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 Marketing Budgets 101

Marketing budgets are a necessary evil in today’s business climate. Unfortunately, it may seem difficult to allocate the necessary funds for a marketing budget with so many other factors pulling at your resources.

Don't fret: we've compiled a list of six tips that can help you figure out how much money to budget for marketing, based on your company's needs and goals. Read on to learn more!

This post is purely informative and factual, meant to give advice and best practices on how to approach this subject matter as well as provide an understanding of what marketing budgets are. I hope that it provides the reader with enough context so they can make the right decisions about their own marketing spending within their business’s constraints.

1. Understand the purpose of your respective marketing budget.

Every business' marketing budget has its own unique purpose and subset of goals to achieve. It is important to ask yourself what your goals for this budget are and how you will track your progress towards it, so you can try to measure the effectiveness of your spending throughout the year. Make sure that, in addition to increasing sales, you are allocating funds to other aspects of your marketing plan that will help you reach new customers and retain existing ones.

2. Start small and scale up over time as needed.

While it is true that a marketing budget can make or break your business in the long-term, you may not need to spend an obscene amount of money on your initial marketing efforts. Instead, you can start small and build up as you go along.

For example, if your business goals include improving brand awareness among a new audience in time for a major product launch, you may only need to spend $500 on online advertising to acquire the customers who will be interested in your product. Then, once people are aware of your product and (hopefully) begin to purchase it, you can begin spending more money on ads and marketing materials such as brochures and mailers that will increase the customer lifetime value of these new customers.

3. Focus on what works for your business.

As with any marketing investment or decision, each of us must determine for ourselves whether a particular marketing strategy is effective for our needs and goals. For example, if you are in the business of retail, your marketing budget may be better spent advertising at the local shopping mall than on online ads. When you look at your business from these two diverse points of view (local brand awareness vs. online ad campaigns), you may see that the former is much more effective from a return on investment standpoint.

4. Consider other marketing channels, specifically those that are targeted towards your clientele (or where you can get them from).

Many marketing budgets are allocated towards advertisements on local media outlets, but, in many cases, these ads will reach customers who aren't your target market or aren't even willing to shop at your store. This means that if you're going to spend money on advertising with local print publications, make sure that they have a broad enough reach to cover all of your potential customers (and if they don't, try different channels).

Similarly, it's important to consider the various ways you can get your marketing message out to customers. Email newsletters are a great way to reach new customers and retain existing ones, as long as you spend enough time and resources on crafting informative, original content in order to maximize your return on investment. You can also try other sales tools such as social media advertising (Facebook), direct mail advertising (letter mailers), and even word of mouth ads (for example, flyers that you leave at local businesses) for increased customer acquisition.

5. Be aware of the waste that is inherent in marketing budgets.

It's easy to get caught up in the mantra of "spend more money, so you can get more customers." However, when you look at your current marketing efforts, you may find that there is little evidence that they are working and that your marketing expenses are getting wasted due to poor customer acquisition. Consider what aspects of your marketing efforts may be ineffective and consider whether these limitations could be overcome by improving your strategy or even repositioning your product in a way that would work better for a new niche market.

Conclusion

Marketing budgets are necessary evil, as they provide the fuel for an effective marketing campaign. As such, it is your job to ensure that you get the most out of your marketing dollars by focusing them on the aspects of your business that have the highest return on investment.

Do you have any tips for budgeting a marketing budget? Feel free to share with us in the comments below!

Title: How to Increase Your Local Exposure Without Spending Thousands of Dollars per Month On Marketing and Advertising.

Author: Brant DeBowes  (http://www.huffingtonpost.