Have you planned the appropriate budget spend for marketing and promoting your business? Most small businesses do not. Whether it's the time to do it yourself, or the task you'd like to bring in professionals to handle - most businesses don't account for the investment and approach necessary to be successful and consistent in growing their revenue.
THINGS TO CONSIDER
Doing things yourself is a great idea if you've got the skills and you're a small business still growing organically, but there are times when you can get more for less - as your time becomes more valuable in other areas - outsourcing the functions to professionals.
BUDGET SPEND LEVELS
It's common to consider setting a marketing budget that's between 4-8% of gross company annual revenues, and in some vertical industries - that percentage is higher, but that's not for everyone.
Even if you're not inside of the averages - even a 2% spend budget for your $500K revenues is an $800-$1,000 per month spend on marketing activities. For a $2M annual revenue business, even at a 2% budget, that amount is $3,000 - $3,500 per month you should spend. The investment decision needs to be dedicated toward important, measurable, high impact areas to promote your business, whether in visibility, ads, social media, email targeting or other marketing support areas.
WHY OUTSOURCING CAN HELP
It's not hard to see that the small company marketing budget, isn't always enough to hire a full-time specialist to address needs and succeed. In our previous example, for a $2M annual revenue small business, even at 2% budget allocation, that $3,000-$3,500/month won't easily satisfy a recent college graduate nowadays, or cover benefits costs, and that resource would have zero (0) experience in most circumstances, and have a limited exposure to marketing segments, approaches, tools, messaging and what customer journeys occur in vertical industries - and for certain buyer roles.
Conversely - that same budget, could potentially get you the following with an experienced fractional marketing services outsourcer:
- social media management on a few platforms with daily posts
- marketing automation targeted email to prospects each month
- collateral creation for prospect follow-up and professional appearance
- website updates and SEO that help ensure your target audience gets proofs
- ads with a small budget approach on social or in google
The value here - is that the services could be delivered by people with decades of experience, and if they've got a good client on-boarding process, they'll come to know your value proposition and can create content that helps you get the traction you need. You see, the fact that they scale their teams to support several customers, allows you to get more for less in most all cases.
Of course, advanced attention and more detailed scope come at a higher price, and the cost of tools and access to proper lists, data and contacts are essential and necessary prerequisites too - but you're going to need those types of things anyway - and your outsourcer may have a flexible way of "leasing" you back the tool costs and access costs to fit into a monthly budget - because of their scale.
Later on - if you'd like, and when you're ready, you can easily bring your outsourced support "in-house" and under your own team - as your revenue grows - and the resources you need become more feasible to have on your in-house FTE payroll. But for now - you just need to get the work done - because promoting your business is a full time job for you or someone else - and it's essential that this work gets done - everyday. Check out our podcast on SPOTIFY for insights.
Need help? Drop us a line to learn how LouMac can solve challenges affordably.
LouMac Strategies llc
614-402-8516
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