As you prepare your business financially for 2021, you’ll want to evaluate your digital marketing budget. Digital marketing is becoming more important each year as the Internet and access to Internet-enabled devices grows. To start your year off right, you’ll need to solidify your digital marketing budget for 2021.

In this post, we’ll help you figure out how to allocate your budget and discuss four website digital marketing strategies you’ll want to put your 2021 digital marketing budget toward.

Let’s get to it!

How do I set my digital marketing budget?

As you enter 2021, you’ll want to solidify your digital marketing budget for the year. If you’ve never set a digital marketing budget or haven’t seen positive results in the past, you can start this year off right by following some general rules.

Overall, most companies spend between 7-10 percent of their overall company revenue on marketing. This is a general rule of thumb that you can follow to ensure that you’re spending enough but not too much.

Of this 7-10 percent you’re allocating, about half or more of that should go toward digital marketing. Many companies fall short of this benchmark, spending only a third of their marketing budgets on digital strategies.

However, with the growing popularity of the Internet, it’s crucial that you allocate enough money to advertise your business online. There are thousands of leads looking for your business online and if you don’t put enough money into your campaign, you’ll miss out on valuable leads and revenue.

Each year, digital marketing becomes more and more important. As technology continues to evolve, you’ll want to put more money into digital marketing efforts than your traditional marketing efforts.

The 70-20-10 rule

When you’re setting up your digital marketing budget, the 70-20-10 rule is extremely helpful for helping you allocate funds effectively. Here’s how that breaks down.

Spend 70 percent of time and money on “now”

With this rule, you should spend 70 percent of your time and digital marketing budget for 2021 on the “now.” The “now” consists of strategies you know work well for your business.

Whether it’s a digital marketing strategy or a product or service that drives valuable revenue for your business, focus on spending your money toward helping those aspects drive even better results for your business.

This is a safe place to allocate your budget because you already know that these strategies, products, and services work for your business. You can use the money to optimize your performance to drive valuable results.

Spend 20 percent of time and money on “next”

Twenty percent of your budget should go toward things that are on the horizon. These are strategies that are new to your business. For instance, you might introduce and market a new product line or service or target new segments to expand your market share.

Putting money toward the “next” helps your business grow. You move your business forward by investing in different products and marketing methods that help you reach new leads and earn more conversions.

Spend 10 percent of time and money on “new”

A small portion of your digital marketing budget should go toward the “new.” These are the unknowns of the digital marketing world, like emerging technology or experimental strategies. To give your business the opportunity to stay ahead of the competition, you must invest some of your budget into new ideas.

This can be anything from up-and-coming technology to testing new ideas. You want to put money toward experimental ideas to see if they will pay off for your business.

The 70-20-10 rule isn’t set in stone. It’s a good starting point, but you don’t need to follow it precisely. For the 10 percent on “new”, that may be too much for businesses with bigger budgets. You can always adjust the ratio to fit your business and your goals.

4 digital marketing methods to budget for in 2021

As you start to set up your digital marketing budget for 2021, you must consider what methods you will use. Here are four digital marketing methods to consider using in your 2021 budget.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great method to budget for in 2021. This is the process of boosting your website’s ranking in the search results. SEO helps you reach valuable traffic that is interested in your products or services.

Optimizing for now

To optimize SEO for now, you can work on optimizing your SEO campaign with traditional techniques. For example, improving your page speed will help your site perform better in the search results.

You can focus on cleaning up code and optimizing image file sizes to help improve your page speed and load time. Your business can also focus on integrating responsive design, which makes your site user-friendly on all devices. Responsive design ensures your website adapts to mobile phones, tablets, and desktops to provide the best experience on that device.

A positive experience keeps your audience engaged on your page longer — and helps you close more sales.

Optimizing for next

Voice search is the newest strategy on the SEO horizon. Voice search devices, like Google Home and Amazon Echo, make their way into more homes each day. People are using these devices to conduct searches and find important information.

If you want to optimize for the next new thing, start optimizing for voice search. This technology is rising in popularity, so you’ll want to adapt your SEO campaign to fit voice search. This includes optimizing for slang words, providing quick and informative answers, and making your information easy to be spoken.

Optimizing for new

Google is constantly looking for new ways to optimize search. The goal is always to get the user to be able to find what they need. When you invest in SEO, you’ll need to keep up with new experimental ways of searching.

An example of a type of search style is photo search. This is growing as a popular way to conduct searches. People can upload images or take a photo to learn information about that object.

This is a revolutionary way of searching. It’s not a prominent way to search, but it could be upcoming. When you consider that many people are visual learners and prefer visual context, photo search could become a growing trend.

Optimizing for photo search includes strategies like integrating image descriptions and optimizing alt text to appear in relevant results.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great strategy to help your business reach more qualified leads. This paid form of advertising allows you to reach valuable leads that are interested in your products or services. These ads appear at the top of the search results, above the organic listings.

When you work with the right PPC ad company, PPC ads help you earn valuable leads that are interested in your business. In fact, 65 percent of all high-intent searches result in someone clicking on a PPC ad. These ads are extremely valuable for helping your business obtain leads that want your products or services.

Optimizing for now

The best way to optimize for now is conducting keyword research. Keyword research will help you find the right keywords for your PPC campaign. Considering keywords trigger your website to appear in the search results, you’ll want to optimize your keyword strategy to ensure you’re driving the best results.

Optimizing for next

Google isn’t the only company that offers PPC ad options. Amazon and Facebook also started offering PPC ad options for your business. In the future, Apple may play a role in promoting PPC ads.

To optimize for the next, optimize for platforms outside of Google. Even though Google is the most popular place for PPC ads, other platforms are rising in popularity as viable sources for PPC ads.

Optimizing for new

As search strategies continue to evolve, there are opportunities for new ways for users to find products or services. There is a possibility that some people could simply scan a product and generate search results based on the product’s UPC code. You may need to consider adapting your PPC ads to fit these types of unique search strategies in the future.

3. Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most valuable methods your business can invest in this year. This method allows you to connect directly with leads that want to hear from your business. You’ll want to allocate funds toward this method because it’ll drive valuable results.

When you obtain subscribers, you do it organically by placing email sign-up forms on your website. This means you’ll only attract people that want to hear from your business.

With email marketing, you can send specific messages to people to get them interested in your products. Email marketing allows you to segment your audience to send them tailored content reflective of their needs. This is a great method to help nurture leads toward conversion.

As you set your digital marketing budget for 2021, you’ll want to focus on allocating money toward boosting your email marketing efforts.

Optimizing for now

Email marketing is an effective strategy for nurturing leads and earning more conversions. To optimize your email marketing strategy for now, the best thing you can do is segment your audience. Audience segmentation is a valuable resource for helping your business drive better results.

You’ll want to segment your audience by demographic information and interests. Group people together based on their interests and the types of products or services they want to see from your business. It helps you drive a more effective campaign because the content is tailored to their likes and needs.

Optimizing for next

The biggest rising trend is personalization. With so many companies competing for the same person’s attention, personalization rises as a driving factor for choosing a business. People want to feel valued by companies and personalization is a key component to feeling valued.

The biggest rising trend is creating 1:1 emails that are specific to each individual subscriber. Think of in terms of how Netflix suggests shows based on a user’s individual interests and viewing behavior. These emails would focus specifically on how a user shops and provide them with the best products for their shopping behavior.

Optimizing for new

Email will become more visual than it is. Similar to how you have a preview thumbnail when you post content, email will move towards creating previews for people to see the content before they open the email. It’s important that you start optimizing your email campaigns to take a more visual approach.

Start budgeting for 2021 today

As you prepare to enter 2021, it’s crucial that you start organizing your budget to know where to put your money.

Have questions about any of the strategies discussed in this post? Feel free to contact us online today to speak with a strategist!