Making Room For Marketing In Your Business Budget

by Melissa Brewer

As a business new to marketing, you may say you say you know where your money goes and you don’t need it all written down to keep up with it. But marketing is tricky – as with all plans, your results must be both achievable and measurable. You need to be able to track a return on your investment. And you may say you spend enough time on it – but if your business isn’t growing, it may be time to spend a little dough to keep it moving.

Unless you have specific objectives built around your strategies, your marketing plan may never be achieved properly. Marketing requires specific resources and you need to communicate these with your staff (if you have staff) or your outsourcing partners. You will be shocked at what the smaller expenses (such as paper, mailings, and stamps) add up to. Take the total you spend on just one extra mailing each month, multiply it by 12 for months in a year and multiply the result by 5 to represent 5 years – and then subtract it from the results. Is your marketing really as effective as it should be? Is it worth the resources you have been using?

When you start to implement a marketing plan for the first time, it’s best to start with a small sampling and wait for results first. It is true that doing something is better than doing nothing – but don’t overwhelm your staff or your budget by attempting several new marketing methods that you are unable to track – for example, if you direct traffic to your website, make sure to target each campaign to a different page or product to track your results.

If it is overwhelming to create several marketing activities, make a small but definite commitment to add at least one new marketing tactic a week. For example, set aside an hour every day to make cold calls or send emails to your prospects. Add one service listing to Craig’s List every week. Send “Thank You” emails to your customers once a month and let them know that you’ve added a new product to your product line. And, I issue you this challenge. Keep track of every penny you spend on marketing for one month – could you have afforded more? Did the amount of time and money you spent seem worth the effort? Set some specific long term and short term goals for making more money – and allocating more money to your marketing endeavors. There are no wrong answers here – just remember, it always takes money to make money. If it’s important to you, then it’s important period.

Some suggestions for powering your marketing strategies
follow:

• Make room for marketing in your business budget by cutting other expenses.
• Barter expertise and skills with other businesses you may network with (LinkedIn contacts, Chamber of Commerce, etc.)
• Cut expenses for services you rarely use. Do you really need call waiting on your business phone line? How about that subscription to Entrepreneur online?
• Don’t discount the power of low-cost and free marketing activities-such as online forum postings, ezine advertisements, article marketing, and blog advertising

Melissa Brewer is the author of the Little White Ebook of Virtual Assistant Jobs, available at LittleWhiteEbook.com. She has worked as a freelance writer for the past 9 years and currently resides in Washington, DC, three miles from the Obama White House.

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