Budgeting: be clear on aims

Whenever there’s a budget available to spend for advertising, it must come down to two crucial factors when being used:

• Relevancy
• Focus

These two attributes are crucial in deciding just how the budget will be used for a business, otherwise the ROI would be so low, some may be hesitant to try the process again.

It always matters when using a budget to make a business shine in its space. Through video, ad copy, or a short audio ad, it just needs to follow those two factors.

For example, having an accountancy firm on TikTok makes no sense; it gives the impression that it’s trying to be a ‘cool’ kid in an irrelevant space. The focus has to depend on the type of industry that your business is in, so look to certain avenues where the audience will be. Even the location for where the advertising will be bought for; focusing on an audience in London when your business is in Lincoln brings no benefit to the aim.

Start small and do the research. Take into account the channels that will benefit your business the most, from Facebook to Google ads, but don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on a select few that can not only fit in the budget, but also be given enough of the budget to make the impact that’s desired.

Give it the time that it deserves as well. Spending all the budget in a week is counter-intuitive, it needs to be given time to flourish. When spending on Google for example, we recommend giving up to three months for the impressions to become significant. Yet when budget is assigned to SEO, it could take up to six months, but that’s the nature of optimisation to search engines. It takes time for results to become significant. It’s also important to make sure that the ad spend is also relevant to the campaign at hand, otherwise efforts on certain social channels could be a waste to the cause.

If you’re still not sure on where to spend the budget, don’t be afraid to ask someone more-experienced in the field.

Even then, if the campaign still seems to be trailing off, a ‘back to back’ strategy could be the saviour to this. As long as it’s relevant, directing some of it to more visibility in another space such as TikTok or Facebook can help yield more results, and could even give you ideas for a new strategy if more budget is applied for the future.

If this scenario needs to occur, make sure that it’s relevant to the strategy that began when the budget was assigned.

Always keep in mind how much a conversion is worth to the brand; conversion is key, and it can be the ultimate decider in seeing more clicks for conversion.

Again, focus and relevancy will be key here to make sure that the budget is being used to its full potential. It can help spur ideas to the brand while also attracting new audiences, but give it the time that it’s due, and you may find new opportunities for the business that you may previously have been unaware of before.