How to Budget for SEO Marketing Campaigns

It's a problem for everybody, how do I determine the right amount of money to invest in a particular venture? When it comes to investing in web marketing tracking your investment becomes even harder because the industry is subjective to the abilities of your consultant who is in-turn at the mercy of unpredictable Google. It's no wonder people mess up their marketing investment, it's hard to calculate, and quite frankly, easier to just 'throw money at'.

How many of you simply find leftover money and give it to your marketer saying, "Here, do some marketing"? The simple answer to how one should create a web marketing/SEO budget lies in simple business planning that many firms can't be bothered to do. But I ask you this question: how do you know where to go and when you've reached if you don't know how to get there? As such, here are some crucial elements you should do BEFORE coming up with a budget for a web marketing campaign.

Planning Leads to Coherent Budgets The first step is to go through a planning stage that articulates overall company vision, goals, and objectives. From this process you can create a budget, not before it. DON'T WORK BACKWARDS! Save yourself the time and reward yourself with coherent goal setting by walking straight forwards and not backwards. In a planning process the steps in order go:

1. Vision 2. Objectives 3. Goals (measurable and attainable in the short run)

4. Strategies (built around distinct capabilities and competitive advantages)

5. Tactics Finally the Budget Vision: This encompasses your overall firm vision. Usually it's on the back of your business card. The vision is not necessarily attainable in the short run, but should be a long term want.

Objectives: When you have the umbrella of the overall vision, you can start creating 1-2 objectives. These are supposed to be attainable but not in the short term. They should be lofty enough that it appears the objective stands in the clouds, but not so far that you can't attain it.

Goals: Goals are then created to meet the objectives. 1-3 goals for each objective. Goals should be measurable--this is important--so you can track the success of your project. Goals should be attainable within the short run (1-2 years).

Strategies: Strategies capitalize on distinct capabilities of the firm. If you answer the question, "what are your firm's distinct capabilities against your competitors," with, "nothing," it's time to get the heck out of your industry. The concept of strategy enforces the need to have some form of competitive advantage over your competitors. If you don't have one then don't bother scrapping leftover market share from them, it's just not worth the time. (1-2 for each goal).

Tactics: Tactics are designed to fulfill the strategies. You should probably have 2-4 for each strategy and each should not only be measurable so you can identify when you've achieved the tactic, but also have responsibility assigned to it so someone is also accountable.

Finally, after this planning process you are ready to start thinking budget. Here is how you approach it. FIRST, take your overall objectives and goals that you desire to fulfill. FROM these objectives you derive your budget. You will find out how much it will now cost to meet your objectives. It is at this point you can determine if you have enough marketing dollars to make the objective happen, if not, guess what? It's back to the drawing board, changing your objectives to something attainable within your budget. Repeat the process until you find something that meets your budget. Usually you create your report to see how much it will cost, not if you have enough money to do it (but the planning process answers both questions).

This is how you come up with the right budget for your SEO project, not the other way around. Don't start by taking marketing dollars and throwing it blindly at ideas or 'trial runs'. That's why some many people loose so much cash in marketing, they have no clue what they're doing because they don't have a plan or goals.

Skipping these steps is like putting a bullet through your car tire. You may (or may not) reach your destination, and if even you do, you're late (but your competitors aren't). You don't get quotes first, and then go, 'ok, what am I going to remodel and what do I want it to look like?' Same thing applies to budgeting for SEO work. Don't walk to the consultant with a vague idea of what needs to be done, come up with a goal of, "I want to rank top 5 for my market within 2 years", then find out cost. Knowing where you're going and how you'll get there will save dollars in the end and reap greater results that impact your bottom line.

This post was derived from a business strategy post on SEO budgeting at Distinct SEO. Visit the Distinct SEO consultation blog for more great tips on applying SEO to your web site.

How to Budget for SEO Marketing Campaigns - To learn more about this author, visit Barry Nagassar's Website.

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