6 Real Marketing Budgets For 2015 (And Changes From 2014)

It’s budgeting season, which means you’re busy running two jobs: 1) keeping all of your 2014 marketing on track and 2) planning your 2015 marketing. It’s a grind, so let’s keep this brief. Today, we’re going to take a look at six actual marketing budgets for 2015 (shared by my HARO friends). You’ll see how they plan to use their budget and also the main change they made from 2014.

How will you use your marketing budget in 2015?

1) Alan O’Rourke – Director of Marketing (WorkCompass)

25% Marketing Software
25% Pay Per Click
50% Content Marketing

“Our big change next year is not a new addition but a change in focus. PPC adverting is becoming less effective due to rising costs and competition in the market. So in 2015 we are changing our strategy around PPC. Instead of advertising the product, we are showing helpful content and resources and getting those leads into the marketing funnel.

The percentage of our marketing budget we spend on technology and tools is also rising this year. Companies are releasing newer and better tools for CRM, email, SEO, social media monitoring, communication, etc.”

2) Rasheen Carbin – Director of Marketing (nspHire)

40% Pay Per Click
30% Search Engine Optimization
30% Email Marketing

“In 2015, we plan to spend more money on paid advertising. We’ve found that this is our most reliable form of lead generation. Of that 40% spent on PPC, we plan to add Facebook and LinkedIn to the mix. Previously, we’d only used AdWords and Outbrainz.”

3) Jason Parks – Owner (The Media Captain)

65% Google
20% Bing/Yahoo
15% Facebook

Jason invests in SEO and PCC. With SEO specialists on staff, that is considered a labor cost. As for the PPC budget, here is his take for changes in 2015:

“We will be investing more into the Bing/Yahoo network online in 2015. Google’s cost per click is continuing to rise and we see an opportunity on the other search engines to achieve more clicks at a lower price point. One new addition that we will be pitching heavily in 2015 is Facebook’s lookalike audience. If you have an email list of over 5,000 contacts, Facebook will find an extremely similar demographic and this has the potential to yield one of the lowest CPAs.”

4) Muhammad Saad Khan – Content Marketing Manager (Cloudways)

50% Content Marketing
25% Social Listening
25% Customer Giveaways

“I will be focusing more on building a community around Cloudways brand and I will be working on a customer advocacy program to actually implement the term, Customer Marketer.”

5) Ian Aronovich – CEO (Government Auctions)

45% PPC/SEO
35% Social Media, Giveaways, Gamification
20% Content Marketing

“The only new addition to our budget for 2015 that we didn’t employ in the previous year is gamification. While we have been holding giveaways on Facebook for some time already, we have not yet applied game design to our service. In 2015, we will be providing badges and other rewards for our auction game (currently being designed) participants.”

6) Lou Altman – CEO (GlobaFone)

70% Tradeshows & Events
20% Content Marketing & Social
10% Marketing Software

“I have found a web-based program that is more oriented toward inbound lead generation with metrics and tracking. The debate: Is it worth giving up 2 trade shows to use this technology? I am an advocate as I have been the one playing around with the trial and understand the impact—among the tools is a daily report of the domains of visitors to the site, but more importantly, what pages they visited, how long and what time of the day.”

What are the key trends for 2015?

• Google PPC is getting more expensive and competitive: Marketers are searching for other ways to drive paid leads beyond Google. They’re turning to Bing, Yahoo, and Facebook as new alternatives. But Google still owns the overwhelming majority of search share, so your customers aren’t switching. Does it make sense to switch to other PPC options or invest more in activities to rank organically in Google?
• Online tools make it easier to track leads: With Hubspot announcing it will go public just a few weeks ago, it’s clear how popular online marketing software has become. And a few marketers here were quoted as saying they’ll invest more in marketing software in 2015. Do you have enough visibility across your online marketing with your current set of tools and systems?
• There is only one right answer: Change. Marketers constantly need to test new ideas and strategies to find if they can bring in better leads, more affordably. As you noticed, everyone’s marketing budget is unique (most likely based on the business model, industry and how well they can execute each marketing strategy). But one thing holds true—change is necessary.

What about you? What are you changing in 2015?

Posted in Marketing