How Much Should a Small Business Spend on Marketing?

How Much Should a Small Business Spend on Marketing? Small business owners know better than most how to stretch a dollar. These business owners also know that no matter how tight their budget, scrimping on marketing is always a mistake.

Successful business owners also have figured out how to answer the most important question when it comes to marketing their business: What is the best use of my marketing budget?

If you need to answer this same question for your small business, the first thing you must do is look at your marketing budget’s ROI. This involves three important factors.

1. The Target Audience: Deciding who your ideal customer is means that you can figure out where those customers are online and then use the correct marketing strategies that will allow you to reach them. If you are marketing to other business owners, it’s a good bet you can reach them on LinkedIn. Trying to reach teens? You need to market on the social media sites where they spend most of their time.
2. The Time Commitment: How long do you need a marketing campaign to last to achieve peak results? If you are relying on content marketing, one blog post isn’t going to get the job done. You have to be willing to put in the time in order to see results. A campaign that runs longer may cost more but also is more likely to pay off. If you aren’t willing to make an investment of time you may not get the intended results – no matter how much money you spend.
3. The Results: You must know how to track results to tell if a marketing campaign is working. While sales are relatively easy to track, brand awareness isn’t. You must know which metrics work to measure specific goals.

Figuring out how much you should spend on marketing will depend a great deal on who you are trying to reach, how much time you are willing to invest in reaching that target audience and what you hope to accomplish. The worst thing you can do is spend money on marketing without a plan in place.

Finally, it is important not to get discouraged if you hit some bumps in the road. The best marketers understand that they need to continually evaluate and refine their efforts so that no matter how much money they have to spend on marketing, it will be money well spent.

Need help marketing your small business? No matter how large or small your budget, GoLeads can put a plan in place to make sure you get the most out of your marketing dollars. To learn more, give us a call at (402) 334-1824 or visit goleads.com.