In our previous article, we discussed in detail why you need a marketing budget for your business and how large or small your marketing budget should be. In this article, we will be discussing marketing budget templates that you can use in setting up your marketing budget.

RELATED: How Large Should My Marketing Budget Be?

Before proceeding, let us briefly summarize why you need a marketing budget.

Why do I need a marketing budget?

You should know that a marketing budget is a way you can control costs and expenses so they don’t go above the acceptable cost level. If you don't have a marketing budget, you wouldn’t know if you have overspent or underspent in marketing.

A marketing budget is a good way to allocate funds that will take care of your marketing expenses over some time.

Don’t forget to reach us at 07034243326 if you need assistance in setting up your marketing budget!

Is a marketing budget template really necessary?

We have briefly seen the reasons why you need to have a marketing budget. But you cannot build a marketing budget if you don’t have a ground to start with. The ground here is your marketing budget template.

The marketing budget template is the tool you use to build your marketing budget. It is the format that your marketing budget uses. It also shows the various items of your budget in their different positions and arrangements.

Marketing Budget Templates to Use

This section of this article explains different marketing budget templates you can adopt for your business to build your marketing budget.

In your marketing budget template, spaces should be provided for the budgeted cost and for the actual costs you incurred on that item. Additional space should also be provided to calculate the differences between the budgeted and actual costs.

A comprehensive marketing budget would include the following sections which also can serve as templates:

1. Content Marketing Budget:

Content generally describes all material, written (for example, blog posts and articles), audio (for example podcasts), or visual (for example videos) that are created to entertain and inform an audience.

In this section, you lay down all expected costs of content generation, content promotion, and freelancers (if you engage any). In a bid to generate content for your product you may incur research costs.

Costs to be incurred in promoting the content on blogs and social media platforms and also to pay your freelancers should be captured here.

Businesses with a strong online presence are recommended to devote 20% - 30% of their marketing budget to content marketing.

2. Public Relations/Marketing Events Budget:

If you intend to organize events and gatherings where you can promote your products, you should include this section in your marketing budget.

In this section, you are to include the expected costs of organizing those intended events, and all other costs you expect to incur on customer service.

If intending to host public relations/marketing events, it is recommended to devote about 15% of your marketing budget to this.

3. Marketing Staff Budget:

This section is pretty self-explanatory. Here, you outline all costs you expect to incur on your marketing staff including their salaries, bonuses, and commissions. You should also include any costs of recruitment and training if you intend to recruit and train more individuals in your marketing team.

About 25% - 30% of your marketing budget should be allocated for the marketing staff costs.

4. Budget for website marketing:

This refers to marketing costs that are directly related to the management of your business website. All expected costs related to your website hosting and your domain management should be included here.

If your business operates with a website, it is recommended to spend about 10% - 12% of your sales revenue on website marketing and maintenance.

5. Summary of Marketing Budget:

After preparing all the other sections of your marketing budget, you must include a summary section.

In this section, you are to bring in all the total costs from each of the other sections with their appropriate headings. This summary section will give you an overview of the total costs you expect to incur throughout the period.

Note that as a precaution, your total marketing budget should not exceed more than 20% of your sales revenue unless under they are credible reasons to that effect.

RELATED: 10 Sample Templates of a Business Plan.

Conclusion

In developing your marketing budget, you will need marketing templates to guide you. These marketing templates will help break down your marketing budget into various sections to make it easier to understand and more efficient to work with.

We at SmartSMSSolutions can assist your business in developing your marketing budget using any budget template of your choice. We are also always ready to help you grow your business by marketing through SMS!

You can request our assistance for these services by simply registering with us or you can call us on 07034243326.

Don't miss this opportunity to take your business to new heights!