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budgets they're like cups of coffee too small and you won't get anything going but too large and you run the risk of everyone getting a little wild-eyed and jittery I mean if we're being honest that sounds like a pretty cool uh pretty cool Wednesday night but that's not either here nor there okay that may be a bit of an exaggeration but the fact is that budgets are a core factor of successful marketing a well-tuned budget can take your strategy from basic to supercharged helping you grab hold of business potential and turning it into smooth smooth reality but it's not as easy as a snap of the fingers because even with a snazzy super user-friendly template like the one we've linked down below which I'll be taking you through today you're very welcome there are a few key Essentials you need to know in order to go from budget beginner to budget big leader let's get to it so if you're watching this video right now you obviously know what a budget is and chances are you've probably come up against them once or twice three four five twenty Thirty 130 000 times in your career buying some new software whoops Finance says no no no no no bummer but those budgets are also very necessary why because they help keep everyone on track and accountable so let's look at the basic anatomy of a marketing budget marketing budgets at a minimum will focus on projecting Revenue tracking expenses and calculating profits the more information you input the more accurate that information is the better your projections will be and that's important because budgets also serve as a financial roadmap for the team and The Wider business it's easier to make plans for the future when you've got a view of projected spend and revenue and knowing how much you've spent in one area of your marketing means you can track the cost benefit of specific actions and use that to influence your future budgets say you work for a vitamin company every quarter you've set a budget of about twenty five hundred dollars on paid advertising with the exception of last quarter where you reduce the budget to one thousand dollars if you see the number of customers or website interactions dip significantly in that last quarter you might attribute that to the reduction of advertising spend obviously in the real world there are often multiple factors that work in the background but the most important thing is that budgets can give you a bird's eye view of relevant operational data which can help you make better decisions going forward and obviously it helps you manage your business spend we can't forget about that now there are two types of budgets traditionally businesses tend to create static budgets these are fixed annual budgets planned and updated just once a year typically in the fourth quarter you can think of static budgets like numbers that are carved in stone they don't change no matter what shift happened in the business over that time period changes are mostly made at the start of the next financial period at which point you get a fresh lovely new piece of stone to carve your numbers into rolling budgets on the other hand known also as rolling forecasts or continuous budgets are Dynamic and adaptable with them you decide on the budget for the next time period immediately after the current one elapses in most cases rolling budgets are dated monthly or quarterly and since they're not set in stone rolling budgets can give you a bit more flexibility but they also require a bit more work there's a clear trade-off but more on that in a bit so let's take a closer look at how rolling budgets work using that handy dandy budget template I showed you a bit earlier don't forget you can get your own copy from the link below let's focus on the master marketing budget sheet for now so let's take our vitamin company example from earlier for simplicity's sake we'll use the pre-filled numbers as our existing budget everyone gets a hundred dollars sweet sweet parity but say we realize that branding and creative are consistently using more budget than events for example with a rolling budget we can take that into account and make a shift in the numbers provided there's a good reason for that difference or we could adapt different budgets for the next quarter to account for the changing circumstance say if I know a competitor is upping their marketing budget and we don't want to lose out in any way that's just one of the many situations where rolling budget can come in handy now I will caveat here to say rolling budgets can be tricky to get right they can be time consuming resource heavy and may incur additional costs but if you can make rolling budgets work for you they can be a game changer for the business because they allow you to adapt to the change fast enough to make a difference bringing us back to our vitamin business example say a new health supplement starts trending every influencer worth their assault is on social media bragging all about this brand new vitamin with a rolling budget you can quickly assess the potential impact this trend may have on sales and adjust your budget ingly such as by reallocating resources to capitalize on this surge in interest you can redirect money to boost your advertising efforts in order to get more eyes on your products quickly these budgets also help you manage performance improve Financial accountability and make other decisions why because it's easier to take corrective action when you're regularly reviewing the business numbers rolling budgets are particularly useful for businesses that really need to stay agile such as startups and young companies because these companies typically have a phase of rapid growth in development any delay or failure to react to changing circumstances can be a death nail for the business hence rolling budgets make it possible to respond to Market shifts emerging opportunities and unexpected challenges in a timely manner young businesses also face another challenge limited historical data most budgets are built on the foundation of past decisions and learnings over time but a new business is less likely to have reliable historical information to rely on which means they need to be able to update and evolve as they learn more about the market customers and competitors in this case utilizing a rolling budget can help with investor confidence by showcasing that the business is proactive about financial planning and able to adapt to changing market conditions plus navigate uncertainty faster finally having a rolling budget can help small businesses in their goal of growing sustainably by seeing and updating the numbers month to month or every quarter businesses can monitor the financial implications of scaling and make informed decisions about investment hiring and expansion opportunities so that's the why of rolling budgets now let's get more into the Hands-On with our handy dandy lovely budget template first let's take a look at how you can manage your expenses in a marketing budget let's start with content expenses now obviously managing content expenses is crucial for driving engagement and brand awareness using this spreadsheet you can easily allocate funds to different content marketing activities for example you might budget for Content creation including copywriting graphic design and video production you'd also need to allocate a portion of your budget for tools like design or project management software or even publishing tools like you know HubSpot and by tracking your actual expenses against budget amounts you can ensure that your content initiatives are well funded and aligned with your marketing goals the same goes for advertising effective budget management is key to maximizing your campaign's reach and impact so here look at our spreadsheet we can allocate funds to different advertising channels based on their potential Roi and relevance to our Target audience for example we might set aside a portion of our budget for paid search advertising display ads social media ads or direct lead generation activities as the budgeting period progresses we can monitor the actual cost and optimize our advertising spend to achieve our desired marketing outcomes you get the picture now each of these tabs represents a different budget breakdown we went through content marketing and advertising but there's also a template for public relations branding and creative website redesigns and events everything you might need really you'll need to adjust them to meet your business's unique goals only ever host webinars and virtual events poof no need for a venue or Refreshments no freelancer needs bam they're gone so now you're aware with the different types of budgets let's take a look at reconciling those budgets in a nutshell this is your projected spend versus actual spend you'll want to check this out at the end of every month to make sure you're still on track in all of our tabs you can see we have columns for Budget versus actual so in the master marketing budget for example we consolidate all of the figures from our different budgets we only need to stick to the numbers and up above here the rest of the sheet gets Auto populated for us see and along with this easy glance section we can also see how we're doing on this graph that's automatic too that budget reconciliation combined with a bit of General business and Market awareness is also crucial in helping you make your quarterly forecast coming back to our vitamin supplement company say we look at our historical data and see our advertising expenses were higher last quarter due to a promotional campaign we were running however for our upcoming quarter we know that there will be a lower paid advertising spend as our focus is Shifting to upgrading our website our awareness of business Trends and upcoming events or objectives can help shape the coming forecasts now through all of this you got to remember to align your Investments to your goals make sure you know why these budgets exist and constantly realign your spin to your objectives that can help you stay aware of budget spend and eliminate unnecessary spend which is super super important in tough Economic Times that alignment to your objectives can also help with the most difficult part negotiating future budgets with key stakeholders like the founders or CEO knowing your budget and actual numbers through and through is super useful for this knowing the reason for out of budget costs will help you provide a convincing case and that's basically it your brief primer on the basics of business marketing budgets I hope you found this video very helpful and don't forget to check out our free templates linked below if you have any questions or suggestions for other topics to cover or even just want to share how you're doing your own budgeting make sure you drop a comment down below thanks for tuning in until next time across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases HubSpot grow better foreign