Blog post

How to plan for your FY20 budget and show off your hard-earned media

The end of the financial year is drawing closer, budgets have been forecast and approved – how will you target your spending in FY20?

A new financial year provides a great opportunity to review your results and reflect on your approach with some concrete performance data that can both prove value delivered and help you make the case for more.

While performance is a critical measure, it’s also a great time to address any internal processes and procedures that may be working against you or impacting other departments and staff. From operating systems and day-to-day workflow to crisis plans and business ready-ness protocols, the opportunity to communicate better throughout your business as well as outside of it can be extremely valuable.

So, when it comes time to evaluate what worked well and what didn’t in FY19 and plan for a successful FY20, here’s some first steps to help you get started:

Set your intentions

Set an intention to celebrate the wins and identify the opportunities to pivot where necessary. Even if you had a great FY19, you want it to grow and have even more success in FY20. If you have a business strategy already for the new financial years, are there areas that you could focus on to have greater impact on the bottom line?

Make a list of questions

Being intentional about your process sparks creativity and prevents the business from overlooking important pieces of information.

• What are your overall achievements?
• How did they impact business growth?
• What were the key learnings from FY19?
• What were the biggest disappointments?
• Did you implement a strategy to pivot or constructively address the disappointments?
• What products/services will be launched in FY20?
• Did your messaging cut through, and if so, was the audience right?
• How did your audience feel about your products, services and people – and what insights can you tell other departments like R&D, sales or the C-Suite that could help course correct some of the sentiment?
• Did you have unexpected expenditures due to a PR crisis, and can you better prepare if this something else happens in FY20?
• How sustainable are you as a business and are there long-term strategies you could start now that would put you in better shape?
• Do you need to revisit some of your relationships with key conte Identify your metricsnt publishers, journalists and influences?
• Are there areas that could benefit from expenditure over others?
• What do you need to pull together to demonstrate what was achieved, and what could be achieved if your new FY20 plan is supported by leadership?

Identify your metrics

What will you use to measure your professional performance? Alongside your business statements and PnL, other measures like online traffic, media reach, customer sentiment and , sales figures, new subscribers and event attendees.

Carefully review your metrics and ascertain what contributed to your growth, as well as best practices for further growth. Assess the reasons for churn and identify areas for improvement. Are there any other tools and resources you can add to your metrics dashboard?

Review your FY19 goals

Identify which goals are worth keeping, which are to be eliminated and where energy will be most effective. This list of goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely) and include short- and long-term timeframes. Goals or priorities for the coming year may be different from the previous year, whether it be hitting a certain new audience, building a certain leader’s profile, a successful new product launch or just staying ‘out’ of certain conversations and stories, these goals are key for your business’ success.

Time for innovation

It can be said that growth invariably comes from innovation. With so much pressure to perform well and report on performance, a different approach to communications tactics and tools can promote greater levels of innovation and encourage a more collaborative environment that welcomes new ideas while ensuring the business keeps up with modern changes. It doesn’t have to be world changing, it could be looking at new audiences, automation, the use of video or updating onboarding programs with all staff media training. The goal here is to think differently, challenge ideas and stay competitive. 

Use technology to your advantage

Understand what is being said about your business, how your audiences respond to or feel, and how you fare against your competitors. Our Mediaportal platform provides a full range of reporting and analytics allowing you to identify the most relevant audiences, the hot topics that need attention and what issues may be impacting your business, as well as additional insights born from your media coverage. This information is useful in planning your future tactics, leverage existing pools of success and continue to stand apart from the competition. Along with these always-on metrics in Mediaportal, our insights reports can provide the quantitative analysis needed to reflect on the year past with a comprehensive overview of share of voice, audiences and reach as well as month-on-month trends, media influence and positioning against competitors. Such reports provide a greater snapshot of your efforts and will assist with setting your benchmarks, goals and budgets for the year ahead.

By gaining a better understanding of what has been achieved and the potential areas for improvement, you will be able to establish an appropriate budget based on your objectives and provide a successful FY20 for your business.

Want to learn more about how to measure the effectiveness of your business and how to plan for your FY20? Let our team show you how, get in touch today.

Vittorio Baiocchi

ANZ Marketing Manager at Isentia

Creative and strategic marketing professional with experience in planning and delivering end-to-end marketing campaigns across multi-channel platforms. As a Marketing Manager at Isentia, Vittorio loves creating educational content for the media and communications industry.