Congratulations! You’re getting more money to use for your digital marketing efforts. This means that you belong to a forward-thinking organization that understands the importance of digital marketing. However, a boost in the budget means nothing without a well-conceived and executed plan to maximize your digital marketing ROI.

Tracking

The one thing that is absolutely critical to your success in digital marketing is a comprehensive system that tracks everything. If you can’t track your performance, you can’t truly measure your digital marketing ROI. And if you can’t prove that your methods resulted in increased business, you can forget about finding additional money in next year’s digital marketing budget.

Think this sounds too intimidating? It isn’t. Think about the ways in which you’d like to track your marketing and work backwards from there. Want to see how much your social media influences lead generation? There’s a way to track that. Want to verify that your white papers actually move the needle? You can track that, too. The key is to eliminate those tools that you can’t track, leaving only marketing techniques that are trackable and successful. That’s what inbound marketing is all about.

Baselining

Now that you’re in the mindset of tracking, it’s time to get to work. Your first job is to do nothing but track how things are already going. Again, if you don’t know where you are now, you’ll never know if you’re getting better.

This might not sound like the most exciting to do, especially that you’ve got extra money burning a hole in your pocket. That said, baselining is absolutely essential and is critical to any marketing initiative. Baselining will not only tell you where you’re starting, but it’ll show you the areas where you need to put in work. At the same time, you’ll also learn your strengths, which will help you as you move forward with your plan.

Goal Setting

Your base goal is to do everything possible to turn leads into customers, to turn idle browsers into purchasers. But how do you know if you’re growing at an acceptable rate? Goal setting will help you to keep your eyes on the prize without burning yourself out in the pursuit of an unattainable mark.

Hubspot recommends using the “SMART” acronym - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timebound. What this means is that you should know exactly what you want to do, and how long you think it’ll take you to do it, all while keeping your expectations based in reality. This might mean increasing your conversion rate by 10 percent over the next year -- an attainable goal that will keep you in line, without exhausting all of your resources. Another goal could be boosting your follower totals on social media by 20 percent within the next six months.

You’ll want to look at your baselining results as you compose your goals for the short term and long term. Obviously, you want all aspects of your digital marketing to improve, but pay special attention to those areas where you’re lagging behind. Then, allocate your resources so that you can cure your problem areas without neglecting areas where you’re already strong. After all, you can always get even stronger.

Troubleshoot

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson was talking about his opponents in the boxing ring when he said this, but he may as well have been talking about digital marketing plans. You can draw it up on paper any way you’d like, but the reality is that you’ll likely have to deal with unforeseen circumstances sooner rather than later.

You could choose to wait until these problems arise before worrying yourself. Or, you could do the smart thing and start planning for them now. Make a list of anything that might get in the way of your new plan and find a way around these pitfalls. You might not be able to answer all of your questions now, but you’ll have a great start. Now, when problems come up, you’ll be ready.

A bigger budget is never a guarantee for success in any endeavor. However, if you’re smart about your additional funds, you’ll be able to create a plan that includes attainable, time-sensitive goals that have a direct impact on your digital marketing ROI. You’ll know where you are now and where you’d like to go, and you’ll understand some of the problems that may get in the way of achieving your goals. If you combine these methods with the basics of inbound marketing -- creating valuable content that will engage customers over the long term -- your investment in digital marketing will pay for itself many times over.