What budget for your digital strategy?
In the “how much does it cost” family, and after talking about the website , the price of a community manager or the inbound marketing budget , I ask for the budget for a digital strategy . This is a question that comes up as a leitmotif. Not a week goes by without being asked this question as a clientele. Strangely, and after more than 350 articles online on our blog, I had not yet addressed, at least directly, the question of the budget to be planned for a digital strategy . techsupportreviews
What do a digital strategy, real estate, a bottle of wine, a
car and a trip around the world have in common? None a priori. Only here,
depending on your choices, the quality of services desired and your needs, the
budget to be expected will vary from 1 to 100, or even more.
So it depends, but what exactly? Several criteria, including
in particular that of the targeted objectives and the expected return on
investment. The real question is, what does it pay off, like any investment ?
In view of the challenges of digital transformation, which, as a reminder,
concerns above all the customer and his new purchasing habits (we also speak of
customer experience ), it is better to have defined your objectives first .
Your goals and ambition
And yes, depending on your marketing / sales objectives,
your customer acquisition cost , the conversion funnel and so many other whatnot
like the business model , or even the ambition you have for your company, your
own vision, you will have to either review your investments upwards, or your
ambitions downwards, or both in some cases.
Taking advantage of digital to win customers (who now
systematically learn online before buying in B2B or B2C), improve the customer
experience or gain notoriety is no longer an option.
Thinking that one can succeed without (s') investing is
either a lack of knowledge of the subject, or a dream. No, using the Internet
is not “free”, and training at 97 € on sales funnels is not enough. And
although you could still a few years ago, offer yourself online visibility for
3 times nothing (which is already something as Raymond Devos said), that time
is definitely over.
From where you start to achieve your goals.
It is heresy to think of winning the Champions League while
your team has been vegetating in the bottom of the Ligue 2 standings for 5
seasons.
Likewise, if you haven't done anything in the last few years
in marketing and / or digital marketing, or so little, like having a simple
Facebook page fueled with promos, trust me, you've come a long way. If it were
that simple ...
What about your customer database , the emails collected
"OPT-IN" and compliant with the GDPR , the state of your CRM (if you
have one) and the configuration of your marketing automation tool , the
audience of your website (if you have one, we still come across boxes that make
several million turnover… ..without a website or with an old free site
mentioning “made with XXX, the free CMS”).
Do not think that an effective strategy is built in a day
and with bits of string, a few tactical moves (see our article on the
differences between tactics and strategy ) or buying (fake) followers.
So the furthers you go, the more you will have to invest to
catch up, especially if your competitors:
• already
trust the first places of Google on most keywords (see SEO below)
• adopt
current sales methods and are equipped with modern tools (see below)
• have a
perfect alignment between sales and marketing
• have a
clear vision and goals
It is the same if your company has never really had a
marketing strategy or any marketing culture (in the sense of customer culture)
and has been content with a few publicity stunts here and there, with great
promotional reinforcements.
Know that even starting a Facebook page without means or
resources is very complicated today. It takes skills, time and money.
Selected technologies: the right tools
Today there are over 7,000 “martechs”, those companies that
provide “awesome” marketing and sales tools for growing your business.
Some have free features, including the leader Hubspot
(Editor's note, of which we are the only Diamond partners in the French
overseas departments and territories and among the first in France) to get
started, in particular by centralizing customer data.
To learn more about the best CRM on the market according to
G2crowd, book your demo or directly activate your CRM (free of
charge, moreover):
So of course, for a start, entry-level tools may be enough.
Again, it all depends on your business plan and your ambitions.
Methods used
There are several methods. Robert De Niro said in Casino ,
Martin Scorsese's cult film “there is the good, the bad and mine”.
In reality you should know that some are proven and others
obsolete. In our profession, not having continuous training would relegate us
to the back of the pack. Even a few years ago, this was not necessarily
visible.
But you have to face the facts, the customer has changed.
And the good old ways don't work anymore . Worse, there are 18 competitors on
average for a company today, compared to only 6 in 2014 (Source Hubspot
Research).
Netflix, Waze, Booking, but also Boncoin, Whatsapp, Amazon,
Uber or Spotify, and so on, are an integral part of our consumer universe. As
much as the baker who makes his bread a stone's throw from the office.
Despite these profound cultural and societal changes which
imply strong strategic decisions and choices , we still hear clients tell us
that their IT brother-in-law knows about websites, and that “his” marketing
intern feeds the Facebook page of the company. 'business.
The gap is widening
On the one hand, we therefore have end customers with
enormous expectations in terms of the customer experience from pre-sales to after-sales, and on the
other hand companies unable to transform their methods to meet these new
standards. consumption , or who hardly care about what is happening, preferring
to take refuge behind the eternal “ we always did like that ” (or “it's the
crisis” and Jean-Pierre's fault)
To have a real digital strategy and meet the new
expectations of your prospects and customers, there are methods to date and
which have been deployed several times with success by specialists. And that
also comes at a cost .
" Digital is evolving rapidly, we must always be at the
forefront, and to do this, be surrounded by professionals ", explains
Laurent Lecocq, CEO ofTeralta (best digital strategy France 2020), in the
economic magazine Mémento (March 2019)
Always note that a method without tools is limited, as are
the best tools without a method, which most of the time lead to failure.
To learn more, read our article “ new tools and old methods
”
Selected services (non-exhaustive list): the quality and know-how of
operational deployment, brick by brick
If you are just start out or are in the growth phase , you
can buy the “menu” with packages or more advantageous packs provided that they
really correspond to your needs, and that there is sufficient agility on the
part of your team. agency to reorient budgets and resources if necessary .
On the other hand, you can choose “à la carte” services if
you are already in an advanced phase and know exactly the levers that are in
your strategy. Don't hesitate to ask for advice.
Among these services:
• SEO or
the art of natural referencing
“Yes, yes, our service provider guarantees us natural
referencing. Besides, look when I type my name in Google, I appear ”.
Do not laugh. This example is lived more often than you
might think. This is obviously not an SEO strategy , followed, calibrated for
your audience and their issues, based on monthly Google search volumes and
competition on these keywords.
So obviously it's cheaper. Note that SEO leverage remains
fundamental if you want to be found and solicited before your competitors, at a
time when Internet users start their searches with generic keywords in 79% of
cases (source Google).
No digital strategy without having a real SEO strategy . And
here too, depending on the services chosen, count between € 500 and € 10,000 /
month (excluding the initial audit which can range from € 500 to € 2,000).
• Content:
feed a blog, linked to SEO
Producing quality articles on a regular basis, for your
audience ( personas in the jargon) and according to a precise and tailor-made
editorial strategy , is not given to everyone.
Here again we meet bosses who tell us “our agency has
promised us articles every month but for the moment, we have published two” .
We tell you bluntly: it smacks of failure.
Or “we took on an intern who is there to write blog articles
for 6 months”
Yet content
production is the number one challenge for marketers . A company that does not
produce one is ultimately completely invisible on the web. And therefore
invisible to prospects and customers.
Without the production of articles, an editorial strategy
costs between 4,000 and 10,000 €. As long as you have defined the personas
(your targets), otherwise it is extra.
To make in addition, videos, podcasts, ebook or other case
studies, also count a significant budget .
• Community
Management:
Read by thousands of Internet users, the article we wrote just two years ago on this subject
had been widely relayed and commented on. Why ? Because some imagine themselves
as community managers. A good CM , also an important lever of your digital
strategy to generate engagement and prospects , count between 300 and 1,500 € /
month on average, plus an advertising budget .
• Ads
and buying space: time, skills and financial means
It takes time and skill if you want to maximize your return
on investment and the cost of acquiring your leads.
And buying space in digital is not the same job as buying
space on traditional media. Knowing how to buy and not paying a lead more than
it should be learned. Here too you have
the choice.
The service providers will charge you between 10% and up to
40% on the sums involved, sometimes with a “set up” package (or configuration
in VF) at the start. Of course in these rates, this includes advice and
expertise, design, content, and time / man for the purchase of space and
research keywords. Sometimes even cash advance to pay Facebook, Google and
others.
Want to do yourself to save money? It is possible but in
general, you will subcontract after the first attempt, unless of course your
purchase of space amounts to tens of euros per month for the Facebook page of
your store.
• CMS:
the website
During a recent forum at the CCI, I heard railing against
certain entrepreneurs. The object of the wrath in the audience? A traditional
trader who has succeeded on the web says he has redone his site, 3 rd version
in 7 years, for 7K € (which seems inexpensive to us for an e-commerce site )
while some are driving in a car for 100K € and buy doorsteps at 200 K € and
spend between 2 and 25 K € / month on prospectuses ...
Several other traders did not calm their grumbling at the
cost of a community manager (“an additional expense”).
Again, it all depends on your ambition and your issues. We
tell you more about it in this article . Count from 300 € to several hundred
thousand euros.
• Time /
People and expertise: support
When we talk about digital strategy , we are talking about
growth and development of your business, over the medium to long term.
Preferably turn to people who have a little bottle in the business beyond the
purely technical aspects.
Do not think that to understand your context, your
objectives and the challenges of your business, the market and its economic
situation, your positioning and the targets you want to reach, a simple
alternate marketing will do the trick.
If you want specialists, duly certified and with recognized
know-how, simply ask for the results obtained from other customers with the
same problems.
Beware of agencies that supposedly do everything “in 360 °”.
We cannot be experts in all areas. Imagine an Italian specialty restaurant that
dabbles in sushi and rougail sausages.
One of the easy ways to verify the experience of consultants
is to make sure that the chosen agency applies to its own business the methods
that they sell to you or that they claim to know how to execute. Ask for the
CVs of the consultants who will support and advise you.
To know the criteria, these 2 articles in the form of a
checklist should help you:
• How to
choose your Inbound agency?
• What
criteria to choose your digital agency?
Which brings us to the next point.
The provider
“We have Camille the intern, Maryse at HR, Jean-Pierre's
daughter at the account who is“ very Instagram ”, she will do a work-study
program with us to take care of“ all that ”, told us Francis, the CEO who
himself does not yet have a Linkedin profile (because “everyone knows me and
I'm not looking for a job… ”).
Do not dream, it is not possible to deploy a digital
strategy without devoting time / man to it. Consistency and rigor as well.
Deploying a CRM of tens or even hundreds of thousands of
contacts and setting up a marketing automation tool with multiple workflows is
not for everyone.
Are you going to entrust the transformation of sales and
marketing , and some of the most strategic elements of a business, like image
and expertise , to someone who does not yet have the idea of what it is? a
business strategy?