- January 12, 2023
- 4 minute read
Whether starting up or established, finding the most effective way to promote your business can be a headache. You have three important questions to answer; how much to spend? what activities to undertake? how to deliver them?
We help many businesses to plan, deliver and monitor the success of their marketing, so here are a few tips to point you in the right direction.
Allocating a budget
As a general rule, companies should spend between 2% and 15% of their sales revenue on marketing. The amount you decide to spend will depend on several factors including; your business type, how established you are, your ambition, and your profitability. B2B organisations tend to spend less (2-5%) than B2C (5-15%) as there is generally less complexity and reach in B2C marketing, but here are a couple of examples.
A B2B company with an established track record, recognised products and services, moderate profitability, and modest growth ambitions has decided on a budget of 3% of its revenue. This budget will help them maintain their profile and help defend them to some extent against their competitors.
A B2C company in the early stages of growth, with a new product, high potential profitability, and ambitious growth targets, has decided on a budget of 15% of its revenue to fuel its expansion.
Doing the right thing
The complexity of modern marketing makes it difficult to know what activities will give you the best returns. To make best use of your budgets you need a good marketing plan, that clarifies your objectives, strategy, actions, and measures of success.
There are no easy answers here, but having a good understanding of your target audience is critical and having this will help you to understand the channels you should use and what you should be saying. Most of the plans we create have a strong focus on digital marketing, we regularly find the following channels very effective:
> Google Ads
> SEO activity and blog writing
> Email marketing
> Social media
> Other paid advertising
Special delivery
Even the best, well-funded plans will fail if the marketing is poor. Ensuring high-quality creative and technical delivery is vital, but making this happen is not simple. The two main options open to businesses are to create and manage their marketing in-house, or to seek the help of a specialist agency, or agencies, to help deliver some or all of the activities.
Many smaller businesses go down the route of hiring a marketing person expecting that they will take care of most of their requirements. This approach is not realistic. Even for relatively modest plans, the range of skills and knowledge required make this an impossible task for one person to deliver.
A much better approach if you are a smaller business is to appoint a marketing manager, or allocate marketing responsibility to someone in the team, who can work with a specialist agency that will coordinate, deliver and report back on your marketing activities quickly and effectively. This will ensure high-quality, consistent delivery of your marketing.
We hope you find this blog helpful. If you’d like to chat about the most effective ways to promote your business please get in touch.
