Integrated Marketing Plan
47 Budget
A large budget can incorporate more expensive marketing communication techniques—such as mass-market advertising and sales promotions—a larger scale, a broader reach, and/or a longer time frame. A small-budget campaign would rely primarily on in-house labor and existing tools, such as a company’s Web site and content marketing, email marketing, and social media capabilities. It’s important to figure out how to get the biggest impact on the available budget.
Campaign Budget Plan Framework
The first step in developing a campaign budget plan is to start with the total budget available to spend on a campaign. This budget figure works as a guardrail to keep your plans in line with the available resources. Next, think about the promotion mix you envision. Will there be advertising? Digital or direct marketing? Any public relations activities? List the different methods and key tools you plan to use, and then determine how much of your budget you plan to spend on each.
Determining a Budget
Marketing budgets help the planning of actual operations by forcing managers to prioritize activities and consider how conditions might change. Marketing also encourages managers to take steps now, so they can deal with problems before they arise. It also helps coordinate the activities of the organization by compelling managers to examine relationships between their own operation and those of other departments, which is a key component of IMC.
The essential purpose of budgeting is to:
- Control resources
- Communicate plans to various managers from different departments
- Motivate managers to strive to achieve budget goals
- Evaluate the performance of managers
- Provide visibility into the company’s performance
Top-Down Budgeting
In top-down budgeting methods in which top management decides the amount the company will spend on promotional activities for the year; Top management sets the overall amount the company will spend on promotional activities for the year. This total amount is then allocated among all of the advertising, PR, and other promotional programs.
Bottom-Up Techniques
Alternatively, some companies begin the budgeting process each year with a “clean slate”. They use the bottom-up budgeting method in which a company begins the promotional budgeting process each year, without taking previous years into accounts. This is done by first identifying promotional goals, and allocating enough money to achieve those goals and techniques.
Objective-Task Method
The objective-task method is the most common technique of bottom-up budgeting and usually the best method for non-profit organizations. Companies that use this method first have the objective or task they want the promotion to achieve. Next, they estimate the budget they will need to accomplish that objective or task. Finally, top management reviews and approves the budget recommendation.
Example: Non-profit Campaign Launch Budget
In this example, we will show how a non-profit might launch a campaign or event, and use the objective-task method of budgeting.
Hogan’s Alley Society: https://www.hogansalleysociety.org/
Objective: Launch a campaign during Black History month to “promote the historical, cultural, societal, and economic contributions made by Black Settlers and their descendants to Vancouver & BC”.
Task: a series of photos, videos, and blog posts to be published daily or every 2-3 days during BHM featuring prominent and lesser-known Black artists, activists, thinkers, and change-makers in BC. Published to Hogan’s Alley Society’s Blog and amplified over all of their social channels.
Budget:
- Photography: $1000
- Copywriting: $800
- Videography: $12,000
Example: David Suzuki Foundation
Objective: Launch a campaign “to conserve the environment by providing science-based education, advocacy, policy work, and acting as a catalyst for the social change that today’s situation demands”.
Tasks: Social media posts including photos, videos, and blog posts every 2-3 days involving environmental activists and user-generated content regarding critical issues.
Budget: Photography, Copywriting, Videography.
Attribution
This page contains material taken from:
Advertising Age, September 3, 2007, 4; “Danone Waters Plans to Increase Spend by 15%,” Marketing, July 25, 2007, 4.
Boundless. (n.d.). Retrieved June 6, 1AD, from http://oer2go.org/mods/en-boundless/www.boundless.com/marketing/textbooks/boundless-marketing-textbook/integrated-marketing-communications-12/integrated-marketing-communications-85/determining-a-budget-428-6894/index.html
Chapter 7 Decide What You Can Afford to Say: msnbc.com Sets the Budget. (n.d.). Retrieved June 6, 2020, from https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/advertising-campaigns-start-to-finish/s10-decide-what-you-can-afford-to-.html
David Suzuki Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved June 20, 2020, from https://readthedirt.org/author/david-suzuki-foundation
Learning, L. (n.d.). Principles of Marketing [Deprecated]. Retrieved June 6, 2020, from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/marketing-spring2016/chapter/reading-determining-imc-objectives-and-approach//
