By Erin Daniels, The KNOW Women
Effective and results-driven marketing is necessary to successfully grow your business and expand your clientele. In order to market your business in a way that gets you the results you desire, you have to make sure you are asking the right questions! What is your brand mission and story? How does your company measure success? Who is your target audience? These questions along with many others will allow you to create a marketing strategy that caters to your ideal customers and business goals while telling your business story.
In addition to the foundation of your marketing strategy, there are many other aspects that come into play such as having a budget for your marketing dollars and measuring the success of your strategy. Creating and implementing an effective marketing strategy can be difficult, but fear not! There are plenty of knowledgeable marketing companies that can help lead you to success.
We asked our high-achieving KNOW women all about their marketing strategies, how to measure success, and what to look for in a marketing professional. Follow along on our four-part mini-series to get the answers you need in order to implement a successful marketing strategy for your business!
How do you spend your marketing dollars and what percentage of your business revenue goes back into marketing?
First, it is important to understand that marketing dollars are not a spend, they are an investment. Making that mindset shift and tracking ROI are the keys to choosing the dollar amount. That being said, in one of my companies, I know for every $5 we invest (or reinvest) the immediate ROI is $55. Now, I reverse engineer by asking “how much money do I want to make this month” and simple math tells the investment amount required.
–Linette Montae, Profitable Empires
We spend our marketing budget on Social Media Efforts, Sponsorships, PR efforts, Website Optimization, and Social Media Advertising. I would say about 9-10% of our revenue goes into marketing.
–Nadia Kaminskaya, Branding BossesA general rule of thumb is to re-invest 20% of your revenue back into marketing. This number can change based on your business’s goals and the efficiencies of your campaigns. It’s important to understand how much growth your business can handle balanced with your marketing ROI.
–Erin Wilder, 81 & Sunny
I spend our firm’s marketing dollars on content creation, collaborative partnerships for exposure, and social media advertising. At this time, for paid marketing efforts, only 8% of our revenue is spent on paid media. Earned media such as PR inquiry responses, blogs, emails, organic social, etc. aren’t included in our budget as they are not amplified by paid spend, but approximately 20% of our time is allocated to those efforts.
–Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
As a small business owner, networking and connecting with non-profits in our community is how we primarily spend our marketing dollars. I would say that this is 75% of our current business model since our location is all about building relationships and growing others’ marketing material. It makes a huge impact on our clients’ that we really take the time to get to know our local area and who’s in it.
–Christina Ingrid Maksoud, MakSchu Productions
We spend marketing dollars on our website, email newsletter, social media content, and client events. About 5% of our business revenue goes back into marketing. This is important to us to continue to build our brand awareness and deliver meaningful content to clients and prospects.
–Alison Stine, Stine Wealth Management
Short answer: It depends. Comprehensive answer: A good rule of thumb for an average business, under $5mil in revenue is 7% of your GAR. If you’re launching a new service or product, that number will vary (new audience, new packaging, need to educate the audience, or is just a new spin on an existing entity).
–Trish Saemann, GoBeyond SEO
We invest in our local NPR station, and a variety of sponsorships that are consistent with our target market, plus exploring the effectiveness of targeted Google Ads. Videos have been one of the most effective use of our dollars. We reinvest somewhere between 6-8% of revenues back into marketing efforts.
–Laura A Webb, Webb Investment Services | Her Two Cents Podcast
I spend about 10% of my revenue on marketing my business. Depending on the month, this could look like building a new opt-in, dedicating resources to email marketing, or sending paid traffic to a landing page.
–Kathleen Celmins, KathleenCelmins.com
