Inbound Marketing Budget Calculator
Calculating Costs for Inbound Marketing
Diagnosing the needs and the associated costs for inbound marketing resources varies greatly depending on goals and strategic techniques.
As marketers continue to move away from from interruption-based marketing many still struggle with how to identify and build a budget for some of the common activities that will be performed to reach their goals
With a strong disclaimer that these activities are different for every company and organization, here is rough outline we put together based on trends we've seen from our clients over the past year. There is no form to fill out. Click here to download.
Summary of the Calculator Activities
- Website Support & Maintenace
- Strategy & Planning
- Blogging
- Email Marketing
- Content Creation
- Social Media
- SEO
- Lead Nurturing
- Press Releases
- PPC
- Software
The Inbound Marketing Calculator is a general guide to estimate the average amount of time and resources necessary for each activity. We also include 3rd party costs for copywriting, press releases, PPC ads, and software. It's not a one-size fits all formula. In this guide we are using Kuno Creative's hourly rates to estimate costs. Some agencies charge more, some less, and costs for in-house employees also range greatly. But whether these activities are done by internal or external resources the costs are real and should be budgeted.
Common Business goals
- Capture Sales Leads
- Grow Sales
- Brand Building
- Reduce Length of Sales Cycle
- Retain High Margin Customers
- Improve Customer Service
- Gain Velocity & Speed in Your Market
Calculating Return on Investment (ROI)
In the final row of this calculator it shows an estimated ROI ranging from 100%-300%. The 300% number was easy for us to calculate with full access to our own financial records and data from a few of our best clients. The 100%-200% range is based on feedback from other Kuno Creative clients. We also failed to calculate ROI in some instances, mostly due to a lack of pre-determined goals and access to data. We achieved negtive ROI in many short, campaign-drive experiences that usually lasted only 30-90 days.
We emphasize the purpose of this calculator is not to prove or debate ROI, it is meant to help people think about some of the core activities that might need to be included in the budget. This can help give credit to existing staff for the value of what they already do, and estimate costs of what needs to be done. We hope you find this information usueful and stay tuned as we plan to publish further details of activities based on our experiences.
