Setting up a marketing budget for a small business used to be a very difficult process. It used to – mostly – involve a lot of guesswork. However, this process was not only fairly inaccurate but was also significantly pricier than it needed to be.
In the modern business world, on the other hand, setting up and maintaining a marketing budget has become far more streamlined. Thanks to modern technologies, various tools, and almost limitless resources, small businesses no longer need to waste company resources on simple guesses. Instead, they can nowadays rely on some tried and true ways that actually bring results. Here are some of them.
Determine your sales funnel
In order to be able to accurately determine your marketing budget, you first need to understand your sales funnel. In order to achieve this, you’ll need to track your results through the entire revenue cycle. Small businesses can usually determine this quite easily by looking at their website visitors, monthly lead generation, how many of those leads convert to SQLs, and so on. For instance, as a small business, golf Manhattan can accurately calculate all the aspects of their sales funnel, which helps them determine just how much resources they can put towards marketing. The most important thing to remember is to avoid going overboard with your marketing efforts, to avoid making any potentially costly mistakes.
Understand your operational costs
Moreover, your operational costs will also determine the number of resources you can delegate towards marketing. Here, you need to think about various marketing-related costs and determine which of them you can actually afford. While to some it may initially seem too costly to hire a marketing agency, this has actually proven to be a much better practice. Unless you have a well-experienced marketing team among your staff – and small businesses rarely do – it’s always better to outsource this than to try and take care of it yourself. It’s important to remember that marketing is not a one-and-done type of deal, which means you’ll constantly need to work on it in hopes of seeing positive results.
Match your marketing budget with your business goals
In order to determine how much time, energy, and resources you need to put into your marketing efforts, you first need to be realistic with your business goals. Once you know how fast you’d ideally wish your business to grow and where you see your business in a year – or five – you’ll know exactly which type of marketing to go with. Determining your business goal will help you match the right marketing strategies with it. This will, in turn, result in a far better understanding of your marketing budget, which will make setting it up and maintaining it far easier.
Treat marketing as an investment
If you treat your marketing budget as an expense, chances are that it will end up being nothing more than that. Instead, any small business should treat their marketing budget as an investment. When done right, all of your marketing efforts should bring in significantly more than what was originally invested in them. However, if you notice that your marketing efforts are not driving the desired results, you need to do something about it. Simply sitting and waiting for things to change without making any changes yourself never really brought positive results.
Stay on top of changing trends
In the end, since the modern business world is constantly changing, you need to make sure that your marketing efforts are following suit. Paying close attention to current and future marketing trends can help you immensely. This way you’ll be able to determine which forms of marketing and which marketing strategies drive the best results. Needless to say, focusing mostly on the most profitable marketing channels will bring the best results. However, you’ll need to stay on top of the game constantly, to ensure that some newer and better marketing trends don’t catch you off guard.
So, when trying to determine your marketing budget, make sure you pay attention to your sales funnel, understand your operational costs, and match your marketing with your business goals. Once you do that, continue to invest in all aspects of marketing that drive optimal results and make sure you keep a close eye on various trends. That’s the only way you can ensure that you remain on top of the game. Since small businesses usually don’t have too many resources to waste around, you need to make sure that all of your marketing efforts truly pay off.
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