How to Create a Marketing Budget for 2015

The end of the year is rapidly approaching, which means it's time to start planning and budgeting for 2015. With the wide range of inbound marketing tactics, it can be tricky to know where to start.

Marketers want to get to the creative side of their campaigns, which is why they may procrastinate making their 2015 budgets for as long as possible. However, this process doesn't have to be as painful as you think.

New Trends in the Marketing World

In 2015, there will be an increased focus on inbound marketing and thought leadership, according to Forbes. Although it once seemed like a marketing buzzword, thought leadership can give your business more credibility.

The top priority of content marketing efforts used to be elevating brand awareness, but this is an added benefit of thought leadership. Inbound marketing is rising in popularity because it supports these goals.

Nearly three-quarters of marketers are setting aside more of their budgets for inbound marketing.

Some companies may be unclear on the differences between inbound tactics and content marketing. While they are related, there is more to inbound marketing than content, although blogs, white papers, news articles and e-books are an excellent way to drive traffic back to your website.

You need to consider other tactics in addition to content, but it is crucial for seeing results from your campaigns.

Mobile has been gaining steam for the past few years, and it will be absolutely essential to offer a mobile website experience in 2015. Investing in local search will be crucial because a larger percentage of visitors will access your website from mobile search.

You also may need to consider responsive design. It won't be enough to get visitors to your website. You have to keep them there with an easy-to-use interface.

Deciding Which Tactics Will be More Effective

There are an overwhelming number of useful inbound marketing tactics, but you have to stick to a finite budget. How can you choose? The first step is determining how much you should spend for the year.

This can guide you to the most applicable techniques. Companies with smaller budgets need to select the tactics that have the best chance of delivering high return on investment and increase brand awareness. Because of this concern, it may be more effective to focus on demand generation rather than experimenting with many different types of content.

Making the most of your budget will require some research. Marketing has changed considerably in the past few years and will continue to do so. Inbound marketing methods that worked for your business a couple years ago may not be as effective now.

Taking stock of the most common inbound marketing methods in your industry may help you allocate your budget. However, it's also important to consider your past marketing successes. If some of your methods have failed to produce ROI, it may be a good time to scale back your investment in them. This enables you to free up more funds for marketing campaigns that might deliver better results.

One of the most important considerations for budgeting is assessing which channels your target audience is using. Even if an inbound tactic delivers high ROI, it won't matter much if it doesn't match your ideal customers' behavior.

For example, if you're targeting potential clients on Facebook but the majority of them use LinkedIn, you won't make meaningful connections or stretch your marketing budget as far as you want. You need to choose the channels where you have the best chance of reaching your audience.