How Much Should I Spend on Marketing My Business?

It’s not just what you spend, it’s how you spend it!

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Rule of Thumb
Beware of Free
Get Hired Help
Fixed Cost for Fixed Effort
Use a Professional Intermediary
Media is Not Marketing
Creating Desire is Costly
Target Profitably
Image Over Profits
Knowledge is Profit

You want new customers, you need to do some form of marketing to get them.

A lot of opinions exist on this, but it seems the consensus is 5-20% of turnover, however just as important is what you spend it on and who you spend it with.

It’s tempting to respond in kind when your competitors start throwing the kitchen sink at their marketing efforts, but wait! They can actually help to grow your business if you know how to capitalise on it.

Here are our top ten tips for the question, “How much should I spend on marketing my business?”

Join the 4th revolution

Rule of Thumb

Standard advice is 5-20% of your turnover, however if you are disrupting a sector, bringing something brand new to the market or in a heavily competitive sector this should be even higher.

Beware of Free

Free tools such as social media and emails have very little value for most companies and should be seen as customer service tools rather than marketing.

Get Hired Help

Hire professionals as soon as your marketing budget (including printing stuff) exceeds £500 a month. It’ll save you even more in the long run.

Fixed Cost for Fixed Effort

Don’t hire companies who charge a percentage of your ad spend. It can take the same amount of time designing a Google Ad campaign spending £100 as it does £10,000, it’s the number of products that has an impact.

Use a Professional Intermediary

Don’t deal direct with media brands, they give their best prices to agencies as they know what other companies are spending for the same thing.

Media is Not Marketing

Don’t buy digital marketing services direct with a media company, you’ll pay a huge surcharge in management fees because of their large overheads. For instance, Reach PLC take up to 50% of your social media ad budget and 35% of your Google Ads budget.

Creating Desire is Costly

Target existing market appetite before you try to create new ones. For most businesses nice shiny display adverts offer poor return on investment but are good for brand building when the time is right.

Target Profitably

If you have read our “How Do I Make More Profit?” Article you’ll know not all customers are equal. Target your marketing spend in channels that have delivered your best clients in the past first.

Image Over Profits

Never get involved in vanity publishing. I know you want to show everyone how successful you are or how proud of your company, but that same press release should target product sales.

Knowledge is Profit

Get some marketing training, take a 1 or 2-day course on practical marketing. When you are small you can do a lot yourself, and as you grow you can have the right conversations with your agency.

So that’s our top ten tips on “how much should I spend on marketing my business?” do you agree? Leave a comment below.

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