In the business world, marketing is among the most important aspects of your company. Without marketing, the masses may not know you exist and, if they don’t know about you, they certainly can’t solicit your services.
But, while marketing is important, you can’t throw endless amounts of cash into it; the concept of “you must spend money to make money” doesn’t always offer a guaranteed return. This is why it’s important to stick to your marketing budget, even when business is less than booming.
Setting a Budget
Before you can stick to your marketing budget, you must first set one. Figure out how much you want to spend. According to the Houston Chronicle, budgets vary widely from business to business, but they typically fall between one and thirty percent of sales revenue. Bigger companies can often get away with spending less on marketing, while smaller ones sometimes need to spend more.
Overall, in order to market effectively, you should aim to spend between one and ten percent of sales revenue.
Budget 2.0
After you have set a budget, it’s important to maximize that budget and get the most out of your marketing materials. One of the simplest ways to do this is through your paper advertising in essence, add to your reprinted ads.
Per Entrepreneur magazine, ads are expensive, but they also contain a lot of unused space; filling this space can save you money while enticing repeat and new business. Adding product data or technical specifications to the back of a reprinted ad, for instance, is a good way to give customers more information about your services without spending a lot.
According to New Century Financial, one of the reputable factoring companies, you may also want to use reprinted ads in your direct mail campaigns and include copies of them in any response to inquiries. Using reprinted ads gets your name out there and your message across, but it saves you from dishing out a ton of money campaigning from scratch.
Don’t Keep up with the Joneses
One of the most common mistakes businesses make is paying attention to the marketing of other companies. While it’s good to know what your competition is doing, you shouldn’t aim to mimic the advertising efforts of another. This is particularly true if you’re a small company trying to keep up with a giant corporation. In short, don’t worry about what is working for the other businesses of the world; instead, focus on what works for you. It’s okay to come up with new ideas and engage in trial and error, but be reasonable; in other words, think big, but spend rationally.
Use Content Marketing and Social Media
Print, television, and radio marketing is still effective, but the world now belongs to the web. For your marketing budget, this is beneficial; posting content to your website, in an e-newsletter, or on your blog comes with a minimal cost.
Social media is also an avenue that can be highly effective with a very small price tag. Posting things to Facebook and Twitter is free if you do it yourself (though it may be in your best interest to hire a social media guru). But you may also consider using pay-per-click advertising; this is advertising that allows you to pay only for Internet traffic that goes directly to your website.
Networking your name online can be beyond successful; you might go viral, yet even if you don’t, your business can still be seen by an endless potential of people. The bottom line is that the Internet is here to stay; use it to your advantage.
This article was contributed on behalf of New Century Financial, your number one choice when looking for help with factoring. Check out their website at www.newcenturyfinancial.com for more information!
