The
beginning of your start up is the time to plan
your marketing budget and provide an adequate
budget guideline for you to follow. Easier said
than done, huh? You’re not alone. Budgeting
is very hard for many people because they are
unsure of how to predict the future. The good
news is that if you know your market and can
give an educated guess of your future expenses
and possible growth in profits on a simple plan
format (yes, written on paper), should work.
The reason that I emphasize that is your marketing
plan, just like your business plan should be
written in the form of a document, so that it
will tell you along the way that you are on
track with your budget. Granted you might go
over one month or under another, but having
a marketing plan will help you gauge where you
are and where your money is going.
There
is no specified number or dollar amount of what
your budget should be, regardless of the size
or amount is not the factor in how your business
will succeed, but how you spend it at a particular
time and how much. You need to allocate your
funding on a monthly basis and see what you
can afford and what form of marketing action
you will do with that budget for that month.
The last thing you want to do is take the budget
of 5 months of advertising in one month, and
leave the other 4 months high and dry and not
do any marketing. Doing it up for one month,
and then laying low for the next 4 months isn’t
exactly a good way to promote your business.
You need to budget each month and find ways
to do it realistically without breaking the
bank. People tend to freak out when they hear
the word, “budget”, and tend to
avoid dealing with why you need a realistic
budget guideline for marketing and advertising
and to stay within the reality of your cash
flow and availability of your funds. If the
money isn’t there, how can you justify
spending big bucks for advertising?
Just
like having a business plan, you have a marketing
plan, which is really a measure of commitment
on your part that you will adhere to the plan
to make your business succeed. What happens
with many start-ups, is that people tend to
go a bit crazy and to go big on some items and
purchases when starting out in their businesses.
And what happened next? The overhead became
too large for them to consume, even with the
meager profits coming in, there are now no funds
for marketing the business. It is far more important
to put aside more money and time for marketing
than for purchases for your start up. Think
of it this way, there is nothing more depressing
than sitting in a “diced-up, state-of-the-art”
office with an overhead that is staggering before
you’ve really even started. When starting
out, figure out what the basic necessities are
that you need that can get you started with
the least amount of overhead…(yeah, we
all love those nice leather swivel chairs).
As a good rule of thumb, start on a smaller
scale, and then allow your business to grow,
and then you can feel good about upgrading your
purchases or items for your business. And at
the same time, you may want to even add any
extra profits (even in small amounts) that come
up into the marketing budget for when you want
to do an exceptional promotional event where
you can actually afford it because you planned
for it.
Just remember the quality of the advertising
or marketing is not affected by the budget,
but the quantity that you purchase at a particular
time is.
Joelene
Orlando is a Web enthusiast and a staff writer/consultant
for eMarketing Answers with a broad knowledge
of topics covering Internet marketing and communication
strategies for both consumer and small business
owners.
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