Whether your marketing budget is modest or massive, it’s important to make every dollar count. And with the New Year approaching, now is a time to assess how well your current plans are working—or perhaps implement a few changes. Although needs vary from company to company, I’ve culled some sumptuous morsels from a number of leading marketers; these are budgetary suggestions that are sure to reverberate across industries.
“Marketers should have a defined portion of their budgets that’s purely for innovation. It’s for trying out new things, new experiences, and new ways of interacting with consumers that don’t have a history of return; it’s funding something new to help move a brand forward. The rest should be a healthy mix across different channels, but with a clear plan for measurement and creating attribution models. And money should be spent to determine how spending in different channels affects the behaviors that you’re trying to drive.”—Ken Allard, managing director of business strategy, Huge
“To drive revenue and generate the highest ROI for their 2015 marketing dollars, marketers should focus on creating engaging customer experiences across digital channels, including mobile, social, video, display, and email. Programmatic buying can enable cost-efficient media buying at scale, while still maintaining targeting and campaign optimization in real time. Plus, data and analytics should always be taken into account to reach the right audience with the right offer.”—Mark Strecker, CEO, Amobee
“[Marketers] should be looking where their target audiences are and where their target consumers are spending time. That’s where their budgets should be. For a lot of marketers, that’s going to be mobile, and that’s going to require a lot of learning new forms of marketing and even new fiscal steps.”—Rebecca Lieb, analyst, Altimeter Group
“Spend should be on social, social, social. We’ve never seen a medium or a channel like this before. It’s one that’s rapidly growing and so large; it’s so rich with data that’s customer-driven. As a result, there’s so much information about the customers that’s available. Social data improves the quality of the relationships that marketers can have with people. There’s never been a platform that’s like this, ever.”—Mark Josephson, CEO, Bitly
“In 2015 marketers shouldn’t let technology confuse where they should be placing their budgets. You have to choose the right channels for your message. Video is a great place to create a true connection. If you want to do that you should be innovating in the video space, right now. That’s video on mobile and video on the Web. Sight, sound, and motion are effective. They provide a greater impact.”Mark Yackanich, CEO, Genesis Media
