Business Owners Need Marketing Budgets

Marketing budgets are one of the leading issues for newbie entrepreneurs and business owners.

Why?

Most of them don’t have a marketing budget. When I speak with potential clients, one of my questions is: Do you have a budget for marketing? Most of the replies are, “No!”

After you’ve paid all of your expenses, take a portion of your left-over amount to use towards ad spend.

Please allow me to explain further.

Your budget for online marketing can be as low as $50 to $100. For instance, I started with Facebook and Instagram ads with a $100 budget.

And, don’t forget you should have conducted market research before setting up any ads.

Being a beginner ad spender, it’s imperative that you start small and increase your budget little by little.

Marketing ads require testing. Please keep this in mind. It’s better to test with smaller budgets until you get stronger in ad copy.

The next issue for people who don’t have money is where actually to advertise. This is very important because the third leading reason why businesses fail is that of lack of marketing and advertising.

Marketing Budgets Help Increase Your Brand Awareness

Yes, you do need a small budget minimal budget, and I’m talking about if you can handle $100 per month you will do yourself great with this.

When I started in the business, my budget was $400 per month. I made my first $10k the first month and then saw a decline.

Here is why I saw a decline in March, April, and May. I didn’t adequately put myself out there. One thing about marketing and advertising is this you must be everywhere!

Let me say that again you must be everywhere! This very very very very important. I cannot emphasize this enough.

If you do not have $100 that you can spare for a marketing and advertising budget, then please do me a favor, go and look around your house and begin to sell items.

This is what I did to maintain my budget once it dropped to $100. I sold all of my school books. Three degrees and being an avid reader gave me hundreds of books that were sitting on my shelf. It was easy to sell these books and make about $430 from them. I stretched the $430 over four and a half months.

Should you use this method, which I highly advise, do not touch the money for anything else. Try not to apply it to anything personal because you need this money for your advertising and marketing budget.

Also, sell old clothes your not wearing to stores like The Clothes Mentor, Uptown Cheapskate, Plato’s closet and dozens of online places including Craigslist, OfferUp, eBay, etc.

I sold lots of old garments and earned $50 to $100. You may be thinking, Jacqueline that’s not a lot of money. But I’m trying to help you understand that I made $50 more selling clothes and items versus to the business owner who’s not making even $5 a per day on a piece of costume jewelry.

Do what you have to do by any means necessary without touching the main pot or account in your house. I sold things that sat idle, taking up space.

Look around your house. Be creative. Sell something. Be relentless; trust me it works!

I knew we’d never use them or wear them again. This isn’t anything new under the sun. Many experts sell their items to get ahead in their business.

So, what I’m suggesting is that for every penny you earn something to capitalize on your business.

If you want your business to work and get exposure, you must do this.

Use your small budget primarily on Facebook and Instagram ads. Also, grow my page using Facebook ads. It works! You’ll see a lot of traffic coming your way from $100. At times, you’ll pay under $100 because you get the traffic needed to make the $100 work.

Marketing requires your brand, product and or service to be everywhere.

Share! Share! Share on all of your Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Twitter posts, and Snapchat posts. Wherever you are on social media, be sure to share your content, services and your product everywhere!

Posting about your business on social media is free and should be apart of your marketing strategy.

I mentioned earlier that I earned $10k my first month in business. This amount is possible to achieve. Although others suggest that it takes 30 days, 90 days, or up to 36 months, you can scale up pretty quickly. It all depends on your product, service and marketing strategy.

Here’s one strategy I used to earn my first $10k. I did make this amount with a warm lead.

Now, this is possible with cold leads. I know of many experts who cold sell with Facebook Ads and close with high ticket clients. However, their ad spend is higher than what you may be ready to handle.

Initially, it’s best to begin a conversation with your warm lead. Send a simple email or instant message with something like,

“Hey! I understand your intentions and passion for your business. I now work with owners to help with _________.

You want to serve your customers with so much value, and I believe that my company has many solutions to push your business to the next level.

Would you consider having a conversation to speak more about this?”

These words are a guide for you to tweak, or just flat out use them.

Don’t use savvy business language.

Speak more personally–as if it were a regular conversation inquiring about how their business is going.

It’s ok to be vulnerable and make them aware of your new start (if you’re starting out). After you send this message, I guarantee you’ll get a response.

Conclusion

Here’s an important point I forgot to mention.

Send this message to 15 warm leads. Warm leads are people you already know and or may have held conversations with previously. Don’t charge less than $1k. Always, always keep your prices in the $1k range. No favors. No discounts. Stick with your worth and price point.

Images courtesy of Pixabay