The Average Cost of Advertising and Marketing for Small Businesses

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |cost of advertising |The Average Cost of Advertising and Marketing for Small BusinessesThe cost of marketing for small businesses depends on many factors.

Every small business should be allocating some of its resources to marketing, either digital or otherwise. If you don’t, you’re not giving your company the best chance to succeed.

Why? Because you’re not appealing to as many customers as possible. Today, we’re going to talk about the cost of advertising for the average small business.

It’s important to remember that every field is a little bit different. An auto mechanic will spend a different amount on advertising than a retail chain. Let us try and help you come up with a budget that you’re comfortable with so you can grow your business.

Percentage of Revenue

A small business will normally spend a certain percentage of their total revenue on marketing. This is called the “5% rule”. But, depending on what kind of business you have, how much revenue is coming in, and your goals, you can expect to pay between 4-12% of your total revenue.

Small businesses and companies that are just starting out tend to allocate more money towards marketing because they need to build their customer base. When you’re an established company, you can expect things like brand recognition and reputation to carry your sales numbers to an extent.

While this “rule” applies to the average small business, you don’t have to adhere to it. If you feel comfortable spending more on advertising and you’ve got a good marketing team in place, it can pay huge dividends. In the end, it’s up to you as the business owner to decide how much money you want to spend on advertising.

The Cost of Advertising: Where to Put Your Money

Deciding how much money to spend on advertising is one thing, but the more important part is figuring out what to spend your money on. In today’s (mostly) digital world, you’re probably going to want to allocate most of your marketing resources towards digital marketing.

While offline marketing practices are still effective in many ways, most businesses rely on an online approach to find new customers. The world of digital marketing is both huge and complicated, so you’ll need to do your research to learn the ins and outs.

Many companies end up hiring digital marketing firms like Elysium Marketing business marketing to deal with things like web development and search engine optimization. There are things you can do yourself on the cheap, like social media marketing and content creation, which are both integral parts of digital advertising.

How much money you put towards each platform depends on your business. Retail companies thrive on social media interaction, while those in the services find content marketing and SEO more valuable.

If you hire a marketing service, you can discuss your financial situation with them and come up with a specific plan to suit your business.

Advertise the Right Way to Make It Worthwhile

When you look at the grand scheme of things, the cost of advertising isn’t huge for most small businesses. If you do your marketing the right way, a small amount of money can generate a lot of capital through new and returning customers. Focus on putting the right money into the right things and watch your business grow.

Did you enjoy this post? Come back and visit us again at Strategy Driven to learn new ways to improve your approach to business.

How 3D visualization can be a key marketing strategy

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How 3D visualization can be a key marketing strategyMarketing is one of the top ways in which you can promote your business. Being able to create an effective marketing strategy can make or break your brand: a good one can bring in new customers, while a bad one can mean you’re being spoken about for all the wrong reasons.

You want to stand out from the crowd and also from your competitors, which can be tricky in itself. How can you do this? You could consider using the techniques that some of your rivals might not have, such as 3D vizualisation. This may become more common as technology evolves, so get ahead of the curve and see why you may want to use 3D visualization in your marketing strategy.

It’s a bit different

Although the novelty factor that is linked to an application will wear off over time, people will try to get the most out of it until then – and can end up with great results. This technology may still be relatively new, but more innovation will follow in time. So, start using this now and you will benefit from it in the long term.

It can help with 3D thinking

Your marketing may have been displayed as a two-dimensional interface – but now you can take this to a new level. People can now visualize your marketing in 3D, rather than just in 2D, and you will get a significant benefit from this. This could even include realistic 3D property CGI images.

You can use it in virtual tours and demonstrations

You have the chance to use new ways to engage, connect with and delight your customers by using 3D environments. With virtual tours, you have the opportunity to use immersive video experiences, especially in areas such as real estate, and other industries.

Having a 3D experience can help you put a customer inside or outside of a virtual sphere. Again, you have a great chance to demonstrate how a product can work or to show its benefits.

Use it in sales presentations

Sales teams are relying more and more on using items such as tablets and other mobile devices when presenting to customers. So, by using the capabilities of these items and 3D technology, you can help to present complex information in new ways. If you want, you also have the opportunity to make promotional games that give audiences a realistic experience of a product or service.

Avoid costly errors

In industries such as real estate, for example, you can use 3D visualization to help you to check any flaws on a model before you finalize any details. This means that you can view the result before the product is created, and any issues can be solved beforehand. You’ll be able to save money, resources and time by doing this.

You keep your clients happy

Being able to present a client with a virtual tour of their item will please them. They have the opportunity to see the interactive visual product before the structure is built. Designers can also benefit, as they can show customized building designs, and they can easily make changes at no extra cost.

How to Effectively Market Your Small Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Market your Small Business|How to Effectively Market Your Small BusinessWithout the proper marketing, most startups and small businesses will be doomed to fail. Making sure that your product or service falls on the right ears is a crucial part of any successful business plan.

However, with such an abundance of marketing techniques available, it is important that small business owners deploy the correct methods in order to maximize their return on investment.

Complete Your Market Research

Knowing your market is always the starting block for any marketing campaign. You need to identify who your customers are, where they are conducting their research and what’s influencing their decisions. A thorough market research should give you insights into customer thinking, buying patterns, location and initial sales forecasts.

This can in turn help you to monitor market trends and conduct detailed competitor analysis.

Profile Target Markets

The better you understand your target market, the better you will be able to market to them with relevant content and messaging on the right platforms. To maximize ROI and enjoy higher conversion rates, you need to avoid unnecessary exposure. Make sure you are putting out the right message to the right people by grouping or segmenting potential customers, and your existing database, based on key elements like:

  • Geography
  • Demographics: age, gender, education level, income, occupation
  • Behavior: loyalty, attitude, buying habits
  • Lifestyle: social class, personality, personal values

Isolate Your Unique Selling Proposition

A thorough competitor analysis should help you to identify what makes people buy your product or service rather than your competitors. Being known for a specific service will help you to steal a bigger chunk of the market share from larger competitors.

Decide on Your Marketing Avenues

With so many marketing strategies to choose from, it’s important for businesses to identify the best avenue for their business. From direct marketing to mobile, to social, your marketing platform should reflect your marketing goals as well as your target audiences, personality, budget, location and more.

Whether you are using business advertising to build brand awareness or social to improve lead generation, you will need a well-defined goal in order to ensure that you utilize the correct techniques for your audience. Uncovering your audience’s preferred communication channels and purchasing paths is also crucial in order to make an informed decision. Your marketing strategies should align with the when and where of your target audience.

It is also critical that you identify your marketing budget before deciding on your marketing avenue. Different avenues will have different costs associated, so it is key that you start off knowing exactly how much you have to spend in order to maximize ROI and look after the financial health of your business.

Consider your industry and look into the marketing efforts of your competitors. They may have already identified the best means for communicating with your target audience, and therefore be a useful resource.

Remember to keep testing and interpreting the results of all your marketing efforts. Only then can you know what’s working and whether it looks to stay that way.

How to Run a Social Media Campaign: A Guide for Beginners

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |how to run a social media campaign |How to Run a Social Media Campaign: A Guide for BeginnersEvery year, people continue to spend more time on social media. In 2019, the average person spent 2 hours and 23 minutes on social media every day.

If you’re selling any type of product or service, you need to know how to run a social media campaign if you want to get your brand in front of your customers.

Keep reading to learn more about building a social media plan that will help you reach a wider audience.

1. Create Goals for Your Campaign

Before you can run a social media campaign, you need to decide what your goals are for it. Do you want to sell a new product, increase brand awareness, or grow your email list?

Whatever the purpose is of your social media campaign, be sure to create goals that are specific, measureable, and achievable.

2. Select Platforms

The second step is to decide which social media platforms you’re going to use to reach your audience. This will determine how you create the content or ads since you want to optimize them for each platform.

Unless you have a huge marketing team in place, you’ll want to pick just two or three platforms for your campaign. This allows you to only focus on the platforms that will help you reach your goals.

StrategyDriven's Social Media Publication Timing Whitepaper


3. Check or Make a Social Media Style Guide

If you don’t already have one, now is the time to create a social media style guide. Make sure everything from your logo to your image sizes are well-defined for each platform you’re using.

4. Plan Your Content

Now it’s time to plan your content. Think about what you want to share to guide users down the sales funnel or to reach your goals for the campaign. Then, come up with a schedule of content that will help you accomplish that.

5. Set Your Budget

Possibly the easiest part of the planning process is to determine how much you’re willing to spend on your social media campaign. If you’re running ads, you can set a price per day or for the entire campaign.

6. Prepare Your Social Media Tools

You don’t want to end up scrounging around for tools at the last second once you’ve launched your campaign. For that reason, decide now what tools you’ll use for every part of the campaign process.

This could include:

  • A logo maker
  • Graphic design programs
  • Auto-scheduling software
  • Email list builder

Be sure to keep everyone on the same page, especially if you have more than one person creating visual content.

7. Get to Work!

All that’s left now is to start working on your social media campaign! You put in the preparation work, so now you just have to follow through with your plan and start creating and posting content.

Learn More About How to Run a Social Media Campaign

Now you know how to run a social media campaign. As you can see, it takes a great deal of preparation but is necessary if you want to get the best return on your investment.

To learn more about social media marketing and how to accelerate growth in your business, keep reading our blog. It’s filled with information you can use to make every marketing campaign more successful.

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website? A Guide on Web Design Prices

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |web design prices |How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website? A Guide on Web Design PricesDespite the fact that we’re all living in a digital world these days, there are still a lot of small businesses out there operating without a website.

In fact, studies have shown that about 50% of small businesses don’t have a website set up at the moment. This is likely having an impact on many of these businesses’ bottom lines by affecting their ability to generate income month in and month out.

One of the reasons why some business owners choose not to invest in a website for their company is because of their perceived web design prices. They’re often under the impression that a website is going to cost too much money to create.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you own a small business, you can get a website up and running without breaking the bank.

Before you take this leap, though, find out some of the factors that will impact how much a website will cost you. It’ll allow you to budget money wisely for creating a website.

Here are some of the things that can lead to web design prices going up or down.

What Is Your Website’s Domain Name Going to Be?

Before you can begin building a website for your business, you’re going to need to invest in a domain name for it. More often than not, your domain name is going to be your business name with “.com” on the end of it.

If this domain name is readily available, it shouldn’t cost you much money at all to snatch it up for your website. But there is a chance that someone might already own the rights to the domain name that you want.

If this turns out to be the case, you can:

  • Come up with a different domain name other than the one that you had in mind
  • Consider paying whoever owns the domain name that you want for the rights to it

Often times, business owners will go with the first option to avoid spending a small fortune on a domain name. But if you really want a domain name, you can make whoever owns it an offer.
Doing this will cost you more than you anticipated to spend. But it’ll be well worth it if you think that the domain name is going to help drive more traffic to your site.

Who Is Going to Host Your Website?

Buying the domain name that you want for your website is going to be the first expense you incur when creating a site for your business. Finding a website hosting service is going to be the expense that comes right behind it.

You’ll need a reliable website hosting service on your side to help you with all your hosting needs when you’re getting a site off the ground. They should have a great reputation for helping host small business sites.

You might have to pay a little extra to work with one of the best website hosting services in the business. But it’ll be worth it once you see the services that they’re able to extend to you while you’re in the process of setting your site up and updating it over time.

Is Your Website Going to Get a Custom Look?

Once you have a domain name for your website and a website hosting service on your side, it’ll be time to get down to business. You’ll be ready to start putting together plans for your actual site.

To do this, you’ll have the option of either:

  • Using a website template to create your site
  • Hiring a web designer to create a custom site from scratch

The first option is hands down, the better option for anyone on a tight budget. You’ll keep your web design prices low by going with a website template.

But the second one is great for those businesses that want to make their websites stand out. You can hire a website development company to bring each and every idea that you have for your site to life.

Who Is Going to Create Your Website?

If you decide that you’re going to hire a website development company to work on a custom site for you, the specific company you hire will affect your web design prices.

If you choose to hire a well-established company with a lot of web design experience, they’re going to charge you more than someone who just started designing websites last week. Consider a bunch of different options when looking for the right website development company.

The company that you bring on board to work on your website should have:

  • Plenty of experience in the website development industry
  • A long list of web design services
  • Lots of examples of sites they’ve developed in the past
  • Fair and affordable prices on the services they offer

It’s not a bad idea to call a handful of website development companies to get quotes for their services. It’ll help you keep your web design prices as low as you can.

How Many Different Pages Are Going to Be on Your Website?

There are some websites out there that have little more than a homepage and maybe an “About Us” page and a “Contact” page. These basic sites are easy to design and won’t cost much money to create.

But many times, businesses need their websites to have more than just those pages. They also need product pages, service pages, blog pages, and more set up. They want to be able to jampack their sites with all the necessary information.

If your website is going to need more than a few pages on it, it’s going to send your web design prices soaring. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t still create those pages. But you should be mindful of the fact that it’s going to impact the final cost of your site.

Is Your Website Going to Have Any Special Features?

With almost 1.8 billion websites on the internet today, you’re going to want to find ways to make your site stand out. That might mean adding a bunch of special features to your site to make it unique.

Some businesses are incorporating things like video into the mix on their websites these days. They’re finding that they’re able to get more traction with customers this way.

Other businesses are adding things like chatbots to their sites so that customers can connect with them in a hurry without picking up the phone. This is making it easier for many businesses to form bonds with their customers.

You don’t have to invest in these kinds of special features. But it’s worth looking into some of them to see how they might improve your site, even if they cause a slight bump in your web design prices.

Will Your Website Need to Have a Store Included on It?

Are you going to sell products and/or services to your customers through your website? If that’s your plan, you’re going to need to create a store that can accept payments from them.

Doing this isn’t anywhere near as complicated as it used to be. You can have a web designer build you a special section on your site where people will be able to order products and services from you.

But this will often come at an additional cost, especially if your web development company has to beef up your site’s security so that you can start taking online orders. You’ll need to make room in your budget for this particular aspect of your site.

Who Is Going to Be in Charge of Updating Your Site?

Once you have your website up and running, updating it is going to be of the utmost importance. If you don’t take the time to update your site, it’s going to take a toll on your site’s search engine optimization and make it hard for people to find it.

If you’re even the least bit web savvy, you should be able to handle updating your site on your own. You can add new content to it every so often to show Google and the other search engines that you’re on top of maintaining it.
But if you don’t have the time, energy, or patience to update your site, that will be another additional cost you’ll have to factor in. You may need to enlist the services of a company that specializes in beefing up the SEO of websites.

Don’t Let Web Design Prices Stop You From Creating a Website

Now that you know some of the factors that affect web design prices, you might feel overwhelmed by the costs associated with setting up a site. Don’t be!

You can get a website started in no time with a small investment on your part. You can then add to it over time as you see fit to make the costs that come along with owning a website more manageable.

A website will help your company do better business from now on. By spending a little bit of money on your site, you can get a great return on your investment.

Learn how to use a website to your advantage by reading through the other articles on our blog.