Marketing Budget

[DHS_SH]

The new financial year is now upon us and we have been lucky enough to see our marketing budget increase for 2013/14.

We have already planned to invest a large amount of this money in Paid advertising, but we are also keen to look more long-term and invest our time & money in channels that would benefit our website in the future.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to potential channels we could invest in to help increase our organic rankings or bring more visitors to the website?

Any ideas welcome! I do a lot of content creation and social media marketing already, but it would be good to know how I can use an increase in budget to drive a more focused approach

[EGOL]

how I can use an increase in budget to drive a more focused approach

If you want to focus you need to give more information about your website and your business.  The information that you provided will only produce guesses and generic advice that will not work 1/2 of the time.

[DHS_SH]

Hi EGOl thanks for your message.

To be honest I was actually looking to generate an open discussion and take away some broad ideas that I could apply to my industry (the heating & plumbing industry).

I was intrigued to find out what people currently spend their marketing budget on away from pure PPC advertising that helps set the website up better in the long run

[EGOL]

I spend 100% of my effort and budget on content that will get my sites into the SERPs for new keywords.     I don't do PPC.

For information sites I am publishing the basic information for the industry area and covering industry news.

For product sites I am creating content on how to select, how to maintain, and how to use the products.  All of the information that I am publishing I am trying to put up the best page on the web for that topic.  I spend a lot of time and money on nice photos, graphs, data, video.

If i had a plumbing / heating site that provide service in communities I would make local search my first investment.  Then create content that helps people decide when they need to upgrade, what their choices are, how to select, how to take care of, how to do very minor fixes and preaching about the value of skilled maintenance.  No chest thumping.  All useful information that anybody anywhere can use.

If my p/h site was competing for national SERPs I would not do the local but put all of that money into informative content.

[wreevesc]

I'm with EGOL, focus on content.  Where my opinion differs, is that it could take you some time to organically build the traffic you (or your manager) wants to see from spending money.  I would put a little money into the PPC to act as a feedback loop to see what keywords are successful from a paid stand point, and then start creating content to get quality scores up and build organic rank.

We're in a similar industry (electrical contracting) on a local basis.  That budget might be well spent sponsoring local events where you can build your brand and make network connections that could lead to more organic linking.