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Table of Contents

What is Digital Spend?

Digital spend refers to the financial resources a company dedicates to its digital marketing efforts. It is the budget set aside for various online channels and tactics, such as:

  • Search engine marketing
  • Social media advertising
  • Content marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Display advertising

Knowing how to wisely spend that money makes all the difference between a revenue team hitting its goals and missing them entirely. When deciding digital spend, it’s essential to consider several factors:

  1. Aligning spend with business goals to ensure money goes to activities that directly contribute to achieving objectives.
  2. Understanding a campaign’s target audience and how that informs the most effective digital channels and tactics to reach and engage it.
  3. Researching industry benchmarks for insights into the average digital spending patterns within a specific sector, helping to gauge competitiveness.

Significance of Digital Spend

While most companies try to follow the best practices seen above, only organizations that apply concerted effort to smartly managing their digital spend can see transformative results. Here’s why savvy spending is so important to business operations:

  • It allows businesses to reach a wider audience and target specific demographics more affordably and effectively.
  • It enables businesses to track and measure performance of marketing efforts, offering valuable insights for optimization and ROI analysis.
  • It empowers more precise targeting and personalization, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
  • It provides opportunities to stay competitive in the digital landscape and adapt to changing consumer behaviors and preferences.
  • It allows for greater flexibility and agility in adjusting marketing strategies based on real-time data and market trends.
  • It offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional advertising channels, enabling more efficient budget allocation.

Ultimately, smart digital spending generates a sustainable return on marketing investment.

Common Pitfalls of Digital Spend

Equally important, however, is to know what not to do when allocating digital spend.

One common mistake is to over-rely on a single channel or tactic without considering the holistic digital marketing mix. While certain channels may yield good results, diversifying spend across multiple channels helps to reach a wider audience and mitigate risks associated with changes in algorithms or market dynamics.

Another mistake is failing to track and measure the effectiveness of digital spending. Establish KPIs and regularly analyze the performance of digital campaigns to optimize spend and ensure a positive ROI.

An Example of Digital Spending in B2B SaaS

Acme, Corp., a fictional B2B SaaS company, wants to drive targeted leads and increase brand awareness. They allocate a portion of their marketing budget toward digital advertising to achieve their goals. Here’s an example of how the Acme marketing team uses digital spend:

  1. Acme conducts thorough market research to identify their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and target audience.
  2. They invest in creating compelling ad creative and messaging that resonates with their target audience — emphasizing the unique value of their solution.
  3. Using platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads, they run campaigns targeted toward decision-makers.
  4. To maximize the impact of these ads, they ensure landing pages they direct users to are optimized for conversion. They conduct A/B testing to refine design, copy, and CTAs.
  5. They closely watch ad campaign performance, tracking key metrics like click-through rates and cost per lead, to adjust targeting parameters, placements, and messaging to improve results.


With this approach, marketing leaders at Acme Corp. strategically allocate digital spend toward the ad campaigns that are effectively increasing visibility, generating leads, and driving growth.

Tools for Optimizing Digital Spend

Thankfully, you won’t need to go by guesswork or back-of-the-napkin math to make sense of your digital spend — or how to spend it. Technology solutions exist that can help inform your decisions.

But in a saturated field, it’s difficult to select the suite of products that will empower marketers without overwhelming them. Here are some questions to ask as you vet these technologies:

  • Can the platform accommodate growth and changing business needs?
  • Can the platform integrate with existing systems to ensure smooth data flow and business processes?
  • Is the tool user friendly? Will it be easy for users to adopt to maximize productivity and efficiency?
  • Does the tool account for the realities of B2B, such as large groups of individuals that are all associated with the same account.
  • Does the vendor provide continuous training and support to maximize the tool’s adoption and value?

Below are some key types of digital spend tools that drive marketing success. 

Marketing Automation

As the name implies, marketing automation platforms automate and streamline marketing efforts to deliver personalized experiences for every potential customer. This is done through capabilities that:

  • Centralize customer engagement, behavior, and other relevant data  
  • Set up personalized workflows to nurture leads throughout their buying journey
  • Create, schedule, and send personalized emails

These tools manage and track interactions with prospects and customers, and segment audiences for personalized content experiences. Marketing automation technologies also provide analytics and reporting capabilities, empowering businesses to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and optimize their digital spending accordingly.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) 

Where traditional marketing tactics involve engaging many prospects at a given time, ABM narrows the approach, focusing on building relationships with a select group of high-value accounts. ABM tools are specifically designed to support this strategy by helping marketing teams: 

  • Identify and prioritize high value accounts
  • Personalize marketing messages
  • Coordinate multi-channel campaigns

ABM tools can often integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) systems to provide features like account profiling and intent data analysis to help businesses distribute their digital spending effectively for maximum impact.

Data Analytics and Reporting 

Equipping teams with powerful technologies is essential in supporting their efforts and optimizing spend — but you’ve got to make sure those efforts aren’t done in vain.   

Not tracking digital marketing performance over time is like setting them off to sea without a compass, leaving the team directionless and uncertain of their progress.

Reporting tools provide businesses with actionable insights and performance metrics. They help track and measure the effectiveness of campaigns and identify trends to right the ship and make data-driven decisions. By analyzing website traffic, customer behavior, and other data, marketing teams can give resources to the channels and tactics that will most efficiently lead them to the buried treasure.

Digital Marketing Budget Template

Budget templates help businesses plan and track their digital spending across tools and campaigns, allowing for expense tracking and performance measurement.

Budget templates provide a map for digital spending, providing a comprehensive view of:

  • Funds allocated for digital marketing
  • Planned marketing initiatives executed within the given budget
  • Expected outcomes or goals for each digital marketing activity

They also help show areas where adjustments may be needed (re-route east to avoid the deadly sea monster!) and optimize spending for greater impact. 

Many programs offer customizable budget templates, including Excel, Canva, and Smartsheet. 

Developing a Digital Spending Plan

Creating a well-defined digital spending plan is crucial to effectively distribute resources and maximize your marketing impact.

Here’s how to do it.

Set Clear Goals

Decide what you want to achieve through your digital marketing efforts, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving website traffic. Defining objectives helps to align digital spending with desired outcomes.

Identify Your Target Audience

Conduct thorough research to understand audience pain points, challenges, and preferences. This information will help to tailor digital spending to effectively reach and engage potential customers.

Select Relevant Channels

Based on audience research, find the digital channels that are most relevant and effective for reaching decision-makers. This may include search engine marketing, social media advertising, or email marketing. Consider the strengths and reach of each and how they align with audience preferences.

Allocate Budget

Determine budget for digital marketing efforts, considering overall marketing budget, industry benchmarks, and potential ROI for each channel. Use a digital marketing budget calculator to estimate and allocate budget effectively, ensuring resources are being put toward the most impactful channels and tactics.

Plan Campaigns

Develop a detailed plan for each channel, including content, messaging, and creative assets needed. These campaigns should align with goals and resonate with audience needs.

Track and Evaluate

Use analytics tools and platforms to check campaign performance. Track metrics like lead generation, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs. Regularly review data to find areas of opportunity and make necessary adjustments.

An Example of Effective Budget Tracking

Our fictitious friends at Acme Corp. allocate a part of their marketing budget to a content marketing campaign targeting decision-makers in the software development industry. The goal of the campaign is to increase top-of-funnel sales pipeline by 30% over the next quarter.

Using their CRM and a marketing automation platform, Acme’s marketing team tracks the number of leads generated, as well as the quality and conversion rate of those leads. 

After evaluating the data, they discover that the campaign is falling short of the desired results. Further analysis shows that the content strategy needs improvement. They decide to create more in-depth and technical blog posts that address specific pain points of the target audience. Additionally, they refine their targeting by focusing on decision-makers in larger software development companies. Further, they explore new distribution channels like industry-specific forums and online communities to expand their reach.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Digital Spending

Are you getting the most bang for your digital marketing buck? Unlocking the true value of digital spending involves a strategic approach. Here are some key considerations when measuring the ROI of digital spending:

  1. Define KPIs: Identify specific metrics that align with business objectives. These could include lead generation, customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, website traffic, or engagement rates. 
  2. Use analytics tools: Tools like Google Analytics, marketing automation platforms, and CRM systems provide data on web traffic, conversions, and customer behavior for insight into digital marketing performance.
  3. Attribution modeling: In complex buying cycles, attribution modeling helps to understand which digital channels and touchpoints are influencing purchase decisions and driving conversions. 
  4. A/B testing: Test different elements like ad copy, visuals, landing pages, or CTAs to find what yields better results and improve campaign effectiveness.
  5. ROI calculation: Compare the revenue generated or cost savings against the amount invested in various digital marketing efforts. 

The Future of Digital Spending

As technology continues to advance and buyer behavior evolves, the success of digital spend hinges on your ability to effectively engage with prospects with fewer (yet optimized) resources.

These are the trends we see through our spyglass on the horizon (yep, we’re keeping this metaphor going!):

  1. The demand for personalized experiences will only continue to grow, requiring businesses to invest in technologies and strategies that allow for tailored content, recommendations, and experiences.
  2. AI and machine learning will play a significant role in optimizing digital spending. These technologies automate processes and analyze vast amounts of data, providing insights to enhance targeting and personalization.
  3. With the continued rise of voice assistants and smart devices, optimizing digital spending for voice search will become crucial. Businesses will need to adapt their SEO strategies and content to cater to voice queries.
  4. Finally, as data privacy regulations become more stringent, businesses must prioritize data protection and compliance — necessitating an investment in secure data management systems and transparency in data collection and usage.
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