There are many free marketing tools out there to help you create a marketing budget. We know that sometimes you want to take things under your control and decide not to hire a professional, and avoid creating a marketing budget. Here are some other common problems people make when they are on a short-handed marketing budget, and problems you should avoid when marketing your business.
They are inaccurate -
Computan deals with a lot of time-strapped and cash-strapped marketing departments and marketing agencies. One of the most common mistakes we see when departments and agencies start budgeting is caused by their ambition. Organizations often believe their company is going to make much more profit or create a bigger dent in the marketplace than it really does. In some cases, our customers don’t even have revenue targets for the following quarter or year. Given these scenarios we make excessive and inaccurate budgets. Or, invest way too much on things we don’t need to invest in.
Not cohesive with the marketing strategy -
When we talk about marketing we have to be as realistic as possible and aware of the organization’s potential and how much you are willing to spend to realize that potential. Even though it’s an important step you must take, you want to do it properly and planned with ultimate execution in mind. So take a step back, learn more about your target, where they are, what they do and how your product or service solves their problems. That way, you will know what you can add in your marketing budget and strategy for a period of time.
Unfortunately many organizations do the complete opposite. They think that they don’t have enough money to spend on marketing because that is a luxury and end up doing marketing ‘half-way.’ This is very counter-productive, if you only get to half your market, you’re only going to sell half as much. Find a way instead to reach everyone in a cheaper way and make your marketing budget work harder for you. Let’s look at a traditional outbound marketing tactic such as outdoor advertising. If you need two billboards to get to two different zones but can’t afford it, you can change your strategy and deliver flyers on the streets. It’s less expensive and you’ll still get to all the people you need to while investing less money.
More cost = more success? -
Another big mistake is thinking that if one marketing tactic or partner costs more than others that it’s automatically the right choice. We’ve seen marketing departments stocked with Ivey-league MBAs crash and burn miserably while others run with college-dropouts and little prior marketing experience do extremely well. Most marketing heads and marketing agencies have premonitions about how much they should be paying for stuff….and if they are paying less they discredit it and if they are paying more they look to reduce it. Things are not as always as they seem. For example, if you’re advertising a video game for teenagers, you’ll probably have a better reach to your target if your strategy is using social networks and a website than if you invest in radio commercials (apart from Pandora). So, in this case, the cheaper choice is best, because the audience you want to reach is more likely to be on the Internet than listening to a radio station these days.
Marketing Budget Is Non-Existent -
On the other hand, there’s also the common believe that marketing is not important and not worth spending money on. The truth is that you do need advertising and you always will. You can have the best product and service around, but if people don’t know about you, it is very difficult to increase your sales. So this is an important activity your marketing department or marketing agency needs to take very seriously. Marketing agencies in particular spend so much time doing the marketing for other businesses that they forget to do it themselves. You need to recognize the importance of marketing and creating a budget so you can spend as much as you need to. That’s the purpose of budgeting, to have it under control and make the best investment of what you have available for your marketing strategy.
If you want your company and sales to grow and your market to start recognizing you as a serious company that can provide what they need then you must take your marketing strategy seriously. It might not be easy at first and you might be a little reluctant to spend your well-earned profit. But marketing is an investment… If you are strategic in how you allocate your marketing budget then you’ll get your money back in no time flat. As a marketing department or marketing agency you need to make sure to budget properly and play your cards right.
