Strategies For Planning A Marketing Budget In 2024

We’ve heard from clients that consumer spending seems to be down across the board. When economic fears strike, marketing budgets are often the first to go under the knife. It’s a tightrope walk for businesses — while trimming expenses is important, it’s equally important not to turn off the marketing tap.

It’s counter-intuitive, kind of like whitewater rafting — you row harder to go faster, even when it’s scary, so you can keep going faster than the current. So how do you strike the balance?

First, the importance of continuous marketing

Putting the brakes on your marketing efforts entirely causes more harm than good to your business’s bottom line. A well-planned marketing strategy in a downturn ensures that you can continue to engage with your customers, fostering trust, and in turn, sustaining revenue streams.

The impact of consistency shouldn’t be underestimated. When spending is on the decline, maintaining a solid and consistent brand image through continuous marketing efforts keeps your business top-of-mind. This consistency creates familiarity and reliability, and makes consumers more likely to choose your product or service over others. Take a look at three famous examples of brands that increased spending during tough times and came out on top:

• Kellogg’s during the Great Depression

• Amazon during the Great Recession

• Airbnb during the Pandemic

Identifying priorities for your 2024 marketing budget

Before you start allocating funds, it’s vital to pinpoint your top priorities and understand what will truly drive your company forward in 2024.

A key factor in determining priorities is assessing marketing effectiveness. This requires an understanding of which strategies have worked well in the past, as well as those that haven’t yielded good results.

If you’ve never had that data clearly analyzed and reported before now, you’re already fighting against the current. There are a few months before 2024 starts, however, so it’s not too late to go back to the data and get an analysis done.

If you’re able to identify a lower-cost initiative that yielded positive results, pouring money into a similar campaign would be one logical way to keep marketing relevant without some of the higher-risk approaches.

READ: Emotive Marketing Isn’t Just ‘Sad’ Stories — The Benefits of Full-Spectrum, Emotional Marketing

How much should you budget for marketing?

Marketing is never a one-size-fits-all sum. It depends on your industry, the size of your business, and overall goals. One practical method is to base it on projected gross sales. This approach can be adjusted according to market conditions, competition level and how aggressive you want your growth to be. A general rule of thumb is allocating between 7% to 12% of total revenue towards marketing.

Setting realistic goals also plays an integral role in budgeting for marketing. This means understanding what you hope to achieve with each campaign or strategy and making sure those objectives align with what’s feasible. Not every goal has to have an immediate financial return — building brand awareness or establishing customer relationships might be just as crucial for long-term success. These objectives should still have quantifiable metrics so that you can measure progress and adjust accordingly.

How experienced marketing agencies help optimize your spend

Experienced marketers have the necessary tools and knowledge to accurately measure ROI. Their expertise in understanding trends and consumer behavior enables them to effectively allocate your marketing budget where it will make the most impact. It’s not about spending more — it’s about spending smarter.

Experienced marketing agencies are also proficient in effective targeting. They understand that a general approach may not always work for all businesses or industries. By leveraging data analytics and consumer insights, they tailor campaigns that resonate with your target audience, resulting in higher engagement rates and conversions.

Adapting to new platforms and technologies

As businesses plan their marketing budget for 2024, they must consider the potential for exposure and innovation that new platforms and tools bring. Leveraging automation, for instance, is a game-changing strategy that can optimize marketing processes and boost efficiency. From automated email campaigns to programmatic ad buying, automation technologies provide valuable opportunities for cost savings and improved effectiveness.

Additionally, social media platforms are continually evolving; even as some lose favor and others gain traction, there are always novel ways for brands to engage with their audience. Live streaming features, interactive polls or quizzes, user-generated content strategies — all of these elements require a flexible marketing budget that allows room for experimentation and innovation.

The bottom line

The companies that do best in hard economic times are typically the companies that stay top-of-mind and find ways to market and innovate. Knowing how much to set aside each year — regardless of market fluctuations or other economic situations — will keep a business from fading away…especially those that aren’t secure yet at a new level of revenue.

Seth Garland is the Digital Marketing Manager for Versatility Creative Group.