When it comes to budgeting for your online marketing strategy, there are a variety of choices available depending on your objectives.

While there is no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" budget, there are a number of variables that can influence your overall success.

How to Allocate Your Digital Marketing Budget 

The main question to address is how to allocate digital marketing budgets across online channels and spread online investment across numerous online/digital platforms.

The expected allocation of marketing funds offline vs. online and across digital platforms is shown in reports from Forrester Research, eMarketer, and Gartner. 

The following are some of the report's conclusions:

• According to Gartner's survey, 72.2 % of marketing expenditure goes to digital channels, indicating the dominance of digital spending.

• As per the CMO Survey, digital marketing activities contribute to 57.9% of the marketing budget, which is slightly less than in previous years.

• Owned digital channels received the most funding, with 29.5 percent going to the website, email, and mobile channels. Earned digital, which includes spending on social media and SEO, was the second most popular category.

• The fastest-growing sector has been online video, with expected investment more than doubling between 2016 and 2021.

• From 2016 to 2021, investments in social media advertising grew at a 17 percent compound annual growth rate.

• Mobile marketing has reached a tipping point.

The nature of the business, the competitive marketplace, and how to target customers behave through the buying funnel all influence how marketing budgets are finally distributed.

Which marketing strategies and tactics are the most successful?

Due to its low cost, email marketing continues to have the highest ROI reported.

Paid digital advertising on search and social media can also deliver outstanding ROI, and SEO investments can yield a high rate of return, albeit at a slower pace.

Marketing automation and technologies are proving to be successful in combining the most effective marketing methods (email marketing, organic search, social media marketing, and content marketing) to produce better outcomes.

Change in marketing spending Traditional Vs Digital marketing.

Digital marketing budget allocation in 2021.

Pay close attention to your "Blended Lead Cost."

For small businesses, determining how much to spend on the web advertising is a stressful process. You need to get your name out there and compete, but you don't have a ton of money on hand. Every penny you spend should be well spent.

The biggest concern is that online ads may appear to be too expensive to be a realistic choice. In fact, you're probably judging your ad's performance too narrowly.

You must evaluate your outcomes as a result of all of your marketing efforts.

The dilemma of "advertised leads are too expensive, but I can't scale my free, direct, and organic leads" can be solved by focusing on blended lead prices. When you concentrate on the big picture, you'll see that as ad traffic increases, so does general traffic to your site. This makes sense; you're boosting overall brand awareness.

You'll likely find that the blended lead cost is far more reasonable in terms of ROI, allowing you to spend more ad cash. You have the benefit of observing trends and can optimize linked channels when you can commit a budget to ads consistently over time. You get plenty of room to test if you keep within your blended lead cost target.

Conclusion

In 2022, how much should you spend on digital marketing?

Enough that you’re able to successfully achieve your goals. We've determined that it's critical to keep marketing going, even if the temptation is to cut down during difficult times. History tells that if you have a good product or service that customers want, you will not lose money by investing in strategic marketing.

Bigger isn't always better. If you're a small firm with a limited budget, smart study and planning might help you compete. Talk to us, Team Social It, if you'd want to learn more about how to make digital marketing work for you in 2022 & many more fruitful upcoming years.