Budgeting isn't everyone's cup of tea—particularly if resources are stretched to the point of stressful. But as an unavoidable part of being a senior school marketer, it's best to equip yourself with a plan, dive in and get it done.
In this post, we'll take you through the five steps of setting your school marketing budget, and we'll provide you with some tools and resources to help you out!
1. Remember your marketing goals
Early on in each year, you probably get your marketing goals set up. They likely include some nitty gritty tasks as well as some big objectives at the heart of your marketing plan. Common marketing goals include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Supporting your admissions team to drive enrolments leads
- Ongoing brand management
- Improving parent/school communication.
It's important that throughout the whole budgeting process you keep your big goals front and centre.
2. List your fixed costs
This is the most straightforward step in the process, where you work with your finance team to determine all your operational costs over the past 12 months. This may include software costs, website hosting, branded merchandise, printing costs, contractor fees, staff salaries, or any other payments that your finance team draws from your marketing budget. This will give you a realistic starting point for how much it currently costs to operate your team.
3. Work out which investments deliver a positive ROI
After you've listed out all of your marketing costs, it's tempting to start 'cutting the fat' and eliminating the marketing investments that cost you the most money. Instead, spend your time figuring out which of your marketing investments are delivering you a positive return on investment (ROI). To do this, you'll need to ask questions, such as:
- Does this investment contribute to my overall marketing goals?
- Does it save my team time and/or resources? Can I quantify the time or resources that it saves?
- Does this investment generate leads? How many leads per month does it generate? How much is the cost of generating these leads?
If you realise some investments are not helping you accomplish your goals, or saving your team time or resources, consider whether this investment is worth continuing. Remember that most marketing investments build over time and may take a few years to deliver a positive ROI.
4. Consider whether you need additional resources
Reflect on your past year — did you have the resources that you needed to achieve all of your marketing goals? Do you need additional staff members, new contractors or even new software?
If you're planning on running any big marketing campaigns this year, take that into consideration as well. Note down the paid channels that you will be using to promote your campaigns, including:
- traditional media — including print advertising or direct mail, TV or radio advertising
- digital channels — social media or PPC advertising
- events
5. Put it all together
The final step in budgeting is to settle on a number that will allow you to accomplish all of the above (and maybe a little extra to cover any unexpected costs that come up). Budgeting isn't an exact science, but with a bit of research, you can do your best to come up with a solid number that you can stick to for the year.
How have you been setting your budgets and are you prepared for the financial year? Do you have any tips or tricks you can share? Get in touch and let us know!
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