Establishing a Content Marketing Budget – What to Consider and How to Set a Budget

Update April 1, 2021

A content marketing budget is a must no matter the size of your business. This blog will help you recognize correct ways to strategize your budget. With SMART goals and a smart team your business will be able to handle any challenge.

Content marketing refers to a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating as well as distributing quality content to a defined audience to drive profitable customer actions. It is an effective marketing tool used by organizations to achieve business objectives. Ranging from increasing brand visibility on search engines to boosting customer retention rates.

What are the Most Effective Types of Content?

As we all know, content comes in many forms. Some of the most effective types of content used by marketing professionals include:

Blog posts– Blog posts allow businesses to raise the SERP (search engine results page) rankings and provide value to consumers via high-quality, SEO-friendly content.
Videos – Video content marketing is another effective tactic used to attract prospective customers. The trick is ensuring your content is high quality and that the material is timeless.
Ebooks – Ebooks provide essential information about the goods your business offers, as well as showcasing your brand's colors, logo, language, etc. in a visual design.
Demos – Demos are short for demonstrations and allow prospective customers to test out the product or service before making a purchase. This can be the gateway to fully qualifying a lead and helping guide them through the sales funnel.
Case studies – Case studies are composed of real data from people who are interested in having their stories told. This form of content not only resonates with people intimately but helps position your brand as an authority on a particular topic.
White papers – White papers are similar to ebooks. The only difference is white papers lack meaningful graphical design and present information more astutely.
Social media – Social media content marketing is one of the most widely used forms of marketing today. The biggest benefits of social media content marketing are that there are multiple ways to showcase your brand's identity. And you can interact with customers directly, which helps boost customer loyalty and retention.

As you create your effective content marketing strategy, it is important to establish an optimal content marketing budget that focuses on streamlining processes as well as maximizing profits. This step is of the utmost importance if you are operating with limited financial resources such as the owner of a small business.

Small business owners are the most prone to under-performing in the marketing realm. As they don't allocate enough funds to areas that could help increase their conversion rates and are too busy with other responsibilities to stay up to date with content creation. That's why budgeting is so important. It creates a pathway to success no matter your limitations.

Business owner's hands typing on a laptop device and providing effective content marketing budget strategies for his business.

What to Consider When Establishing a Content Marketing Budget

Set your budget

When setting your budget, ensure your content strategy aligns with your spending. This requires a clear understanding of your overall marketing budget. So, you can have a better sense of how much you want to allocate to content marketing. For the average business, it is recommended that 25% to 30% of your marketing budget go to content marketing.

Allocating your budget

Now that your budget's set, it's time to focus on the allocation of content marketing funds. The best way to go about allocating funds is to answer questions that are in line with your business objectives.

Examples:

What goals am I hoping to achieve with my content?
How will I measure the progress and success of my campaign?
How will I distribute my content to my audience?

The answers to these questions will help you determine key metrics, effective strategies, and maximize your return on investment.

Measure and adjust results

Once your content campaign is live, you can sit back and monitor how well your content is converting. Based on the key performance indicators you set, you can analyze the data and adjust your budget allocations to better serve your brand's bottom line.

These considerations can help you create a thorough content marketing budget using SMART goals.

What are S.M.A.R.T. goals?

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for:

Specific

Specificity concerning goal setting means being clear about the goals you want to accomplish. When drafting your goals, you should answer the 5 W's.

What do I want to accomplish?
When will I accomplish the goal?
Why is the goal important?
Who is involved?
Where is it located?

Measurable

Setting measurable goals means you're able to monitor your progress via a metric system, to help you stay focused, motivated, and on track to meeting deadlines.

Achievable

An achievable goal is a realistic goal that you can accomplish successfully. Unattainable goals can be costly as they waste valuable company resources such as time, money, and energy.

Relevant

Crafting relevant goals means focusing on goals that align with your business's overall objective. For instance, if your brand is on the verge of releasing a new basketball shoe, the content you create should relate to the release of the basketball shoe.

Time-Bound

An important component of goal-setting is providing target dates for deliverables and completion. Realistic deadlines will help you stay organized, busy, and on the road to success.

Example: If you have a project that is due in a month, you could set biweekly target dates for deliverables.

Takeaways

Do's of content marketing budgeting

Understand your audience and market in a manner that is more likely to reach and convert them.
Allocate funds to areas that have shown potential to convert.
Be realistic with your goals.

Dont's of content marketing budgeting

Don't allocate content marketing funds to areas that don't convert and have yet to show potential to do so.
Never set goals without understanding how you are going to accomplish them.
Don't make business decisions that oppose your business objectives.

Marketing is developing exponentially, but marketing budgets have pretty much stayed the same. In this advanced and highly competitive climate, businesses need to get in front of the eyes of consumers with intent. And that requires reworking those budgets to meet the needs of the new digital age.