Rapid Business Growth’s Blog

There is no doubt that the business climate in Dublin is tough at the moment. A lot of people are telling me that they are cutting costs to the bone, delaying payments and generally trying to be a lean as possible. As a marketing guy you probably expect me to say “Increase spending on every type of marketing”

Well I hate waste as much as anybody so I won’t say that. I think you should look very carefully at your marketing budget and figure out where your new business comes from. Is there a match? I’m a great believer in the 80/20 rule.

Sometimes businesses spend money on marketing for historical reasons, well there is no room for that anymore. Lots of Advertising people talk about brand awareness but any Advertising that brings in 100s of queries that doesn’t result in a sale are worse than useless. Those queries just get in the way.

Each cent should bring a reward and the best way to measure that is by looking at sales. Compare your sales figures to your marketing campaigns and map the peaks AND the troughs. If your sales cycle is fairly long then the least you should measure is “Qualified Leads”.

Lots of businesses did very well in the boom years without any real marketing systems. The result is that many do not have a way of tracking what impact marketing campaigns have. But times have changed, good leads are harder to find and without good information it is impossible to make valid decisions about what works and what doesn’t.

The good news is you can implement a system for tracking leads quickly and easily. Once you have the system in place you see that you now have a list of unconverted prospects which can be a very useful side effect. You can develop a system in-house or you can out-source, it doesn’t really matter how you do it, just do it!

Once you have that system in place then you can spend each cent in a way that maximises its return to you.

So should you spend money on marketing? My answer: Spend money where you get the biggest result.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.

Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

Have you ever wondered what amount you should set aside for marketing each year to grow your business?

How do you know what the optimum amount is? As an Marketing specialist, I’m often asked this question by startup and small business owners.

So what’s the answer? Whilst many business owners are looking for an answer such as €5000 or 10% of sales, I think this completely misses the point.

I believe the answer is…

You should not put a limit on your marketing budget

Let me explain. Whenever you undertake any marketing activity, you need to know whether you make a profit or not on that activity. The only way to do that is to measure the results of the marketing.

To do this you need to undertake direct response marketing as opposed to purely brand marketing. For small business especially it is crucial to ensure money spent on marketing is not wasted. The best way to do this is to record the results of any marketing activity, whether that be direct sales letters, advertising, telemarketing, email marketing, pay per click campaigns, seminars or whatever.

As a minimum, you need to know…

•             The cost of the marketing activity

•             The sales generated from that marketing activity

•             The profit made from those sales

And if you make more from the marketing than it costs you, it makes sense to continue spending on that marketing activity until it stops making you a profit. You’ll of course know when this is because you are measuring your results.

By testing on a small scale to start with, you’ll never lose too much money if it doesn’t work, but when it does work, if you gradually increase your spend on this particular activity, you should continue to do so until it no longer makes you a profit. It doesn’t matter how much you spend, as long as you make a profit, it makes sense to continue to invest in the marketing.

And don’t stop at just one marketing activity. Test another marketing activity and if that makes a profit continue with that in the same way. Eventually, the aim is to have multiple marketing activities. This is the key to exponential business growth. Not being reliant on one activity, means you continue to grow even when one stops working.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss with you how we could help you further.without charge!
Best wishes

Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
+353 1 491 3328