“You have to spend money to make money.”
Mailing and printing services are an imperative company expense that is easy to overlook when creating your fiscal calendar for the year. Why are these services essential to your business’ success? Because, they’re great MARKETING tools! In an earlier blog we wrote (Direct Mail vs E-mail), we talked about how direct mail still makes a huge impact in marketing and that you can’t just rely on email and internet networking. Social Media can only go so far.
And, guess what? Ads that you run in newspapers, magazines, direct mail campaigns, brochures, flyers, car wraps, catalogs, give-away items like pens aren’t free as well as production costs.
How do you make a marketing budget for mailing and printing for a WHOLE year?
The first step is to review 2015. How did you do managing your finances in 2015? Hopefully you did well, but there is always room for improvement. If something didn’t really work for you, cut out that cost and focus on something that did. If you really like sending brochures, but car wraps were a bust – cut car wraps out and spend more money on brochures. Also, if something like catalogs are really working for you, invest more money and increase the margin of success. Shift the money around as needed.
You do not have to set an exact monetary amount like $1,000 for marketing. A popular method that works especially well for a smaller business is to use a percentage of your sales towards marketing. On average, 39% of small businesses use about three to six percent of sales on marketing and 40% less. Newer businesses tend to have to calculate a higher percentage into their budget because they haven’t established a name, brand or audience yet.
Free template and downloads: http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/budgeting/create-marketing-budget
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