Marketing budget help

[PhilD12345]

Hi

We need abit of help and guidance on how much we should on average be spending on marketing and what we spend it on. A little bit about us, we're an IT Support business providing support to SME businesses. It has been my dads business for 25 years and I started working with him a couple of years ago, there are just the two of us. He has never spent any money on advertising and always relied on word of mouth so is abit reluctant to start spending now, we have a solid customer base but have recently started offering VoIP Phone Systems which are working out quite profitable, we've installed 7 of these systems at existing clients but want to push it to new clients now.

Realistically our aim is to install two new systems a month.

Any help on what our budget should be?
What we'd be best spending our budget on?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[saythisinstead.co.uk]

Work out how much profit and/or customer lifetime profit there is in the 2 deals you want to do.

What % of that profit would you be prepared to spend to get that profit in?

Download a copy of Claude Hopkins book (it's free)

http://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf

Whatever that figure is, start testing some marketing methods (say three methods)
that you think would work....and spend no more than the amount you're prepared to commit.

Read the book again.

Then read it again.

Then keep testing.

Good luck

 

[Toby Willows]

....

 

[saythisinstead.co.uk]

....

Yeah.....that'll make you rich!

 

[Toby Willows]

Yeah.....that'll make you rich!

It’s a secret code that debunks all the myths on marketing and how to reach millions of customers for free.

 

[saythisinstead.co.uk]

Myths? What Myths?

 

[Nikki Hesford]

Whenever I work with clients on a Marketing strategy, we always start with - what do we want to achieve? So for example, one of my clients is a Botox Practitioner - the RRP for the three areas of Botox is £200 of which her gross margin is £125 after the prescription and prescribing cost. She currently does around 10 patients per week (£1250 gross margin), but would like to aim for 20 per week (an extra £1250 gross margin)

So obviously, she doesn't want to spend more than £1250 per week on earning £1250 otherwise she would be doing it for free (although lifetime value / repeat custom does need to be considered too - if your product is a 'one off' without any upsell or repeat then your cost of acquisition needs to be less).

We have agreed that she is happy with a £50 cost of acquisition (£200 a month) - so we will begin with £100 per week marketing, once we can measure 2+ new customers per week consistently after month 1, we will increase the budget to £400 etc etc. For her, Facebook is very effective and the cost of acquisition has actually turned out to be less than £20 per customer (and even less than that when considering repeat custom)

However if she was selling a £20 product and the cost of acquisition was £20 it obviously wouldn't be financially viable for her to pay me to manage it for her, so she would need to do it all herself.

It's really hard to say how much you should be spending for the reasons above - it much depends on what you want to achieve, your margins, upsell opportunity, and of course - how much cash you actually have to play with. It also relies on having systems in place - i.e if conversion happens via your website but you don't have Analytics set up, putting money into marketing is just chucking cash down the pan as you are almost entirely blind to how effective it is.

Give me a shout if you would like any help!
Nikki

 

[Minuteman Press]

Research and dentify media your prospective clients may be exposed to, invest in media you are able to afford, audit the results and adapt.

Create communications appropriate for your target clients which identify why you are special. Again audit and review.

Make sure your audit is 100% and invest resources in the development of the message.

Very strategic comments - develop the tactical.