Managing Your Paid Media Budget Like a Performance Marketing Pro

This is the second post in our new content series, Meta With Metadata. We’re giving you an inside look at how our Marketing team uses our own product to automate paid campaigns and drive more revenue.

How can I get something out of nothing?

That’s the question every demand gen marketer is asking themselves right now. 

If you’re a demand gen marketer, you’re used to hearing, “Hey, times are tough, but I need you to double your results with half the budget. Oh, and we’re cutting your team down 50%.” 

For the foreseeable future, you need to get scrappy. You need to find ways to hit paid home runs without the Louisville Slugger you’re used to. There’s no better place to start than getting more out of your budget.  

As last year ended, we shifted the conversation around our demand gen strategy. Instead of double clicking on the “do more with less” way of thinking, I think it’s time to consider the importance of diversifying your channel mix.

I’ve always been in favor of hedging my bets with a healthy mix of organic posts and paid ads. Even though the economy is in the dumps, we still believe advertising during a recession is a winning move. 

With that said, obviously most teams are pivoting right now.

For the Metadata team, that means testing new channels like our DEMAND community and email marketing.

To keep your demand gen engine turned on for the rest of 2023, you can start thinking about diversifying channels into two buckets—demand creation and demand capture. 

Demand creation vs. demand capture: a tale as old as time

When I think about the pre-pandemic days when you didn’t need to take out a second mortgage to buy eggs and TikTok had less than 100 million users, I relish the thought of demand creation.

I’d say about 70% of our budget went to creating demand via no-ask tactics. We focused on providing value without expecting anything in return. 

The rest…