How to Use Marketing Budgets on Your Strategist or CMO Plan
Marketing budgets are an essential tool for any business looking to effectively manage their marketing expenses. With the help of marketing budgets, you can set up and oversee budgets tailored to specific channels, campaigns, or planned activities, actions and other items within your marketing strategy.
Marketing budgets are available on both Strategist and CMO plans. In this article, we will guide you through the process of getting started with marketing budgets and how to make the most out of this feature.
Getting Started with Marketing Budgets
To get started with marketing budgets, you will first need to activate it in your Business Settings. This can be done by following these simple steps:
Navigate to Settings > Businesses
Click 'View' to open your business and scroll to 'Power-ups'
Next to Marketing Budgets, click 'Set-up'
Tip: Team Members with Editor or Read Only permission must be assigned access to Budgets. Do this via the Team settings page.
Creating New Budgets
Use the following steps to create a new marketing budget:
From your main navigation click 'Budgets'
Click 'Add' to start a new budget.
A popup window will appear for you to complete some details for your new budget.
Different Budget Types
There are 3 types of budget you can choose from. These are designed to make it quick and easy for you to import common expense categories based on your existing marketing strategy for activities you've created under these categories.
If you don't want to do this, select 'Other'.
Channel Budget: This budget adds all Marketing Activities related to a selected channel (e.g., Social Media).
Campaign: This budget adds all Marketing Activities related to a selected Campaign
All Planned Activities: This budget will add all active Marketing activities that are part of your Marketing Strategy
Line items can easily be added and removed from your budget management dashboard.
Tip: When setting up your budgets we recommend sticking to a consistent schedule. For example Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly to keep things organized.
Updating Budgets
As the month progresses you can enter actual expenses against budget allocations to track marketing expenditure.
How to Set Default Budget Allocations
If you spend the same amount on Marketing Activities each period, you can add these default amounts to your marketing activites. When budgets are created these will be added automatically to save time.
Tip: Activities with a default budget allocation can be identified through the budget icon.
More Actions
More actions are available via the chevron icon next to your Budget Header. These include:
Copy: The copy feature is available so that you can easily bring across a budget for each period.
Archive: In some cases, you may need to archive a budget that is no longer relevant or needed. Archiving a budget will remove it from your active budgets list, but you can still access it by clicking on the "Archived" tab.
Conclusion
Marketing budgets are a powerful tool that can help you effectively manage your marketing expenses. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily set up and oversee budgets tailored to your specific needs. So why wait? Activate marketing budgets today and take your marketing strategies to the next level!