When it comes to advertising, many companies often end up throwing money away as the engagement and click-through rate levels they’re receiving from their paid campaigns become stale and reduce.
Fortunately for you, as a marketer or entrepreneur who may be looking to get the most return on investment from their marketing budget, this blog shares some insightful strategies that can be effective when it comes to increasing the performance of future advertising campaigns.
There are 5 key areas you should consider when managing your advertising budget:
- Advertising Strategy
- Campaign Goals
- Using a Budget Template
- Tracking Expenses
- Media Selection
Below are those 5 key areas broken down so you can identify which are most relevant to your business and your advertising strategy.
1. Advertising Strategy
Without recognising the right strategies to suit their operations, many organizations try every tactic they know about and assume that return on ad spend will come. Instead, developing a solid and effective strategy of advertising based on the most suitable platform for their company will allow the organization to invest effectively.
For a company it may be more suitable to invest in blogging and digital content; for another company, it might be more suitable to invest in targeted and paid social media ads or TV advertising. This should be decided by a whole team, and collectively a call should be made about the best allocation of budget and investment of time, finances, and energy.
Split Testing
Split testing, otherwise known as A/B testing can remove the guess work from your advertising strategy and help return return on investment from your marketing budget.
Split testing is where two landing pages are tested against each other, the same ad, the same ad budget but with two different landing pages. After a set period of time, measure the conversion rate on those pages and prioritise the page which offers the best return.
Equally this can be used with strap lines, ad creative and more to make the most out of your advertising budget. Demonstrating extensive split testing will also support in preparing for series A investment, as you’ll be equipped with what ad creative and landing pages convert best.
2. Campaign Goals
To manage your advertising budget, the focus should be made on one or two campaigns at a time. Your goals for these campaigns should be defined and based solely around what your company seeks to get out of each campaign.
Set the right target audience for your campaign and decide the ways in which your campaign will reach them. Also, define your success parameters. By the end of your campaign, assess if each goal has been achieved.
Measuring and bench-marking these goals is a great way to manage your ad spend but also make sure you’re not wasting capital or time.
3. Using a Budget Template
Another effective way of managing your advertising budget is to use a budget template. Depending on the size of your budget and needs, one can find many various options of templates to try out and see what works best.
Once you have found the right budget template, continue to regularly visit and keep it updated.
4. Tracking Expenses
To better understand the spending patterns of your organisation and return on investment, all marketing expenses, including those allocated to your advertising campaigns should be reviewed.
However, keep in mind that if several people have access to company cards for the purpose of advertisement expenses things might become difficult to manage for you and your team.
To avoid such tricky situations, you should choose an appropriate financial tool to track your advertisement budget or expenses accurately, which is easily accessible to your whole marketing team.
A number of applications and programs can be used, that are easy to use for employees for making invoices of expenses that can be viewed and approved by the senior management further.
5. Media Selection
If you focus on a media-based strategy for your business, then it should be carefully determined which media type is most suitable for your audience. Not every type of media is suitable to cater to your target demographic.
For instance, TV advertising is used for targeting a large audience and generating awareness. However to engage your audience, one can find social media to be more appropriate.
All these factors are important for managing the advertising budget in an effective long-term way.
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