Your Digital Marketing Budget: Cha-ching!

How Much Should You Allocate?

What if we told you that you can have your cake and eat it, too? Well, today’s your lucky day—because you can! While the world might tell you that you need to pay an arm and a leg for good marketing, at Digital Storyteller we say no thanks! Here’s how much you should really allocate to your digital marketing budget.

The Average Marketing Budget 

At this point, you might be asking yourself, “What’s considered a ‘good’ marketing budget?” or “What percentage of my profits should I allocate to marketing?”

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), “small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8 percent of their revenues to marketing.”

However, there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to digital marketing budgets. Allocation depends on several factors according to the SBA:

• The industry you’re in
• Business size
• Growth stage
• Profit margins

Most importantly, however, your marketing budget should never be an afterthought, “based on just what’s left over once all your other business expenses are covered.”

Setting Your Marketing Budget

Crafting your marketing budget no longer requires the guesswork it used to. Here are six steps you can take, thanks to OutboundEngine, to set a successful marketing budget for your small business.

• Step One: Identify where you are in your business journey
• Step Two: Outline your sales funnel
• Step Three: List operational costs

(Psst! At this point, you should know how much money is coming in and how much money is being expensed, which is a huge help).

• Step Four: Set goals
• Step Five: Identify competition in your industry
• Step Six: Craft your marketing plan using all your research!

Something to remember: Don’t cling to your plan year-round! It will (hopefully!) change annually and could also be susceptible to change if something shifts in the market or if you launch a new product or service!

You’re Wasting Money on Facebook Ads…

At Digital Storyteller, we will not deny that having a marketing budget is important. It is, of course! But frankly, we’re just seeing too many companies spend ridiculous amounts of money on paid advertising, like Facebook ads.

In fact, did you know that companies spend an average of $200 to $800 on Facebook ads per month? An enterprise, however, may invest up to $5,000 per month on Facebook ads… Holy moly is all we can say!

And this is just on Facebook ads alone. One singular platform. For many companies, if not all, Facebook ads alone cannot carry your business and the success of your digital marketing strategy. (Sorry not sorry, Zuckerberg!)

For companies to succeed, it’s typical to expect both a blend of paid and organic initiatives in the marketing melting pot.

The Affordability of Outsourced Marketing

At Digital Storyteller, we believe that fragmented marketing wastes money and time and reduces impact. We also believe that you should be able to have your cake and eat it, too. Hell, you can go on vacation and still afford quality, effective marketing! 

(We should know since we market for ourselves the way we would any other client AND *cough cough* our owners just spent two weeks at the five-star Chileno Bay Resort in Cabo San Lucas—woot woot!)

At Digital Storyteller, we strive to be transparent, and we don’t think pricing should be a secret. This is why all of our pricing is broken down in full on our website for you to see.

For those in a pinch, here’s what we offer:

Our STARTER tier, priced at $3,000 a month, is perfect for the small business owner who needs marketing support to maintain or build an online presence.

Our most popular package, titled GROWTH, is priced at $5,000 a month and includes content creation, a social media strategy to align online presence with your current business identity, as well as sales enablement workflow assistance.

Lastly, our ENTERPRISE tier is for companies whose growth has outpaced their marketing. We are your outsourced marketing department focused on building your business with you. The enterprise package is priced at $8,000 a month.

We also offer a ​​stand-alone website design product starting at $8,500.

From SEO analysis to organic content creation, from sales enablement workflow creation in Hubspot to online reputation management and social media, we do it all at a fraction of the cost that hiring marketing in-house would be.If you couldn’t already tell, organic content marketing saves you money. In fact, content marketing is 62% less expensive than paid marketing and three times more effective. So, what are you waiting for!? For more on why digital marketing is important for your financial services company, read on.