1) Stick to your strategy

As part of writing your marketing strategy, however long ago that might have been, you should have given some thought to a suitable budget that supports your activities and tactics. At it’s most simple, your marketing budget should align with your plan for the year ahead, so if you want to attend conferences, host events, or give corporate gifts, you’ll need budget for all of this. But these short-term ‘activations’ also need to be complemented by long-term ‘brand building’ so it’s important to think about what that means in budget terms. You might choose to use sponsorships or partnerships as a recurring brand builder, or invest in ongoing brand advertising via search or social media.

It seems obvious, but can easily be forgotten when you’re busy with the day-to-day tasks, that your budget should align with your strategy. If you’re intending to use public relations as a way to increase brand awareness, but you haven’t budgeted for an agency retainer, or the salary for an in-house PR expert, you won’t achieve those objectives. Your marketing strategy should be a help, not a hindrance, to making spending decisions. It’s also a great way to avoid annoying sales calls that pressure you into thinking you need a new email platform, when it’s not in your strategy to send 10,000 emails a month!

2) Assess and adjust accordingly

Of course, you can update your marketing budget throughout the year, without completely overhauling your strategy. In fact, it’s a good idea to see your budget as a flexible tool which needs regularly assessing and adjusting.

At least once per quarter, you should review your ‘actual spend’ against the budget to check both progress (have you spent more or less than you intended?) and performance (are your channels and tactics performing better or worse than expected?).

You might have budgeted to attend an overseas conference with a client but not been accepted to speak, so you have a spare pot of cash to spend next quarter instead. Or you might decide to end your paid social campaign after 6 months because it’s not generating enough leads. It’s worth understanding how your accounts team deal with unspent budget. If they have a ‘use it or lose it’ within the quarter policy, being behind on your budgeting can mean less to spend throughout the year. Alternatively, there might be moments during the year when you can ask for more budget, so you need to be ready for this opportunity.

3) Test, learn and refine

Whether your business is new or established, an element of ‘test and learn’ can be extremely beneficial. In a new business particularly, if you’re not sure which channels need investment, allocating chunks of money to a handful of tactics is a stress-free way to test the waters. You can also leave these quite wide in remit, for example, budget for research, design, partnerships, and tools, rather than creating specific budget lines for individual activities. Refine these buckets at the end of each campaign period to understand which required more or less money, and the expenses which are ongoing versus one-off.

Even when your business is established, this is good practice. Retaining a small budget for experimentation allows you to test new channels, techniques and platforms. You might want to use this as a ‘wild card’ to test your creativity and surprise your audience. It’s often worth dipping a toe into the latest shiny marketing tool without overinvesting, in case it’s just a fad, or it doesn’t work for your niche.

The world of marketing moves and grows rapidly, so a test and learn mindset gives you the flexibility to refine your marketing mix and your budget alongside it. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t think about your budget at all and just dip into it as and when. Flexibility means making plans, but being open to changing them when you can confidently assess their worth. Remember to refer to your strategy for guidance, adjust accordingly when you need to, and remain open to new opportunities as they arise.