With a few short months left in the year, it’s time to tackle the challenging task of planning and budgeting for your 2014 digital marketing activities. eMarketer estimates that B2C and B2B companies will see a 9.9% and 11.1% growth in digital advertising budgets in 2014, respectively. How is your company planning on establishing online marketing goals and budgets for your business and mapping both strategy and tactics to these objectives and resources? In this seminar, Formic Media will cover digital marketing planning and budgeting best practices, trends for 2014 and how to incorporate your key decision makers and digital agency into the process of creating an effective digital marketing strategy.

1. Planning Your 2014 Digital
Marketing Strategy
November 2013
John McPhee
Vice President
johnm@formicmedia.com
503.517.9059 x122

2. About Formic Media

3. About Formic Media
• Launched in 2008 to service small business &
partners
• Specializes in SEO, PPC and Social Media
• 100% of Account Team Google AdWords &
Google Analytics Certified
• Focus on education via monthly Seminar
Series

4. Overview

5. Overview

6. Overview

7. Overview

8. Overview

9. Setting Goals

10. Setting Goals
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Specific goal: align to corporate objectives
Measurable: set up appropriate tracking
Attainable: make it a realistic goal
Relevant: tie marketing goals to corporate
Time: set timeline for achieving goals
Evaluate: collect data and assess goals
Re-evaluate: analyze on a regular basis

11. Budgeting

12. Budgeting
• Review Current Budgets
• Review Activities from 2013 (what worked, what
didn’t)
• Understand the nature of your business, and
plan accordingly
– Seasonality, sales cycle, competition
• Do you need agency/consultant help?
• Framing the conversation
• Budget calculator

13. Review Current Budgets
• Compare total budgets Year over Year (YoY)

14. Review Current Budgets
• How do budgets compare to revenue YoY?

15. Review Activities
• Break down budgets by activity, determine ROI
– What should we be doing more of?

16. Review Activities
• Dig deeper…
• Break costs down even further
Roughly 66% of spend is going
towards Google right now.
Should it be?

17. Review Activities
• Compare search engines, see where more efforts should
be placed
Google is responsible for 64%
of conversions in 2013

18. Review Activities
• Compare search engines, see where more efforts should
Google has the lowest CPA, which
be placed
means we’re spending less per
sale on Google. The majority of
the budget should be placed on
Google

19. Plan Accordingly
• Do you have seasonality in your business?
• Ex. You sell widgets that are a hot item during
the holidays, bump up your ad spend

20. Plan Accordingly
• Consider running promotions throughout the
year
– Full price vs. discount strategies
– Free shipping
– Promote certain products/services
• Plan accordingly as costs could be affected
– Do you need to create content?
– Increase PPC spend? Update ad text? Update Landing
pages?
– Promote via social media (i.e. more time?)

21. Plan Accordingly
• Create a calendar
to help plan for
additional costs
– Content
– Ad spend
– Consultants

22. Framing the Conversation
• Do you need to sell to your boss to get more
budget? Do your homework.
– Understand the company’s goals
– Discuss previous ROI from marketing activities, and if
possible, how they compare to other efforts
– Mention the competition (especially if they are doing
what you are proposing)
– Provide case studies or backup data that can help sell
your idea
– Get to the point, they don’t have a lot of time

23. Budget Calculator
• Need help setting a marketing budget?
– Rule of Thumb: 8%-10% of total sales/revenue
– Aggressive: 10%-15% of total sales/revenue
• Calculators can be useful and help provide some
direction

24. Budget Calculator (long term)
• Determine
your annual
revenue &
time frame
• This
calculator is
low
(suggesting
about 2%)

25. Budget Calculator (somewhat aggressive)

26. Budget Calculator (very aggressive)

27. Measurement

28. Measurement
• Benchmark progress
• What metrics should you measure?
• Tracking tools

29. Benchmark Progress
• Need to understand progress on a regular basis
– Are you seeing improvement?
• SEO
• PPC
• Social Media
• Email marketing
• Phone calls
• Foot traffic

30. What Metrics Should You Measure?
• SEO
– Share of Visits
• Direct, Referral, Search Engine
– Organic search visits
• Review by engine (Google vs. Yahoo vs. Bing)
– URL/Page traffic
• Due to ‘Not Provided’ we now need to understand which
pages drive lots of traffic – this gives insights into keywords
that are performing well
– Search rankings

31. Measurement Tools - SEO
• Google Analytics

32. Measurement Tools - SEO
• Google Webmaster Tools

33. Measurement Tools - SEO
• Google Webmaster Tools

34. Measurement Tools - SEO
• Google Webmaster Tools

35. Measurement Tools - SEO
• Link Measurement Tools

36. What Metrics Should You Measure?
• PPC
– Impressions / Clicks
• Identifies which keywords are driving traffic
– Cost per Click (CPC)
• Helps determine what budget should be set to
– Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Helps determine which keywords/ads are performing
– Quality Score
• Higher quality score = lower CPC
– Conversions & Cost per Conversions
– Return on Ad Spend
• Profit / Cost

37. Measurement Tools - PPC
• Google AdWords/Bing Ads Dashboard

38. Measurement Tools - PPC
• Google Analytics

39. Measurement Tools - PPC
• Google Keyword Planner

40. What Metrics Should You Measure?
• Social Media
– Facebook
• Likes, Comments, Shares
– Twitter
• Retweets, Replies, Favorites, Followers
– Google+
• +1’s, Circles added to, Comments
– Pinterest
• Likes, Repins, Comments

41. Measurement Tools – Social Media
• Sprout Social

42. Measurement Tools – Social Media
• Facebook Insights

43. Measurement Tools – Social Media
• Google Analytics

44. Re-cap

45. Recap
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Review previous years’ performance
Set high level goals realistic goals (revenue)
Understand what resources you’ll need
Account for seasonality/promotions/etc.
Set specific goals for activities (SEO, PPC, etc)
Track your efforts and review metrics

46. Thank You!
John McPhee
Vice President
johnm@formicmedia.com
503.517.9059 x122