The 2012 Digital Marketing Budget Calculator Interactive Infographic by 6S Marketing

SEO is an online marketing tactic that can take 3 – 6 months before the end results are achieved. If you have a longer time frame to work on your online marketing strategy, say 6 months or more, you should allocate more budget towards SEO because you have the time to build a solid online presence for your company. Those with shorter time frames of 3 months or under should focus on immediate traffic through PPC.

Pay per Click Marketing is an excellent way to drive immediate, qualified traffic to your website. Within 15 minutes of setting up an account, your ads will show within the search engines to potential customers looking to buy from you. If your marketing plan time frame is shorter, say 3 months or under, a higher budget should be allocated to PPC to help increase qualified traffic to your site immediately while you work on implementing other efforts such as SEO. Longer time frames can allocate a smaller budget over a longer period of time.

Social media marketing takes time, after all, it is “social” marketing. The amount of resources your company has internally will dictate how much of a social media marketing budget you have to play with. But it also takes into account the time frame you have to execute on your online marketing plan within. Like SEO, if you have a short amount of time little to none of your budget should be allocated; more time available equals more budget allocation. A time frame of 6 months or more justifies allocating some of your total online marketing budget to social media marketing.

Email marketing is the most direct way you can communicate to your potential or existing clients and is also one of the most cost effective ways to drive sales. Even if you have a longer period of time to execute your digital marketing strategy allocating a minimal email marketing budget will get you a high ROI. If you have a time frame of 6 months or more you should allocate budget towards this effective medium.

Mobile marketing encompasses all online marketing tactics that can be formatted for a mobile device. This includes PPC, Email and Social Media. A longer time frame for executing your online marketing strategy means the ability to incorporate mobile marketing tactics. A 6 month or longer time frame is required to effectively incorporate mobile marketing tactics into an existing online marketing plan.

Content is King, but marketing is the Queen and she runs the household. So a budget for content development should be allocated for those with time frames of 6 months or more to ensure fresh, unique content is created regularly. This keeps your marketing department happy too by providing them with content they can use within their campaigns. This is especially true if your budget allows for social media marketing. The recommended budget allocated starts at 5% of your total online marketing budget for time frames of 6 months and above.