Top 3 Things To Spend Your Marketing Budget On

As independent musician, where you funnel your marketing budget is incredibly critical. According recent polls, the following are what people in marketing departments consider the areas in which they have seen the highest return on investment in for their precious marketing dollars.

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Guest post by Tim Brown of Symphonic Blog

Recent polls of what people in marketing departments believe they are getting the most ROI from showed three key areas in the lead: Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing/Automation, and Content Marketing.

How do these translate into actionable strategy for your 2018 marketing budget?

Well for one – content is part of all three. Content in e-mails, content is one of the two biggest parts of SEO, and content in the form of content marketing proper continues to grow in importance!

The top activity for marketing professionals is using resources to target your content, research keywords, and honing in on who your core demographic is and what content would appeal to them the most to help convert them to customers.

How to create targeted content people want to read, and content that compels people to take action

For many marketers, making the content people want to read is easy and it can be for you too:

• What content do we want to read?
• What subject do we know more than almost anyone?
• How can we take a unique and compelling angle on the subject?

These questions start the process, but the guide to the whole strategy is the all-important question:  What content will draw people into your company’s value proposition and persuade them to work with you? If your content shows them how to do it themselves, asks their most important questions, and prepares them to work with you – but doesn’t demonstrate your unique value proposition and ask them to take the next step, it might be time to step up the content strategy.

This doesn’t mean putting a sales pitch at the end of every post, but it does mean having some give away and at least showcasing some aspect of what makes your company’s offering unique.

Spend money on – Content Marketing:  keyword research, content strategy, writers, and designers for images to accompany content.

How to spend money on E-mail marketing and Marketing automation – the right way

Use these questions to help you figure out where your company is on the email marketing and automation journey.

• Do you have a solid list of emails you can send out your broader promotions, newsletters, and pitches to?
• Do you have segmented lists that you are promoting on specific messaging, for different types of services or angles?
• Are you putting resources into writing compelling emails to serve those people and actually move them along in the sales funnel?

Whatever you use for marketing automation software and your email list – you should always look for new ways to fill the marketing funnel. You need prospects to market to. But you also need legitimately compelling emails, so don’t neglect on segmenting lists and allocating resources for getting persuasive emails.

Spend money on E-mail Marketing and Marketing Automation:  Segmenting your audience, Mailchimp, Infusionsoft or similar, and targeting/persuasive writing.

How to spend money on SEO in a way that will actually give you return on investment

SEO is all about getting you more search engine traffic – and the amount of effectiveness that you can get out of it depends on three questions you can answer by doing some keyword research.

• What are your competitors ranking on the first page of Google for that you’re not?
• What are all of your services and sub services that people might look for on search engines – and how are they referring to them the most often?
• Where do you currently get the most traffic and for what subject matter?

It’s crucial to make the most of your present advantage and utilize the last question to find ways you can continue to leverage that current advantage with further in-depth content.

Spend money on Search Engine Optimization:  analyze competitors, do keyword research, and determine your current search engine advantages to target your site.

Wrapping up

Making use of your present advantages should be the theme of your marketing budget. Use what’s working, and use your resources that competitors might not have. Consider using something like this marketing budget calculator as well to see what the benchmarks in your industry might suggest as well.

Tim Brown is the owner of Tim B Design, and is a web designer and SEO Specialist out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can check out his recent project “The Marketing Budget Calculator” to plan your marketing budget for this next year and take a look at his blog to learn cutting-edge methods to get the most out of your digital marketing budget. Tweet him at @timbdesignmpls

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