15 Ways to Spend your Marketing Budget Next Quarter

Phew *overdramatised forehead wipe* ...  your marketing budget has been approved for the next quarter - nice pitch! But now the tricky part starts - how are you planning on spending it, to make every cent count? While initially, you think that it just about covers a 3 week Bali trip with the guys from Sales - you need to consider the resources and tools your team needs to do their jobs well. While of course - leave a little wiggle room to celebrate your teams' wins, but how do you accurately plan for a perfectly planned out budget? 

It can be hard to know where to start a lot of the time, especially with marketing gurus touting a new flavour of the month strategy what feels like every other day - "wait long form content has ... resurrected?" So to save you the headache, we're going to give you a taste of some of the strategies we suggest our good ol' clients invest in, to get the absolute most bang for their buck!  

1. Test new versions of Calls-to-Action that aren't performing well 

Estimated cost: $50 per CTA 

In your analytics dashboard or software, organise your CTA's by click rate and conversion rate. Then, scroll to the bottom and redesign those bad boys with the lowest performance and test them. One way to do this is to perform an A/B test - which will give you insight into which design your audience likes more than the others! 

It might be as simple as changing up a photo that's so five minutes ago, or tweaking the wording to be more action-orientated and resonate better with leads. This test will also be super useful in furthering prospects along their buyers journey! 

2. Revise landing page copy

Estimated cost: $150 per page 

Your landing pages are an ever-evolving listener - there's always room for improvement! Start with pages that have conversion rates of less than 20% and rework the language to tune it more to the sound your buyer personas want to hear. If you're unsure of what will resonate with your audience, try out some good old fashioned keyword research and perform A/B tests. As well as this, do a little social listening to tap into how to connect with your audience across multiple pages. 

3. Do a social media engagement analysis

Estimated cost: $250

A quick analysis into social media messages will reveal which received the highest engagement - and therefore, what worked best for your business. If Facebook and Linkedin are outperforming Instagram by a mile, you can begin to infer how to use it next quarter! Maybe you could invest in more Instagram-savvy staff or even deactivate underperforming accounts. Or perhaps you've discovered that there's a huge YouTube audience you're missing out on (there is!). Look at your analysis and decide if YouTube is worth investing in over the next quarter. 

4. Find SEO keyword opportunities on your website 

Estimated cost: $250

SEO keyword opportunities basically fill you in on the lingo you should rely on to rank in search engines and boost acquisition! So if you spot a few offers that aren't performing as well as you'd hoped - suss out the keywords surrounding that topic and adjust accordingly.

5. Identify improvement opportunities on your homepage 

Estimated cost: $150

Install heat map software, like Hotjar or Crazy Egg on your home page, so you get to go all Big Brother and see where they're clicking and how far they're scrolling down the page. These tools will also help you determine whether visitors are seeing the content you want them to see the most, giving you a great idea into how to restructure your site for max conversion. 

6. Try ad retargeting to boost performance 

Estimated cost: $500

Snagging those visitors who nearly converted into customers, ad retargeting gives you a second chance with a new, personalised offer, and potentially give your acquisition numbers a boost! Look for ad retargeting options on networks like Facebook, so you can build and revise ads within the channel! 

7. Conduct a usability test 

Estimated cost: $350

A usability test provides you real feedback from potential customers! Similar to the results you get from a Net Promoter Score, you'll get all you need to piece together what's hot and what's not on your web pages. Using the results, you need to get out your to-do list and figure out how to revise the content to be more user-friendly! 

8. Experiment with social media advertising 

Estimated cost: $500

Social media advertising is the chameleon of the marketing world - evolving as your customers do! When the planning hits a brick wall, mix things up. Try a new channel or even a new approach with a network you're already using. Advertising on social media is all about experimentation -  testing the waters so to speak. You can limit the inherent risks involved with experimenting by doing some social listening and finding out which copy, format and design hit the spot for your audience.

9. Invest in employee knowledge 

Estimated cost: $500

Because the world of marketing, sales and customer service changes so frequently, investing in learning opportunities makes your team well-equipped to boss their day-to-day tasks. Training can come in the form of eBooks, blog posts and even signing up for a webinar and watching it as a group. As well as this, you could scope out courses online that will give team members a deeper understanding of your industry - just like we do! We've recognised that the urgency of work invariably trumps the luxury of learning, so we try our best to dedicate an afternoon every month to discovering new concepts, fine-tuning our skills and gaining certifications in the HubSpot Academy - no emails, no texts, no distractions! 

10. Perform customer research 

Estimated cost: $500

While you may have previously done customer research at the start of the quarter - you need to allocate funds on an ongoing basis to continuously refresh your understanding of customer behaviour! Look at how you're currently monitoring the web behaviour of your customers, how well you're conducting social listening, and whether your personas are due a makeover. If you're looking to create new buyer personas from scratch - check out this webinar I did a few months back which shows you every step you need to take to get a really firm grasp on who you're targeting and what they mean for your business! 

11. Celebrate your success 

Estimated cost: $500

Remember to save some moolah for the inevitable EOQ - you've worked hard, so remind your team that their work is appreciated! While it doesn't have to be a beer/darts/pinball blowout as we so eloquently display below, send a lil' care package or a coupla beers to your team and make sure they know the hustle was worth it! 

12. Design an Infographic 

Estimated cost: $150

It's no secret that 2020 Earthlings have an attention span smaller than their ever-shrinking iPhones, so it's important you deliver the goods in as little time as possible to keep engagement high and boredom low! Not only can they inform and engage in under a minute, Infographics can magically take a boring topic and make it more exciting and enjoyable - much like Nigella Lawson reading the Yellow Pages. Simply run a cheeky analysis and create an infographic to visually represent your results, to get a bird's eye view of your customers' activity (and serve as bomb material for your blog posts!).

13. Optimise your outdated blogs for conversion 

Estimated cost: $100

Because the life of a blog post can span several months (depending on the topic) - you may need to revisit old posts and check if there isn't a more fitting CTA to encourage better conversion! SEO tools can help identify posts that are falling in traffic and can be updated with new information. Top tip: Keeping an archive of previous blog posts will assist in keeping that performance data on-hand. 

14. Invest in a webinar software 

Estimated cost: $500

A webinar is an unbeatable way to generate new leads - and our personal fave! We use the TwentyThree software to host our webinars and have found it unbeatable for housing our videos and providing the best live content possible! To ensure the juice is worth the squeeze, we focus on pain points our clients have as sure-fire topics for our webinars, or even focus on topics that are trending. Once we've shot the webinar, the investment doesn't end there! We send the recording to everyone who registered, and then publish it to our website as evergreen content our audience can learn from whenever they please! 

15. Conduct an SEO audit 

Estimated cost: $500

Re-evaluate your website for SEO opportunities every six months or so, by optimising on-page factors and reviewing copy for missing keywords. SEO audits basically act as a Spring clean - they improve the user experience and boost the chance you'll be found in search engines! Conducting a thorough SEO audit is an essential starting point for any digital marketer, whether you do so in-house or outsource the task - start the next quarter knowing your site is filling every nook and cranny of SEO opportunities. 

While this list of ideas might sound red-hot, we understand that spending your budget is one thing - but spending it wisely is another. Make sure you stop to think about what your team needs, what your audience will love and how you can plan to meet both their expectations over this next quarter. If you need a hand, we'd love to help deliver personalised action items that will make a lasting strategic difference towards reaching your digital marketing goals - so drop us a line for a chat!