What Can I Do with a $10,000 Marketing Budget?

Before you do anything with your marketing dollars, you have to know where they’re going. Below is a breakdown of what you can do with a $10,000 marketing budget and how to get started.

Before You Spend Anything…

When you have money to spend on marketing and you’re trying to get more customers or clients, then you’re probably tempted to just jump right in. Don’t do that.

I repeat: Don’t do that. In fact, don’t spend a single dime of your marketing budget until you have a plan — or a strategy — in place! 

Don’t know how to do that? Start by doing this:

• Define who your customer is, including their interests, financial profile, challenges, motivations, locations they visit, web searches they perform, and any other psychographic characteristics you can get. The more you know, the better.
• Define the purchase process so you know what you want customers to do when they see your ad messaging. If they decide they’re interested in your product or service, what’s the next step they should take? Lead them there.
• Aggregate any data you have, such as email lists and pixels related to website activity.
• Analyze your existing customers and understand how long it took them to purchase, why they purchased, the challenges they solved when they purchased from you, the order size, and whether they were happy with their purchase. Look at how they transacted.
• Decide if you have time or money. Which is more abundant? If it’s time, then you’ll move slower and spend less money. If it’s money, you’ll move faster and spend more money.

The mistake many businesses make with marketing is that they jump in without a strategy in place. That is a surefire way to fail, and if you’re spending your marketing dollars all wrong, you might as well be lighting every single dollar on fire, and that is the last thing you want to do.

When you know where to put your marketing dollars, you can get a positive ROI.

Use all of the above information to make some decisions, like:

• Who should you target?
• How do you target them?
• What can you expect when the marketing is implemented?
• How do you know if you’re succeeding or failing after all your hard work?

If you try something and it doesn’t work, that’s okay. Try again. 

No matter what the results are, they can always be better. So make sure that, regardless of the outcome, you learn more about your business so you can get better results next time.

With your ideal customer in mind, think about:

• the kind of imagery that works
• the type of messaging that works
• the sort of marketing that works
• the formats that are best for your business
• and the critical factors that drive success

When it comes to your marketing budget, here’s a general rule:

If you have time, you should focus on value-driven content marketing (like blogs and newsletters).

If you have money, you should focus on advertising (like pay-per-click ads and social media ads).

Once you’ve done all of this, pay close attention to your marketing because, when it’s done right, it can change the course of your business. See what’s not working, notice what is working, and then build from there.

So... What Exactly Would I Do with a $10,000 (per month) Marketing Budget?

I realize that I haven't directly answered the question yet. So, to appease the marketing directors, CMOs, entrepreneurs, and whoever else that may be researching how to spend their marketing budgets, here is the marketing mix I would default to regardless of niche, vertical, transaction type, or product.

This plan will ensure your product or service is easily found online, no matter where they are in your funnel. We all shop the same: meandering, direction-less, emotional decisions at various times on multiple devices.

Disclaimer: This pricing is based on what Business Builders would charge for the service on a monthly basis. Details on pricing here.

Local SEO - $500

Reasoning - Always start with SEO (search engine optimization). I've specified Local SEO because it can often yield results much faster than a national plan (i.e "Home Remodeling Boston" vs just "home remodeling"). If your business can dominate the SERPs (search engine results pages) for your audience's searches, you will win the marketing game. A good SEO campaign is about three things: visibility, relevancy, and authority.

Content Creation Pro - $1850

Reasoning - This is an extension of the SEO plan, but needs to be budgeted for because of how much work is involved with planning, creating, repurposing, and distributing great content. Great content helps with the "authority" piece of a good SEO campaign. The content created also gets cross-posted to social channels. This way brands can build their social following and community.

PPC Pro - $1250 (with $3000 ad spend)

Reasoning - A strong Google Ads campaign can offer immediate results and ROI for your brand. You're basically paying Google to be at the top of the SERPs for your audience's search intent. This helps with visibility in the short term if you're missing on ranking for important keywords. Also, ROI is usually very straightforward to track. Copy (the written words) and landing page quality are the keys to success here.

Social Ads Starter - $750 (with $2000 ad spend)

Reasoning - An effective paid ad campaign on the big social networks can drive huge results no-matter the KPI. Brand awareness, lead generators, and retention can all be accomplished with a strong Facebook or LinkedIn ad campaign. Again, creative and copy are both key here.

Email Marketing Pro - $500

Reasoning - Nothing beats selling to a warm audience. That's exactly what email marketing is, especially as your company grows its email list. Friendly persistence wins. If you're in your customer's inbox providing helpful and brief emails, you'll often get picked. Make it easy and stay top of mind, no matter what part of the buyer's journey your customer is in.

Performance Website Maintenance - $179

Reasoning - Your website is going to need updates. New pop-up forms and landing pages will need to be created to meet your campaign needs so your marketing efforts pay off. All of this takes time and money. Don't forget to include this in your budget!

Total: $10,029/ mo. Close enough. ;)

Make Your Marketing Work

At Business Builders, we recommend you always start with your messaging — specifically, messaging that’s built using the StoryBrand Framework. Why begin there when there are so many other things you can do? It’s simple. Your messaging is the foundation of all your other marketing efforts. When your messaging makes sense, everything else falls into place, and you’ll start seeing a positive ROI in no time.

If you could use a little help getting your messaging right, sign up for a blueprint with our team of industry experts. You’ll be glad you did!