If you’re a B2B marketer, it’s possible you’ve already set your 2023 marketing budget. Perhaps you’ve been waiting to finalize it — holding out for more news on inflation, a possible recession, changes in the political landscape, or any other updates as we enter year three of the pandemic. There are myriad considerations when crafting an effective marketing budget, and many are out of any one person’s control. Here are some tips for managing your budget as we head into an unpredictable new year.
- Remain Agile
This can be defined two ways. The word “agility” means the ability to move quickly and easily, and to think and understand quickly. With so many unknown factors influencing a marketing budget, it’s important to process information speedily and act accordingly. Being agile could also refer to a type of marketing. Adobe defines it as “a strategy for making fast decisions that react to events in real time. Its aim is to enable companies and teams to move quickly through and deliver at various stages of a project. Data and analytics are key enablers of agile marketing.” It’s a strategy that ultimately is a time-saver, but requires an all-hands approach from every team at the company. If you haven’t considered an agile marketing strategy, now might be the time to do so.
- Do a Comprehensive Analytics Review
Hopefully, you’re looking at analytics on a daily basis, but the beginning of the calendar year is the perfect time to do a comprehensive analytics review. (If you don’t have the tools to do an analytics review, now’s the time to make an investment.) Go beyond the basics. Do a deep dive into how well your team performed against your company’s KPIs. Identify pain points to improve your performance this year and find what worked last year so you might be able to replicate it. Go one step further and do some research on key competitors’ performance.
- Audit Your Martech Stack
We’ve all seen that overwhelming super-infographic that features every marketing technology solution on the market. Chances are you have one or more of those. It’s likely you probably have one too many. No doubt you’ll be asked to do more with less this year and probably make some budget cuts. Take a look at your martech stack. Do you invest in one or more tools that essentially do the same thing? You might have more than you realize and this is one area that can be an effective budget cut. An audit of your martech stack can also help ensure you have the right tools to do things like a comprehensive analytics review.
- Clean Your Data
Much like reviewing analytics, cleaning data should be a regular, ongoing process. Use this month to review your automation tools, your CRM, and spend some time updating outdated information or deleting junk leads from your database. It can be a big undertaking, but it’s well worth the time. Clean data means more effective targeting, more accurate scoring, a stronger relationship with your sales teams and a better one-to-one customer experience.
- Keep Track of Customers’ Buying Habits
Have I mentioned that this year will be unpredictable? It’s vital to stay on top of industry news and customers’ buying habits. Every industry will be different. SmartBrief offers more than 200 free, B2B industry-specific publications. Subscribe to the ones that’ll help you make informed decisions for your company. You can even search for keywords such as “marketing.”