A guide to creating a brand budget sheet!

At the end of each year, marketing partners need to make a budget plan for the next year.

Many partners who are new to the marketing industry may have big questions about this matter and don’t know where to start.

Today I would like to talk to you about annual planning.

First of all, when different companies make annual budgets, their anchor points and focuses are actually different.

• For example, for companies whose main business is e-commerce, the biggest anchor point and focus is actually to follow the rhythm of the e-commerce platform to arrange rounds of activities.
• For example, for a product-centric enterprise, when making annual plans, the core must match the new product launch nodes each year.
• For example, some social media platforms have time nodes every year, on the one hand, the festivals and solar terms of the four seasons, and on the other hand, the annual brand events of the platform itself.

Although different companies have different focuses in their annual plans, their dimensions and logic are generally the same.

The biggest common point among them is that everyone has no money. That’s right, no matter how big a company is, when making its annual budget, the first thing it thinks about is the budget being insufficient. There are so many things I want to do, but so little budget to spend. From national operations to personal spending, not having enough money is a dilemma faced by every decision maker.

Back to the logic, for the marketing department of an enterprise, when making an annual budget, we basically combine these dimensions together:

1. List the festivals and solar terms of the four seasons of the year first

Every year I compile an annual holiday and solar term table, which includes Gregorian holidays, lunar solar terms, anniversaries of different industries, and key exhibition times of different industries. I then mark the holidays corresponding to the target audience of my own brand or platform, such as Mother's Day, and finally add in the anniversary of my own brand or company. It becomes a very complete holiday table.

In fact, if you observe carefully in your daily life, you will find that many festivals nowadays have become menstrual-like hot spots.

For example, on the fifth day of the lunar calendar, when we welcome the God of Wealth, there will definitely be various posters of the God of Wealth in the circle of friends.

For example, when students in compulsory education start school, a large number of parents will feel sad that their little kids have returned to their cages and they can finally stop worrying.

For example, the college graduation season in June and July is when the nostalgia surges every year.

For example, on Halloween and New Year's Eve, more and more young people begin to leave their homes and go to amusement parks to feel the sense of ritual among the crowds.

The holidays that these young people like are not all Chinese holidays. But for marketers, it is indeed possible to predict and even prepare in advance for emotional hotspots that may be able to be capitalized on.

2. Start with the annual key events and set aside budget

Basically every company has some key events that require some action. Some are consistent with the timing of the e-commerce platforms, while others are events that the company wants to do outside of promotional activities. Although the expectations and actions may be slightly different each year, the general process and content will basically give you a mental prediction once you have done it.

For example, I am currently working with a brand that makes fresh food for children. We plan to hold a "Cod Festival" on Children's Day every year to strengthen our brand's position in the industry and take the opportunity to promote our products.

The related costs of this activity, from activity execution to subsequent dissemination, total about 200,000 yuan. Considering that wages may increase slightly every year, we can make plans based on relatively loose cost expectations when making the budget.

For example, every industry has some meetings or exhibitions held at fixed times, so these expenses can also be prepared in advance. For example, we participate in the CBME International Maternity, Baby and Child Expo every year, which is held in July. The annual booth fee is estimated to be less than 200,000 yuan, and the event setup plus labor, airfare, hotel and meal expenses are about 150,000 yuan. This is another fixed expense.

So when I make my annual budget, these fixed things to do become my anchor point and origin.

3. Plan the budget for launching key products in advance

For any branding company, products are one of the core elements.

Although products are divided into different logics in the company, some are profit products, some are strategic products, and some are traffic-generating products...

But there are always some products that are worth promoting.

For brand managers, this requires advance preparation.

From material preparation, budget preparation, media communication, and grass-planting preparation before going online, to price planning, data monitoring, channel promotion, and daily price control in the initial stage of going online... a series of actions require budgeting in advance.

Even the budget is not just about money. For a business, labor itself has costs. If it is a resource, there must be corresponding overall arrangements. Only when everyone works together can we form a combined force and achieve the greatest effect.

4. E-commerce, e-commerce

Starting from Tmall’s Double Eleven in 2009, the entire e-commerce industry began to create festivals.

After Tmall, there was JD.com’s 618, Lefeng.com’s 38 Festival... Later, it became a situation where there were several big promotional events almost every month throughout the year.

Take Tmall as an example. In addition to the four times a year when new trends are renewed, from the New Year's Festival at the beginning of the year, to Goddess Festival in March, spring outing in April, to Labor Day and Mother's Day in May, 618 in June, the entire industry is basically down in July and August, the school season starts in September, Double 11 starts in October, a big promotion in November, Double 12 in December, Double Holidays... a year is basically over.

Sometimes I think about it, with so many festivals, brands often participate with tears, while consumers are becoming more and more price sensitive.

But it is also undeniable that it is these endless holiday promotions that have made the country's policy of expanding domestic demand come true and allowed China's various industrial chains to become sound and complete through repeated training.

Of course, as an individual, after working in e-commerce operations for several years, I really feel tired. You will eventually find that this kind of tiredness is not physical tiredness. Most of the time it is a kind of psychological fatigue for operations. This is also why I think e-commerce work is more suitable for young people.

For young people, although the pace of e-commerce is very fast, their bodies can always survive it. At the same time, it is of great help to individual logic and ability.

But for marketers who have been in the industry for many years, these daily experiences have long been familiar to them and become habitual, and the work becomes a repetitive cycle.

So I personally recommend that veteran marketers, when the time is right, make sure to look up and see new things.

Stepping out of the e-commerce platform, even if it's just stepping out of Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo, taking a look at the gameplay of Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and looking at more changes and cases in the advertising circle, can make our understanding of marketing more humane, from just staying at promotions and product combinations.

In any enterprise, human touch is very important. The scientific name is called user insight.

Once marketing loses its human touch, all real user behaviors will be collectively referred to as traffic, which will be turned into a series of PV, UV, conversion rate, UV value, ROI...

To emphasize, each of these numbers is important, but data is more of a digital feedback of behavior that has already occurred. If we stare at the numbers and are overwhelmed by them, it will be difficult for us to see the real user needs reflected behind the numbers.

This point is worthy of regular self-reflection from each of us who works in marketing.

5. Brand, Brand

As a brand person, we need to make a preliminary judgment on the brands we work for or serve every year.

Determine what stage the brand has reached and whether there is an opportunity to make some big moves.

This kind of judgment within the brand takes into account GMV, profit, proportion of marketing expenses, and ROI of different channels.

From the outside , we see more of some actions that we know brands will take if they have money, and they will have the opportunity to make more money if they do so.

For example, whether the brand has been significantly upgraded from the VI level, whether there are relatively good TVCs or posters released at certain important time points, whether there are relatively large-scale advertising campaigns, whether there is a budget to invite relatively popular stars to endorse the brand...

Behind this series of actions is our new judgment on the stage of brand development.

As we said before, when there is no money, everyone pays more attention to performance-based marketing, because short-term, immediate sales result feedback is a necessary condition that can bring us a sense of security in the early stages of every brand development.

At this time, everyone is paying more attention to channel dividends and short-term growth.

As we gradually developed from a product brand to one that no longer worried about its ephemeral life, we began to pay attention to our target users, who not only had demands for purely functional benefits, but also for emotional benefits and self-expression benefits.

We began to try to not only define a new R&D direction for the product on the product side, but also to try to establish a deeper connection with our users on the content and visual sides.

When people get together, they emphasize "being well matched". In fact, the same principle applies to "consumers' choice of brands".

For example, even those of us who are not very aesthetic will resolutely abandon Jack Jones, Semir and Baleno after graduating from college.

It’s not entirely because the brand’s products cannot keep up with our aesthetic taste, but it must be that we ourselves, as consumers, have absorbed the signals that change is needed through various feedback from the outside world.

Otherwise, look at Converse, Nike, Vans... these brands that we have been wanting to wear since we were young, and even when we grow old, they still maintain their youthful vitality and appeal to people.

A brand needs culture and content to keep itself renewed.

Back to the plan, when we make plans for next year, we must consider the additional brand content layer and the flexible budget for the delivery layer.

It doesn’t necessarily have to happen at a specific time, but if funding allows, it’s worth keeping trying.

Experimentation has a cost. The team needs to try small-scale experiments again and again to understand how to improve efficiency. They also need to keep trying to find the right direction for the brand.

OK, that’s all the basic dimensions involved in brand planning.

From festivals and solar terms to annual must-do events, combine product release time, keep up with the pace of e-commerce platforms, and set aside a brand-level content promotion budget. It's a pretty complete marketing budget sheet.

We only need to match the corresponding time for these events, arrange manpower in advance to make advance workload planning, and make financial budgets, so that we can spend more time on the game of applying for the actual budget from the company.

Of course, a real full-year plan cannot be fully presented in a table. For each of the parts we mentioned above, a complete plan is needed to actually implement them. But when making plans at the end of the year, we can indeed use such a table to roughly calculate what needs to be done in the next year, as well as the approximate budget allocation and proportion, and try to be prepared in advance. This table can bring us the greatest help.

Seeing this, you may wonder why these logics sound so clear. But when you actually start writing, you still have no idea what to do?

This involves two maxims that everyone has heard since ancient times when making plans: know yourself and know your enemy.

Most people have trouble making plans. Often it’s because there are more and more platforms and more and more ways to play. At the beginning, no one knows how much money many things will cost and how much food can be produced.

This requires those who make plans to spend a lot of time learning and understanding new platform rules, industry practices, and corresponding data judgments.

At the same time, it is also important to consider whether the planning role is only responsible for brand communication or whether the sales budget must also be managed.

When someone who is solely responsible for brand communication makes the plan, the budget often appears larger. After all, if you want to do publicity, just a celebrity live broadcast, including subsequent authorization, will basically cost at least 50,000 yuan.

If you need to look at sales and communication comprehensively, you can make more comprehensive decisions about your budget. When we spend money, each of us will unconsciously hope to spend it more beautifully - to do bigger things with the least money.

So this is why the budgeting role needs to discuss with higher-level management which projects can be merged, which projects need to be cut, and which projects need additional budget.

Let’s talk about the platform.

Now for any new consumer brand, as long as you want to gain a bigger voice in the new year. So how various platforms allocate budgets and investment proportions is a compulsory course.

Each of us needs to go through the complete path of understanding the platform planning on our own - asking for experience in different groups - then finding official sales to understand official guidance - conducting small-scale trials on our own - and finally making subsequent plans based on phased data .

Let me share with you the following information we have obtained from working on Xiaohongshu:

The current way of playing Xiaohongshu, the cooperation among three types of people, also means playing with different budget sizes.

The first one is what everyone is doing, which is to find KOC for scale-up cooperation at no cost or at very little cost.

Generally, we don’t care about quality, we can just find MCN or a few interns to contact experts and build up the network. There are also many organizations like Puppet Notice that can help everyone cooperate with KOCs.

The advantage is that if the volume is large, it will indeed allow the brand to obtain a basic base search volume on Xiaohongshu in the short term.

The disadvantage is that Xiaohongshu does not clean up junk notes regularly. Therefore, it is easy for a large number of KOC notes that you spent money on but did not report to the public to gradually become inactive or even restricted. Moreover, the content creation capabilities of most KOCs are indeed very limited.

The second way is to find mid-level KOLs to collaborate with without reporting.

The logic is similar to KOC, but the fee may be 1/3 lower than reporting through Dandelion, after all, there is no official toll. But this requires very soft requirements for expert notes. Similarly, if the volume is large, it is an investment worth trying in the short term.

The third type is that if you hope to produce multiple popular articles in a short period of time, then you need to prepare multiple budgets.

• First of all, you need to find influencers yourself or find an MCN through Xiaohongshu’s official Dandelion platform, and conduct a lot of content communication to polish the content.
• Secondly, these contents may present a variety of different data results when they are actually launched due to different angles. Some notes have excellent CTR (click-through rate), but when converted into CPE (average unit interaction cost), it may be greater than 20 yuan each. For high-quality notebooks suitable for placement in the industry, the CPE may only cost a relatively low price of 2 to 12 yuan. At this time, you can only find notes that are more suitable for large-scale delivery by optimizing the notes or changing the influencers you cooperate with. Therefore, when looking for talents, according to the current market price of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan for cooperation with one talent, you will need about 30,000 to 50,000 yuan in the early stage to prepare for cooperation with talents. This is just the preparation needed for a small-scale launch.
• Even if you finally find a suitable note to publish, the cost of publishing a popular article (a note with 10,000 likes) in the information flow is about 150,000 to 200,000. This is already a very demanding thing. What's more, a single popular article cannot make a difference alone. This requires us to prepare more budget for information flow and search delivery.

The above content does not specifically involve the organization and polishing of brand content before cooperation. We hope that experts can help polish the dissemination content, as well as various details such as keyword selection and the writing of note content ... To understand a platform, you not only need to invest in your own labor costs, but also the actual cost of trying to spend in the actual operation process. For a platform with over 100 million active users per month, if brands want to obtain enough traffic conversions, what is the threshold for investment? How much investment is needed in the early stage to see actual data in the subsequent stages? This involves different results for different brands.

If you are making products related to women, or fast-moving consumer goods with low decision-making costs, then I highly recommend Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

And if you are dealing with large consumer products that require in-depth decision-making, such as furniture and appliances, then I would recommend platforms that are mostly male and suitable for in-depth knowledge explanations. For example, Zhihu and Bilibili.

As an intensive user of Zhihu, I like to use Zhihu to search for many important decision-making matters. For example, the selection of furniture and appliances, decoration knowledge, and some marketing knowledge. After all, these contents require in-depth decision-making, and Xiaohongshu only has 850 words and a few pictures, so the information carrying capacity is still relatively limited.

OK, having written this, we have basically finished talking about how to make an annual brand budget.

Author: Wang Weichen (Xia Fox)

Source: Wang Weichen (Xia Fox)