One of the most common conflicts with small business owners in the GTA comes when they are supposed to allocate a budget for the marketing efforts in their company. There are no two ways to put it, marketing is one of the most important functions of any company. It’s how you expand your business and earn more revenue.
However, most of the GTA business owners are confused as to how to do it. As per a common rule of thumb by the BDC, a B2B company should invest anywhere between 2-5% of their annual revenue into their marketing efforts. As a Business owner in the GTA are you doing that?
Pre Budget-Planning
First things first, know your target audience. Who is it that you what to reach through your marketing effort? Set a clear picture of it. What is the age that you want to target? What are their demographics? What are their likes and dislikes? Remember, when targeting a local area, hyper personalization is the key to your success.
Secondly, Set a clear marketing goal in your mind. What exactly do you want as a result of your marketing efforts. Do you want more website traffic? More social media engagement? And more leads of course. At the end of the day everything that you do through your marketing efforts is to get more leads and more revenue.
Budget Allocation
A BDC survey of more than 1400 Canadian businesses, small businesses’ marketing cost average at around $30000 a year. While those with 29-50 employees spend nearly $60000 on marketing annually. However, this is subjective. As discussed earlier, let’s apply the common rule of thumb of 2-5% of the revenue.
Assuming you generate a gross revenue of 1.5-2 Million Canadian Dollars, you should be spending anywhere between $30000 – 50000 in your marketing efforts.
| Gross Revenue | 1.5-2 Million | 2-10 Million | Over 10 Million |
| Average Marketing Budget | $30,000 – $50,000 | $50,000 – $80,000 | Over $1,000,000 |
This rule of thumb also checks out in the BDC survey of 1400 Canadian businesses.
How to spend your marketing budget?
Now you have a clear idea how much you should be investing in your marketing efforts. You must set a clear plan of where you will spend that budget. In today’s digital landscape the majority of every small company’s marketing budget goes into online marketing. Here are a few online marketing channels and you as a business owner has to decide what weighs more importance for your business so you can allocate your budget into these channels smartly and strategically.
1. Website
Everyone is aware of how your website is your online storefront. It is where your target audience can reach out to you 24/7. Therefore, as a small business owner you need to make sure your online storefront is updated and attractive to pull in traffic.
2. Social Media
People of all age demographics use social media. Leveraging the power of social media can be your biggest advantage. However, make sure you know which social media channel is more beneficial for you and focus on that more than other channels.
3. Email Marketing
On average email marketing is known to pull in revenue of $36 for every $1 spent. That stat alone makes it impossible for any marketer to look beyond it.
4. LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn is the go-to platform when it comes to marketing of B2B companies. Your customers are actively looking for valuable information and business solutions on LinkedIn, make sure they find you there.
These are a few of the channels you can think about investing in. Remember, in the field of marketing nothing is concrete. The landscape changes regularly and so should your marketing efforts.
