Maximizing your marketing allocation takes a strategic approach that’s focused on results.
Otherwise, you’ll be left sinking money into marketing channels that aren’t increasing your bottom line.
But when it comes to finding the right marketing mix… one size does not fit all.
That’s why the age-old question of: How should I allocate my marketing budget?
To effectively manage your marketing budget it takes a very tailored approach that leverages data to get your money in the best positions to attract customers, decrease your marketing cost, and skyrocket your ROI.
Top-Down Marketing Allocation
Top-Down Marketing Allocation Is the Fastest Way to Waste Money
The annual budgeting process is the enemy of marketing strategy.
Why?
Because most companies start out the year assigning budgets to channels arbitrarily or to get discounts on with “upfront” commitments. This locks you into certain marketing channels that may not be the most effective as the year progresses. Many online marketing platforms require agility and daily decision making about where to invest or shift marketing funds to, in order to get the best return.
For example, you wouldn’t hold onto losing stocks for 12 months if you were getting a negative return, right? You will see a downward trend and shift your investment into a more profitable stock. The same thing is true when managing your online health brand marketing campaigns and budgets. Over time and by having clear metrics into which platforms are working the best, you can optimize and capture progressively greater ROI and literally sell more by using less advertising spend.
Outcome-Based Marketing Allocation
Outcome-Based Allocation Holds the Key to Higher Marketing ROI
The strategic way to determine how to allocate your marketing spend is by first setting specific, measurable marketing goals. This can be based on customer acquisition costs, revenue channel targets, increase in the percent of new sales, the number of repeat sales, etc.
The key is to identify what your health brand marketing performance metrics are and apply them across all of the various marketing channels you use.
This way you’ll have a standardized way to measure marketing performance that is both quantifiable and designed to help you achieve the results you want.
Every month (and sometimes daily) all media should be competing for your budget for what delivers the most sales and customers.
Based on the chart above, for your next week of marketing, you would want to pull some of the budgets from non-brand keywords and Facebook and maximize Pinterest and branded keywords. If need be, kill Facebook altogether unless you find through something advanced like media mix modeling, that’s driving other channels.
Use Your Marketing Model to Test What Works
With your clear goals identified, use them as the benchmark. In order to see what channels are performing well and which are not. Use your data to drive marketing decisions and where to allocate your marketing spend. If one channel is outperforming others, be willing to pivot and put more resources on that channel.
But, health marketers beware.
You may find that one channel may work better for certain types of marketing campaigns, while others may perform better during certain times of the year.
The important thing is to arm yourself with measurable marketing insights that are aligned with your business objectives. So you can powerfully (and quickly) pivot your marketing budget as needed.
The more time and resources you invest now in establishing a clear set of marketing performance metrics. From this, the more empowered you’ll be to improve your marketing mix.
Check out our post on Branding vs Direct Response (DR) in Health Brand Advertising