This is a simple easy-to-use Marketing Budget calculator for Small & Medium businesses.
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A few days ago I bought a brand new blazer
Back at home, my wife, checking the credit card statement, asked me,
What, you bought a new blazer ah, are you going to get married or what?
Like any husband, with all sincerity, I answered “no ma, I am attending a lot of events. Blazer is important to improve my personal branding “
Wives are wives; they don’t get convinced by husbands’ answer
My wife replied, ” If it is branding, why don’t you do it as an official expense? Why use your personal cash”
A right question, of course. I don’t use blazers for personal purposes, it’s only for business use. Then why should I put them in my budget?
This made me think, are our marketing expenses are budgeted?
Some yes and most times no
My belief is we business owners are sticking to good old methods in calculating our marketing budget.
In 1995 when I was a newcomer to marketing, marketing budgets are simple, for smaller companies, it’s just 3x of the salesperson’s salary. For bigger companies, the measurement is whether the TV or newspaper Ad has improved sales.
That’s it
But today the marketing landscape is complex. There are at least a minimum of 50 channels to reach your customers.
The biggest problem for entrepreneurs is to find which channel is working
All your marketing channels and activities are a waste of time & money unless they contribute to revenue.
One of my friends spent enormous time and money on networking forums which doesn’t give him the right returns.
One of our clients had a huge spend on Facebook ads, which resulted in overwhelming clicks and responses. The telesales team had a tough time converting the lead to a sale. The conversion ratio is too poor, and not worth the money. At some point, we realized and decided to stop.
But this is a one-off isolated activity. We pulled out after noticing some events, but is there a way we could get a collective view of our marketing speed and efforts.
Here is a simple attempt to start with. We have a custom-made Marketing Budget calculator for Small & Medium businesses, which has all the essential marketing elements of an SME owner to deal with; right from websites, to networking events to digital marketing, at least we have covered 80 line items. So that you can have complete visibility of the budget here.
But this is only the first step in the marketing campaign. The trickiest part is measuring the outcome of the marketing program, which is not straightforward., We will see how to calculate the ROI in our upcoming blog, but right now, let’s start the budget calculation.
How to use the sheet:
Step 1: Download the excel sheet and save a local copy
Step-2: we locked the cells for standard well-known channels. If you want to add a new line item click only the rows which mention “others”
Step-3 input your budget numbers for the entire year you will get the annual budget rounded off; keep taking it till it justifies your sales goals.
Also, refer to the second sheet for a graphical view of the budget.
If you have all done it, that’s the first step to success in marketing, once you complete the budget planning, the next step is You should know what is contributing to revenue directly or indirectly, what is working, and what needs to be stopped.
The ultimate aim of this exercise is:
You don’t have to waste your hard-earned money on a marketing channel that doesn’t work
You do not have to struggle with marketing. Once you have clear measurements in place, it is easier to track which channel is paying back and which one is not giving enough returns.
Start right away. I assure you feel confident about your marketing. You are in control. Naturally, you will succeed.
Are you looking for the right partner who has done multiple campaigns? Call on us, we are here to help.
