can employ a research agency to do this for you. You can use the results of research to improve your product or service to the customer and this will ensure you are achieving maximum return on investment (ROI) on your campaigns.

Managing your marketing budget properly is the best investment you can make in your company. If you wisely invest your marketing dollars, you can keep your costs down and get a profitable return on your investment.