3 Reason Why You Need a Marketing Budget – Podcast Episode 153

by | Oct 6, 2021 | Latest, Listen's favs, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Strategies, Podcast, Podcast notes, Small Business Help | 0 comments

Hey there, my fabulous listener, welcome to episode 153 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast

Thank you for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re enjoying this podcast – I’d love to you take a screenshot and share it on your socials and tag me in it.  How cool would that be!

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/153

Today we are talking marketing budgets – because frankly we need to.

Many, many, many small business owners I talk to either

  • Don’t have a marketing budget, or
  • Don’t know what that budget really is.

Without being industry-specific at all – I was always taught in business that your marketing budget should be around 10% of your revenue.

So if you make 100,000 a year, you should be spending around 10,000 on marketing. 

If you’re a new business – it might even be more to try and establish yourself in the marketing.

So, my question to you is – how much revenue do you make in a year?  Tell me now ….

And then, how much do you spend on marketing in a year? 

Now, I’ll put a small caveat here – because I can, it’s my podcast, if you said $0 on marketing but you’re on social media and using it for “free” – it’s NOT really for free. 

You are simply trading time for money.

If you work for $50 per hour and you spend 10 hours a week on social media creating content, curating, reaching out etc – it’s technically costing you $500 a week.

I would hope, as you grow, that you will stop trading time for money and start trading money for time – paying someone else to do this work so you can do what you’re an expert in.

But that’s a different discussion all together!

So, you need a marketing budget.

You just do.  Because as the old saying goes – you need to spend money to make money.

That’s my first reason why you need a marketing budget.

To make more money!

To make more money, more people need to know about what you do, how you do it, why they need you or your products in their life and why they should come back over and over and over again and bring their friends with them!

101 Marketing!

In order to do that efficiently, you need to have a paid marketing strategy.

Organic is great.

Fantastic actually.

And we are SO lucky to have all this “free” ability to market our business.

But realistically, the time will come when it’s time to put skin in the game and cough up some bucks for some marketing.

In my other business, which if you’ve listened to this for a while, you’ll know if a marketplace called www.spendwithus.com.au – for regional and rural Australian small businesses (like Amazon but only for rural and regional small businesses), we spent upwards of $1500 a month on marketing.

Between google ads, google shopping ads, Facebook and Instagram ads – we do a lot of paid marketing.

We have to – it’s our way of getting more brand awareness, and more sales traffic to our website and then to keep top of mind so they come back again.

We also invest in email marketing platforms as another part of our paid marketing strategy.

We are investing in our business by buying ad space.

In my social media and marketing business, my “spend money to make money” is a little different.  It’s more around when I want promotion around a product or a service that I run ads for – it’s not 365 days a year as my other business.

But I do invest.

You have to spend money to make money.

Especially if your competitors have a paid marketing strategy to get in front of your audience and you don’t.

Of course, your total spending should be influenced by your goals for your business.  After all, you want to be able to say my paid marketing strategy gave me x in return.

Without a marketing budget, you are simply, leaving money on the table for your competitors to swoop in and enjoy.

The second reason why you need a marketing budget is to SCALE UP!

If you want to grow your audience, or perhaps you’re a bit stagnate in business right now (covid issues aside) investing in your business with a paid marketing strategy will help you reach more of your target audience.

Once you are super clear on who your target audience is, who is most likely to buy your products and services, then it’s time to reach further than organic marketing can.

Having a marketing budget will, something to spend on marketing, will make you more successful and give you something to measure that success against.

I spent x on marketing and returned x in return!

You will know if your allocation of resources had a good ROI – return on investment.

The third reason is that having a marketing budget, actually a marketing budget with a figure against it, allows you to allocate scarce financial resources more effectively.

If you don’t have a marketing budget, there’s no figure placed against marketing, it makes it harder to make strategic decisions on whether or not you should spend x on a marketing strategy.

Allocating some financials against marketing, allows you to grow, even when things are tight, you can simply be assured, looking at your budget, that you have the financial resources to invest in x – whatever x is.

When things are free, we take them for granted a bit.

Is our copy not quite right?  Mmm, doesn’t really matter, didn’t pay for it.

Is our targeting on point?  Mmm, doesn’t really matter, didn’t pay for it.

Is our email program giving us the best return?  Mmm, doesn’t really matter – it’s free.

Whereas paying for something, as a business owner, helps us pay more attention to the return on that investment.

We are more vary of results.  We are more likely to look at the results.

How long how have you been posting on social media?  How often do you look at the insights to see what’s working, what’s not?

I’m guessing pretty infrequently if at all.

How often have you run a paid marketing ad on social media and NEVER looked at the results?  I’m guessing never.

Money talks – money makes us take notice.

Of course, there’s loads of free and low budget ways to promote your business too – check out episode 21 – 7 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS ON A SHOESTRING. www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/21

So, Jenn, where do I spend my marketing budget?

Fab question – thanks for asking it!

There’s a stack of places that you can invest your marketing budget.  There’s just a few:

  • Social Media Platforms
  • Content Creation
  • Paid Advertising
  • Website
  • Email Marketing
  • SEO
  • Paid Advertising (PPC)
  • Graphic Design
  • Print Material (Flyers & Brochures)
  • Networking
  • Hiring a coach and mentor
  • Podcasts
  • Hiring help!

You need to spend the money in your marketing budget where you can see the best return.

My hope for you is that after you’ve listened to this podcast you will assess who much you are relying on platforms for free to do all your marketing for you vs how much you are investing in yourself, and your business and the brand to help build and scale it.

If you’re not sure about a marketing budget, where to spend it, how much to spend and so forth – let’s chat.

You can head into the Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group and ask questions in there or you can reach out to me jenn@jenndonovan.com.au

Or if you want to book a discovery call where we can see how I can help you further – do that!  Go to: http://bit.ly/Discoverwithjenn

But that’s it for ep 153. 

If you’re enjoying this podcast, which if you have listened to here – you hopefully are, don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode with another superstar business owner who’s doing the daily grind and would appreciate someone making their business simpler, and leave a rating or review to show how much you are loving this free weekly content.

Massive love coming your way if you do!

See you next week on the podcast for episode 154.  But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

……..remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!

 

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Brilliant – it’s on its way – thanks!

 

Brilliant – it’s on its way – thanks!

 

Brilliant – it’s on its way – thanks!

 

Brilliant – it’s on its way – thanks!

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