There are plenty of places you could spend your marketing dollars. Social media. Print advertising. Sponsorships. Email. Events. Direct mail. And whatever new marketing opportunity lands in your inbox next week.
But how do you decide which ones are actually worth your time and money?
When you're figuring out how much a small business should spend on marketing, there isn't one magic number or one marketing channel that works for every business.
The better place to start is with a few questions: Who are you trying to reach? What are you trying to accomplish? And what makes sense for your business?
Here’s how we think through those decisions at The Brandstalk…
1. A Brand Persona Helps You Decide Where to Put Your Marketing Energy
Before you decide where to market your business, you need a clear picture of who you're trying to reach.
One way to do that is by creating a brand persona: a fictional person who represents the ideal customer for your business. This is the person who loves what you offer and, in a perfect world, happily spends all their disposable income with you. (We can dream.)
At The Brandstalk, one of our brand personas is Doug. We know what kind of business Doug owns, what challenges he's facing, and what matters to him. This gives us a filter when we're evaluating marketing opportunities.
Should we advertise in Teton Magazine? Ask: Would Doug read it?
Should we spend time marketing on Facebook? Ask: Does Doug use Facebook?
Should we sponsor a particular event? Ask: Is Doug likely to be there?
Instead of asking whether your business should be using a particular marketing channel, ask whether it's a good way to reach the person you actually want as a customer.
The next time you're considering a marketing opportunity, ask yourself:
Is my ideal customer here?
Is this something they pay attention to?
Does it make sense for how they make purchasing decisions?
Your persona helps you decide whether a marketing channel belongs on the shortlist.
2. Your Business Goals Help Determine How Much You Should Spend on Marketing
How much should a small business spend on marketing?
One common way to establish a marketing budget is to dedicate a percentage of your revenue to marketing. As a general rule of thumb, a small business can plan to spend about 1–3% of their revenue on marketing.
But a percentage is only one way to approach the decision. Another is to start with what you actually want your marketing to accomplish.
A brand-new business trying to get its name out into the community may need to spend more, in more places, than an established business whose customers already know it well.
An established business may have something even more useful: experience.
Let's say you sell widgets and you already know that spending approximately $X on a certain type of marketing tends to produce $Y in sales. Now you want to sell a million more widgets. Your past results give you information you can use to estimate what it might take to reach the new goal.
The important part is that you're not choosing a marketing budget simply because someone told you what percentage you're "supposed" to spend or what’s on trend. You're connecting the investment to what you're trying to accomplish.
3. Every Marketing Channel Should Have a Specific Job
Before you put time or money into a particular channel, ask:
What do we want people to do because of this?
You might want your marketing to:
Get more people through the door.
Introduce your business to people who don't know you yet.
Promote a particular product, service, sale, or event.
Remind existing customers to come back.
Help customers discover something else you offer.
Keep your business recognizable and top of mind.
Different marketing efforts can also work together.
An ad might get someone into your store. Once they're there, signage can introduce them to another product or encourage them to make an additional purchase. The ad and the sign have different jobs, but they're working toward the same larger business goal.
4. Evaluate to help You Decide What to Do Again…Or Not
Once you know what you want people to do, think about how you are going to measure success.
Did more people come into the store? Did the promoted product sell? Did customers mention seeing the ad? Did more people attend the event? Did people respond to the offer?
Not every marketing result will be perfectly trackable, but if something seems to be working, that's useful information for the next marketing decision. Over time, your own results can become far more valuable than a generic list telling you which marketing channels your business "should" be using.
5. Your Marketing Budget Can Follow Best Practices AND Your Own Rules
Marketing benchmarks can give you a place to start, but they don't have to make the final decision for you.
Maybe you're in your first year of business and you've decided you're willing to invest a much larger percentage of your revenue in marketing because getting your name out there quickly is important to you.
Maybe your business is established, you're happy with its current growth, and you have no desire to increase your marketing budget simply because an industry benchmark says you could.
The Brandstalk calls this marketing by feel.
That doesn't mean closing your eyes, pointing at an advertising rate sheet, and hoping for the best. It means considering the numbers, your goals, your customers, and then asking another perfectly legitimate question: what feels right for our business?
Your desire for growth, available time and budget, and priorities all matter.
Know the best practices. Understand your goals. Look at the information you have. Then make the decision that fits your business.
6. A Marketing Strategy Turns All Those Decisions Into a Plan
Brand personas. Marketing channels. Goals. Budgets. Past results. Revenue percentages. Ads. Social media. Signage.
If your brain has started to feel a little jumbled, you're not alone.
Small-business and non-profit marketing can quickly turn into a collection of disconnected decisions: Should we advertise here? Should we post there? How much should we spend? Is this working? Should we be doing more?
A strategic marketing plan can help you organize those questions. You don't have to have every answer before you start. But you do want your marketing decisions to connect to each other and to the long-term goals of your business.
If your marketing currently feels more tangled than thriving, The Brandstalk can help you sort through the options, decide where your marketing energy and budget belong, and create a plan that makes sense for your business.
Is your marketing working? is it enough? And should you still be doing it yourself?
With everything else you're juggling as a small business owner or nonprofit leader, it’s easy for marketing to slip to the bottom of the to-do list. This quick 9-minute decision guide helps small business owners figure out whether it's time to bring in marketing support (or not).
You’ll walk away with:
• A simple way to evaluate your current marketing efforts
• Clarity on whether you should keep doing it yourself or bring in help
• A better understanding of what marketing support actually looks like
let’s grow something together
We help small businesses and nonprofits clarify messaging, strengthen positioning, and bring consistency to their marketing so every touchpoint reinforces the same clear story. Do you need help with your homepage headline? Give The Brandstalk a call to talk about Copywriting and other Marketing Services.
