Developing a dynamic and cohesive marketing strategy has become essential for you if you want to profit in today’s competitive marketplace. Online marketing introduces and promotes products and services to your potential customers. Without the implementation of dynamic online marketing strategies, your potential customers will not learn about your products and services, and your business growth will be impeded.

While some business owners believe that they don’t need to implement strong digital marketing strategies to be successful (with some maintaining and even growing their revenues without a coherent digital marketing strategy), their customers are increasingly turning to the Internet to help themselves with their buying decisions. Furthermore, with the increase in mobile adoption, more and more consumers are using their mobile devices to help them with their buying decisions.

If you want to profit in today’s marketplace, you need to develop and implement strong multi-device and cross-channel digital marketing strategies to effectively reach their potential and existing customers.

How Much Budget Should You Allocate to Your Marketing?

As a general rule of thumb, new businesses are advised to invest at least 10% of their gross annual income into a strategic marketing action plan that covers appropriate online, print, and networking initiatives. However, Entrepreneur magazine advises businesses that want to advance their objectives and sales to invest more time and money into their strategic marketing action plan—as much as 20-30% of their anticipated annual gross revenues, particularly if they are introducing new products or services.

These figures, of course, aren’t set in stone. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses with revenues of less than $5 million should allocate between 7-8% of their revenues to marketing. This allocated budget should be split between brand development costs and the costs of promoting the business.

The U.S. Small Business Administration states that a small business’s allocated marketing budget should also take into account the business’s industry, the size of the business, and its growth stage. How the marketing budget is spent is equally important, and the budget should be used to outline the costs of the business’s marketing goals within a certain time period.

Your Competitors are Increasing their Marketing Budget in 2014

As the economy continues to recover, more and more marketers are stating that they’ll be increasing their marketing budgets this year to fuel business growth. According to the fifth annual Marketing Budgets Report, which was published by Econsultancy and sponsored by Responsys, 60% of client-side respondents say their companies are increasing their overall marketing budgets for 2014—which is significantly higher compared to 54% in 2013 and 45% in 2012.

Forty- four percent of supply-side respondents say their clients are increasing their overall marketing budgets this year—up from 39% in 2013 and 30% in 2012. As for digital marketing budgets, the number of companies increasing their spending has been remarkably consistent since 2009, and is 71% this year. Digital budgets have largely been insulated from spending cuts as more companies focus on their digital channels to drive business growth, as well as leads and sales conversions.

Meanwhile, only 20% of companies are planning to increase their traditional (offline) marketing budgets over the next year, with 55% of companies planning to keep their traditional (offline) marketing budgets the same over the next year.

Your Competitors are Focusing on Acquisition Marketing

The fifth annual Marketing Budgets Report also stated that more companies say they will be focusing their investments on marketing for new customers (acquisition marketing) over keeping their existing ones (engagement/retention) in 2014. 34% of respondents say they are focusing on acquisition marketing (up from 31% in 2013), while retention/engagement is down from 24% in 2013 to 18% this year.

The modest boost in acquisition marketing can be partially attributed to the more positive economic climate and the corresponding increase in marketing budgets.

Marketing Spend in 2014: Email Marketing, Social Media, & Search (SEO/PPC) Lead the Way

The latest StrongView survey, which was conducted with SENSORPRO, examines business leaders and their planned marketing budgets for 2014. According to the survey, 52% of respondents plan to increase their spend on email marketing, 46% on social media, and 41% on search (SEO/PPC) this year.

In contrast, some traditional advertising channels are seeing a significant decrease in spend. According to the StrongView survey, 32% of respondents plan to decrease their print advertising spend, while 21% of respondents plan to decrease their direct mail spend.

A prevailing challenge for marketers this year is accessing and leveraging the enormous amount of data being generated by a growing number of marketing channels. 40% of respondents cited accessing and leveraging customer data as the biggest email marketing challenge, while 32% of respondents say they’re struggling to develop more relevant engagements.

How Professional Consultation Can Drive Your Marketing Objectives & Business Goals

While developing a dynamic marketing strategy is important for businesses that want to drive growth, boost their profits, and increase their leads and sales conversions, setting aside the optimal marketing budget to drive these objectives can be a tricky process. This is a problem frequently encountered not just by small and medium businesses, but by large enterprises as well.

Fortunately, we can help business owners like you identify the ideal marketing budget for your organization in order to drive your marketing objectives and business goals. For a limited time, we’re providing FREE PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATIONS WORTH $1000 to business owners who want to establish optimal marketing budgets and become more competitive and profitable in an increasingly cutthroat marketplace.

Our free professional consultation worth $1000 includes a comprehensive research and analysis report, and an in-depth online marketing services blueprint, so that you’ll better understand your current online presence, what your competitors are doing, and what actions need to be taken in order to drive your marketing and business goals.

We typically charge $1000 per consultation because of the extensive research and analysis—not to mention expertise—that is required. Indeed, no other company will offer such comprehensive and superior consultation for free. If you want to compete in the online marketing world, you’ll need serious intelligence and the advice of an experienced, knowledgeable consultant.

We’ll make the effort to research and analyze your target market, your brand, your marketing goals, your past marketing campaigns, your competitors, and your industry to help us devise a sound online marketing strategy for you. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll then proceed with implementation, and every step in the process and every milestone will be aligned with your marketing goals.

Our online marketing services blueprint will outline the services that you need to meet your marketing objectives and business goals, with the corresponding timetable and well-justified marketing budget.

Don’t miss this chance to obtain valuable intelligence and first-rate consultation from the experts. Call us now or send us a message so we can schedule your free consultation.