It is not as important to increase the Online Marketing Budget, as it is to employ these funds in the right areas, because every marketing dollar spent should produce a good return in sales. This requires budgeting adequate funds to each Online Marketing activity to drive maximum bang. Having recommended increase of the Online Marketing budget in our last newsletter, we would discuss the avenues that could be considered to employ this additional budget, to derive maximum ROI on the marketing spend.

The objective of every Online Marketing plan is to get your message out to the intended audience on a regular basis. It should be understood that expensive ad exposure does not necessarily translate to increased sales. Hence, it is critical to target such customers who are easy to find and affordable to reach.

The need of selecting the correct Online Marketing mix assumes greater importance, as it is proven that a customers needs to hear a marketing messages at least 7 times, to influence a buying decision. Using marketing strategies outside your budget, does not allow the privilege of repeating the message often enough to make an impact. The further a marketer can "stretch the marketing dollars" to reach the target market in multiple channels, the higher the impact of the marketing message.

The planning for budget allocation can be broken into two steps. The first step involves selection of the appropriate Marketing mix, and the second involves calculation of the ratio in which the budget may be allocated to each of these activities.

The marketing mix may be decided by cogitating on the following questions.

It would be prudent to allocate more funds for such initiatives, as well as identify the areas that need improvement.

This would be influenced by the risk bearing appetite of the respective business.

The choices could be from Search Engine Marketing (organic, paid search, local search, meta search), Newsletter sponsorships, Email Marketing, Strategic Linking, Banner Advertising, amongst others.

The allocation of the budget is determined by the nature and size of the business. A few examples that could be pertinent are:

An e-commerce business, that has customers acquisition as a priority would need to spend a lot on search (organic and paid), followed by social marketing, such as a good blog. A mail marketing campaign could also be a good avenue. For such businesses, a healthy blend could be to allocate 60-65 % to search, followed by 20-25% to social marketing and the balance marketing budget to social media optimization.

For a big enterprise social marketing would assume greater importance than search. This is important since such businesses would need to focus more on managing their image and reputation. It is pertinent for such enterprises to ensure that the targeted blogging community or members of classified forums, like them, as negative publicity moves up the search rankings faster. These social marketing initiatives would deliver long term benefits.

While these are just two examples, such ideology may be used for other businesses too. As a broad classification, and based on the desired Online Marketing objective, the overall Online Marketing budget could be distributed under the following heads:

Web promotion initiatives including PPC, SEO, Email marketing.

Social Media promotion including blogs, forum participation.

Newsletters, whitepapers.

Content syndication.

Press Release.

Affiliate programs.

A certain portion of the funds could also be allocated for experimenting with one new Online Marketing area. However, this should be preceded by a profound research to minimize risks.

In conclusion, it is not about how much to spend on the Online marketing initiatives, but how these funds are utilized. Employing a holistic strategy, that incorporates the appropriate blend of the aforementioned tools would enhance the reach of the website. It would also facilitate ROI tracking by using the available analytics tools.

Please do let us know if these inputs further helped you with your Online Marketing plan. Please also write to us with your comments and feedback.

You could also download our Online Marketing e-book, which features articles ranging from Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click management, Link Building and other emerging trends of Online Marketing.

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