In order to capture your audiences and generate sales, the place of digital marketing is no longer in question. It is now relatively difficult to miss the digital channel, with a good part of the population connected to networks. However, depending on the channels channels you plan to use, as well as the budgets budgets you plan to spend, it is important to work out your strategy strategy in order to put all the chances on your side and start the year 2023 as it should be!
What is digital marketing?
Definition of digital marketing
Digital marketing is simply the use of digital channels to sell a product or service, or to promote a brand to online consumers.
Digital marketing is based on the use of objects connected to the Internet such as social networks, websites and applications. Digital marketing also invests in more atypical media such as podcasts and online videos.
Digital marketing allows to increase organic traffic on websites, and to accompany visitors in their e-experience, in order to redirect them to the purchase page. Digital marketing also aims at building brand loyalty by supporting the graphic identity through the UX.
Today, with the resources available online, it is possible to learn by yourself how to do digital marketing. For example, there are certifications, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) or even videos on Youtube.
Digital marketing objectives
There are several objectives specific to digital marketing, and some distinctions to note.
With digital marketing it is possible to convert audiences in the first instance. It is also possible to reach a new audience that is not yet engaged with your brand.
The objective, then, is to convert these audiences into buyers Depending on your objectives and the level of maturity of your project, you will need to define your KPIs beforehand
What are the main expenses related to digital marketing?
First of all, your digital marketing expenses depend on your goals and means. If you have the possibility to hire a marketing team, the expenses will of course be high.
The main expenses in digital marketing are mainly related to SEO, SEA, social networks and visual content creation.
How to estimate your digital marketing budget?
The digital marketing budget is important to define for companies that want to enhance their identity. More concretely, the marketing budget corresponds to the strategy of your company to promote a product or a service.
Specifically, it includes:
- The creation of advertisements
- Advertising campaigns
- The design and creation of the material
- Employment of staff (of the team)
- Media buying
Logically, you should estimate your marketing budget according to the objectives you wish to achieve within your strategy. If you decide to work with an external agency, they will ask you for the objectives of your project, and evaluate the means to achieve them
In any case, the marketing budget depends on your level of advancement, your persona, your competitors as well as your choices in terms of distribution media.
How to allocate your digital marketing budget?
General budget
Typically, digital marketing budgets are around 45-50% of a company's resources. This figure is constantly increasing, due to the exponential profitability of content.
Within this budget, 25% is typically dedicated to social media advertising.
Allocate your digital marketing budget
To allocate your digital marketing budget, there is no magic recipe. It's going to depend on the goals you want to achieve through your campaigns. A 2018 Hubspot study ranked the top digital marketing expenses:
- SEO comes out on top with 61% of the allocated budget.
- Paid acquisition including SEA, SMA, retail media
- It is closely followed by blogging (55%), marketing automation (50%), content production (47%) and then interactive content creation (36%).
Questions to ask yourself
For your own digital marketing strategy, you need to think about which channels and tools work best for your business and can generate the most leads. Here are some questions to ask yourself before you accurately define your marketing budget :
- Do you generate more leads through email or SEA?
- How will you produce your content and at what pace?
- What is the budget you will allocate to external resources?
- Does your team have all the skills for the strategy you define?
- Will you be using or implementing any marketing tools during the year?
How much do companies spend on average on their digital marketing?
It all depends on the size of your company, and the industry, how long you've been in business, as well as what you decide to do in digital marketing.
The annual budget for French companies in digital marketing for digital strategy is around 35 000 €.
On the side of website creation, budgets are decreasing from year to year. Thus, the average in 2020 was almost 27 000 €. On advertising, budgets are also decreasing, for an average of 37 400 €.
Attention: The average budgets in digital marketing are difficult to estimate, depending on the expertise on which each company works. On average, the budget spent per expertise is around 33 000 €.
How to reduce your digital marketing budget?
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Organize your expenses
Lowering your digital marketing costs may be necessary to align your processes with your results. As a first step, classify your expenses to get a detailed picture of your budget.
This will also allow you to quantify how much you are spending in each area. Once you have done this, you will be able to identify the areas where you are losing ROI and those where you could invest more.
These steps will allow you to sort out the tools, marketing channels and processes that are giving you the least return while trying to understand why they didn't work for your business.
An important point of support to decrease your digital marketing budget is to equip yourself with automation tools. This allows your company to save time.
You can also use these tools to perform repetitive tasks such as collecting data, promoting content or responding to users. Many free tools exist, do not hesitate to use them to reduce your costs.
Maximize your sales by optimizing your acquisition channels with Steerfox
An external agency, such as Steerfox, specialized in digital acquisition and ROI/ROAS analysis, with human skills and tools, can also help you gain in performance and therefore in investment!
How? By detecting the profitable levers of those that should be abandoned or by identifying the flagship products that you must absolutely put forward or on the contrary not push in your advertising campaigns.
Steerfox is the solution to maximize your e-commerce sales thanks to 8 acquisition channels and dedicated teams: Google, Amazon, Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, ManoMano, etc....
This unique SaaS platform allows you to precisely define your digital acquisition marketing strategy through a complete evaluation of your product performance and the profitability of your potential distribution media.
By using Steerfox 's services and the partnership with Karmen, you will be able to manage and ensure the performance of your advertising campaigns in 6 steps:
- Analysis of your acquisition campaigns by the Steerfox team to identify untapped sales opportunities and receive a dedicated action plan.
- Definition of your multi-channel advertising budget and your profitability objectives by range, brand or product.
- Forecasting and release of the necessary funds at Karmen in less than 48 hours.
- Deployment of the growth solution to make your online sales take off.
- Repayment of your financing over several weeks with Karmen
- Reap the benefits of your advertising campaigns with optimized sales, results and performance on each of your product universes, without impacting your cash flow.
With Steerfox, your digital marketing budget will be allocated to the most effective acquisition levers and your campaigns will be built accordingly. The promise: a stronger ROI and ROAS to provide you with profitable and sustainable growth.
How to finance your digital marketing budget?
Depending on your digital marketing strategy and budget, there are several ways to finance yourself and access funding.
Grants and subsidies
In terms of grants and subsidies, there are different sources of access to funds depending on the region:
- Regional funding such as the Chèque Transformation Numérique in New Aquitaine.
- VSE growth loans
- Chèque France Num to digitize VSEs
- The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
Credit
In credit solutions, it is quite possible to subscribe to a bank loan such as the professional loan, in order to build your website and to associate your digital marketing campaigns.
Revenue-Based Financing
The Revenue-Based Financing(RBF) is a transparent, non-dilutive and fast (less than 48 hours) financing method that allows digital companies to transform future revenues into immediate cash.
It's a good way to get cash flowing quickly, without losing shares in your company, or spending a lot of time on fundraising. Revenue-Based Financing is therefore very quick to obtain.
It is also a way for companies to anticipate or complete a fundraising by improving their performance metrics, for example to generate more traffic on a site.
Digital marketing can represent an important part of your company's strategy, resources and budget.
Important alert points are defining which channels work for your buyers, what they cost you and how you implement the means to achieve your goals.
Financing your digital marketing is possible with the help of many resources, among which Revenue-Based Financing is particularly attractive. To find out more, don't hesitate to talk to our consultants.
In order to capture your audiences and generate sales, the place of digital marketing is no longer in question. It's relatively hard to miss the digital channel these days, with a good portion of the population connected to networks. However, depending on the channels you plan to use, as well as the budgets you plan to spend, it is important to work on your strategy to put all the chances on your side.
