The bigger your marketing budget, the better your campaign? Incorrect. In fact, it's the opposite. With a limited budget, you're forced to be creative with your resources, often leading to the most innovative campaigns. While having more money allows for greater experimentation, it's still wise to start small. Validate your assumptions with data first. But of course, that's just our humble opinion. No reason to grumble :-)
“I can't run a campaign without a budget”
Many campaigns are executed without a media budget, utilizing internal channels and resources such as social posts, newsletters, events, direct mailings, websites, and more. It's a misconception to believe that a campaign always requires a media budget. Leveraging these internal resources and channels forms the foundation, and then, if needed, a media budget can be added to expand the reach.
“I trust that my media agency provides me with the best advice”
That channel where you need to invest the least media budget to acquire one lead/order/customer/application. Initially, these are your own channels. However, media can be expensive and often lacks transparency. It's crucial to be able to see and interpret the data yourself, rather than relying solely on provided reports. Making transparent what isn't transparent provides valuable insights and significant cost savings.
“No idea if I'm overpaying for advertisements?”
The ad buying system lacks transparency, making it challenging to determine if you're overpaying unless you do it yourself. However, you can gain insights into how your ads perform in terms of leads, orders, and revenue. The cost per conversion is determined by (1) the expenses of the ad leading to a conversion and (2) the total cost of underperforming ads. Establishing a cost per lead/order/hire before the campaign is essential to answer this question. And that's relatively easy to do.
“I know exactly what I earn from my campaign”
Marketing doesn't exist in isolation. Linking it with sales data is crucial for measuring the impact of your campaigns. This requires a structured setup for each campaign. Creating a funnel design with corresponding data entry points and trackers provides you with control. It allows you to identify which orders can be attributed to the campaign within each target audience segment. This way, you know precisely what you're earning!
"It seems like more budget is always the solution"
The campaign isn't performing well yet, and increasing the budget is often suggested as the solution. Unfortunately, this is a weak approach. It's crucial to understand what's happening before concluding that more budget is necessary. Regrettably, insights often arrive too late, after the campaign has been running for a while. By that time, the budget is already spent, making an increase unavoidable. It's a costly lesson that could have been easily prevented. More budget is only beneficial if the campaign is converting.
