Why There is No Absolute Formula for a Great Marketing Plan 
If you ask most small business owners or managers what their budget is they blanch on the spot, start to stammer and/or pull out their "smartphone."
Most have no real budgets of any kind, don't know how to create one or where to start.
Five things your business needs to know about marketing budgets and where/how to start.
Many consultants, agencies (big and little) have no real clue either about what's the right budget for your business. We are guessing too; or, at least filling in some blanks.
Uh, "insert pregnant pause" in conversation: "what was your revenue last year?" We are simply working back from last year's revenue and how much your business wants to grow this year.
Nothing absolutely wrong with this analysis as a starting point for some businesses.
You have a revenue number, you factor in head count costs, operational costs, cost of goods, competitive forces, and call the Shaman.
It's not always a great way to start. But, it's better than the dart board method.
Every $Billion or Euros start-up learns how to say very early on in the process "customer persona" or "growth hack."
You should too. One term refers to what was called in the Don Draper typewriter era days as a demographic profile and the other is just a fancy way of saying how do we create more revenue so we cam move to San Francisco?
Every budget can/should start with how many more customers do we want this year or incremental sales. What is this number? Start here and work back.
Then overlay competitors, market growth, historical trends, cost of sales/goods and start with some kind of a SWOT Analysis ("strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats").
Put rough cut numbers on a grease board and leave them there for a week or two and hammer them 3-4 times with your management team. And, know you are not alone, even if you've never seen this in Inc Magazine.
Here's the basic formula for defining the attributes that define who your customer is.
Once you have these issues defined then create a picture of this individual (this can be the "buyer" in the biz you are selling to) and throw it up on the wall.
Now, you know who you want to sell to in at least a "fill in the blanks" manner.
What kind of content do you need to attract this type of customer?
Content can be blog posts, videos, social media status updates, images, infographics. Just about anything your can write or create.
What does one single piece of marketing content cost and then run this analysis out via a spreadsheet or grease board.
How much content do you need to create to effectively reach some finite number of customers? And, where do you need to share the content across what digital platforms. Web, social, etc.
How do you focus your marketing expenditures to reach some finite number of customers.
You are still in the voodoo magic phase of developing a marketing budget at this point.
But, it gets easier as you move forward and just like any marketing process, iteration and refinement are critical success drivers.
If it's any consolation to you, these big billion dollar brands you read about can spend months on creating marketing budgets. Some take years, not that you can afford this luxury.
Half of the managers are looking at "historical" documents and legacy information and then working back from there.
Competitive analysis is pretty easy to do on the social web.
We use SpyFu to assess what, where and how a client's competitors are advertising.
This will give you another good datapoint for your SWOT analysis.
Also, your competitor's career pages will give you some sense for growth, what they are paying, where they are hiring, etc.
Every business has unique attributes. There is no magic formula for creating a one sizes fits all marketing budget.
Start with a 1.0 plan and move forward from there.
If you are hazy on some of the facts, then just work on a 90 day budget and refine it downstream.
It gets easier.
Related Posts on Marketing Strategy
"How Content Heroes and Heroines are Made Not Born"
"What I Learned About Social Media from Andy Warhol"
"How to Generate More Revenue and Lower Costs with the Cloud"
"Why Every Marketing Campaign Lives or Dies on this Foundation"
"Four Critical Marketing Strategies to Stand out in Today's Noisy World"
"Why so Many Web Site Designs are Lipstick on a Pig"
"How to Win Your Darwinian Digital Battles"
"The Ten Second Race to Content Nirvana"
"Ten Creative Ways to Use Lists for Content Curation"
"How to be a Mythic Content Whisperer"
If you ask most small business owners or managers what their budget is they blanch on the spot, start to stammer and/or pull out their "smartphone."
Most have no real budgets of any kind, don't know how to create one or where to start.
Five things your business needs to know about marketing budgets and where/how to start.
Many consultants, agencies (big and little) have no real clue either about what's the right budget for your business. We are guessing too; or, at least filling in some blanks.
Uh, "insert pregnant pause" in conversation: "what was your revenue last year?" We are simply working back from last year's revenue and how much your business wants to grow this year.
Nothing absolutely wrong with this analysis as a starting point for some businesses.
You have a revenue number, you factor in head count costs, operational costs, cost of goods, competitive forces, and call the Shaman.
It's not always a great way to start. But, it's better than the dart board method.
Every $Billion or Euros start-up learns how to say very early on in the process "customer persona" or "growth hack."
You should too. One term refers to what was called in the Don Draper typewriter era days as a demographic profile and the other is just a fancy way of saying how do we create more revenue so we cam move to San Francisco?
Every budget can/should start with how many more customers do we want this year or incremental sales. What is this number? Start here and work back.
Then overlay competitors, market growth, historical trends, cost of sales/goods and start with some kind of a SWOT Analysis ("strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats").
Put rough cut numbers on a grease board and leave them there for a week or two and hammer them 3-4 times with your management team. And, know you are not alone, even if you've never seen this in Inc Magazine.
Here's the basic formula for defining the attributes that define who your customer is.
- Age
- Income
- Location (GEO, Country, Region)
- Martial Status
- Pain points ("they are buying our product/service because....." (top three). Or: "motivators."
Once you have these issues defined then create a picture of this individual (this can be the "buyer" in the biz you are selling to) and throw it up on the wall.
Now, you know who you want to sell to in at least a "fill in the blanks" manner.
What kind of content do you need to attract this type of customer?
Content can be blog posts, videos, social media status updates, images, infographics. Just about anything your can write or create.
What does one single piece of marketing content cost and then run this analysis out via a spreadsheet or grease board.
How much content do you need to create to effectively reach some finite number of customers? And, where do you need to share the content across what digital platforms. Web, social, etc.
How do you focus your marketing expenditures to reach some finite number of customers.
You are still in the voodoo magic phase of developing a marketing budget at this point.
But, it gets easier as you move forward and just like any marketing process, iteration and refinement are critical success drivers.
If it's any consolation to you, these big billion dollar brands you read about can spend months on creating marketing budgets. Some take years, not that you can afford this luxury.
Half of the managers are looking at "historical" documents and legacy information and then working back from there.
Competitive analysis is pretty easy to do on the social web.
We use SpyFu to assess what, where and how a client's competitors are advertising.
This will give you another good datapoint for your SWOT analysis.
Also, your competitor's career pages will give you some sense for growth, what they are paying, where they are hiring, etc.
Every business has unique attributes. There is no magic formula for creating a one sizes fits all marketing budget.
Start with a 1.0 plan and move forward from there.
If you are hazy on some of the facts, then just work on a 90 day budget and refine it downstream.
It gets easier.
Related Posts on Marketing Strategy
"How Content Heroes and Heroines are Made Not Born"
"What I Learned About Social Media from Andy Warhol"
"How to Generate More Revenue and Lower Costs with the Cloud"
"Why Every Marketing Campaign Lives or Dies on this Foundation"
"Four Critical Marketing Strategies to Stand out in Today's Noisy World"
"Why so Many Web Site Designs are Lipstick on a Pig"
"How to Win Your Darwinian Digital Battles"
"The Ten Second Race to Content Nirvana"
"Ten Creative Ways to Use Lists for Content Curation"
"How to be a Mythic Content Whisperer"
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