Are you a Marketing Manager with budget leftover for the remainder of your financial year?
It goes without saying, you want to make a wise investment but you need to do that pretty quickly.
Read on for tips on assessing your needs and identifying your best options.
First, let’s do a little brainstorm:
What are your main marketing goals for 2024? Are they SMART?
What are your biggest marketing successes over the last 12 months? Which channels have performed, and are there any that have waned?
What are the strengths and weaknesses within your marketing team?
Are you making the most of your marketing tools?
Is there anything you’ve wanted to do, but never seem to find the time, resources, or buy-in?
STOP. START. CONTINUE.
You may be familiar with this simple framework or versions of it. Identifying what is already working well, what isn’t, and new areas of opportunity, are essential to ensure your marketing strategy evolves in line with your business goals.
Let’s say over the last year you’ve invested heavily in paid search, content creation, and email marketing. Investigate! Where have the real, tangible results come from?
If something is clearly providing a return on investment, that’s one to CONTINUE. (Side note, your CONTINUEs are not easy wins, they still require the work to keep them working). However, it’s your STOPs and STARTs that need some deliberation.
If something is showing promise, but you haven’t seen the desired results, why is that?
If something has not worked, what have you learnt from it? How will you adapt?
When it comes to deciding your next steps, you need to consider past performance and future opportunities, as well as what your team and key stakeholders can get behind.
Perhaps investing further into the channels that have worked, or clearly defining new opportunities that you should invest in, could be the way forward.
The Right Now
To get to your immediate needs, you have to start by thinking about the bigger picture. Working backwards will make sure that your investment today is part of that bigger picture and working towards your longer term goals.
So you’ve thought about your long term goals, your marketing performance, your STOP/START/CONTINUEs.
What now?
What can you do in the next 6 weeks which could prepare you for the year ahead?
What skills could you develop within your team to create stronger foundations?
What are the gaps you could fill? For instance, could focusing on content creation equip you with a set of resources to maximise over the year ahead?
Got your strategy nailed for 2024? Perhaps you could use your remaining budget on a campaign to kickstart the journey of attracting, engaging and converting leads or sales.
Still not sure what’s really been working and where to invest? Maybe now is the time to consider getting external support to focus your strategy and identify the best opportunities.
On the flip side, your marketing may be performing consistently, and the best way to invest your budget could be on research and analysis of new opportunities and channels that could grow the business even further.
Ability vs Capacity
Does your team have the knowledge and skills to deliver the results you need?
Does your team have the time to deliver the results you need?
Do I want to upskill my team or do I need an extra pair of hands?
Investing in your team’s knowledge and skills has multiple benefits for their growth, and the impact they can make on the business. Training can be a transformative experience for your team and give them the inspiration and motivation to keep driving forward.
However, your marketing team may be really busy and that’s simply not an option between now and the end of the financial year, but you want to make the most of your budget. In that case, the question is what could an agency bring to the table that’s going to support the marketing team best? Is it providing insights, strategic advice, tangible deliverables (marketing assets), or delivering campaigns from start to finish, that is really going to have the biggest impact.
If you are unsure what to do next and want some impartial advice, give me a call on 01223 258000 or drop me an email – evie@socialb.co.uk
