Every week in The Girls Mean Business Club the same questions come up again and again.
'How much do I spend on Facebook ads?'
'How much should I pay for my website?'
'How much should I pay someone to do SEO work?'
'How much should I budget for marketing each month?'
And the thing is, as I tell my lovely ladies, it's different for each of us but actually how much we spend is secondary - it's what we DO with it that matters.
Let me explain.
Some experts say you should invest 10% of your profits in marketing.
Others say it should be way more than that - up to 50%.
The trouble is, that doesn't really apply when you're a one woman band and just trying to keep your head above water - even 50% of profits wouldn't amount to much!
So how much SHOULD we spend on marketing?
Well here are my thoughts...It's not about how much you spend. It's about where you put your focus and your resources - including money but also your time and energy.
Successful marketing depends far more on where you place your attention rather than how much money you spend.
$1 per day spent on really targeted Facebook ads could bring you more customers than $100 per day on untargeted ads.
A £200 website that is written for your ideal customer, pinpoints their pain points and offers the perfect solution will be FAR more successful than a £10,000 website that just looks pretty but doesn't get your ideal customer to sit up and take notice.
10 minutes a day spent optimising your own web pages with the right keywords will bring you more web traffic than paying a random company £150 per week to do your SEO, if they don't GET what you do.
So you see. It's not all about the money.
It's about the RIGHT marketing to the RIGHT people.
It's about understanding why your ideal customers need you and how you can give them incredible value.
Once you get that right, THEN you can start to invest in making your marketing bigger and better but ONLY once you've got your marketing message and targeting spot on, otherwise you're throwing good money after bad.
Get it working first, start to bring in some money & see the benefits of your hard work and then reinvest some of it back into marketing.
A little at a time.
Job done.
We love the practical approach at The Girls Mean Business!