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Do you see marketing as an investment for your business, or as more of an expense?  

If you have attended one of my marketing workshops or seen me do a presentation, you’ll know this is something I say a lot. “No one built a successful business with leftover time or leftover budget!” 

This is something that is massively important to understand when you’re running your own business. If you waited until you had some spare time to work on marketing your business, would you actually get anything done? 

Maybe you’d get a little bit done, here and there – but it wouldn’t be carefully planned. Therefore, it wouldn’t be structured to reach your business goals. If you’re doing your marketing when spare time comes up, it’s not going to be terribly successful. 

Instead you need to allocate time in your diary. Time when you will work on marketing your business and time in which you will work towards your goals. This will help ensure you will have a more successful business and marketing campaign that will help grow your business. 

If we now look at using leftover money to pay for our marketing – do, we ever really have any leftover budget as business owners? Very rarely! 

As business owners, we are always reinvesting in our business to do bigger and better things. Things like paying bills, paying ourselves and paying our employees a wage. We usually have the money for this as it is seen as important. Yet somehow a budget is rarely set aside for marketing, as a budget for salary and bills is. 

If you set aside a budget each month for your marketing, and used this solely to invest in your marketing, you would quickly see marketing as an investment in helping you build a successful business. 

Lots of companies see marketing as an expense. They choose to only spend money on marketing when it is absolutely necessary, and they need more sales. As a result, companies like this look to minimise the cost as much as possible. 

Some business owners prefer to spend money on things they feel they need to run a business. This includes the purchasing of new equipment or the hiring of new employees for example. However, with a mindset like this it can be easy to miss the bigger picture. 

It’s simple really – without new customers and sales, you may not have a business. Marketing is an investment in your business that will help bring in new customers and sales. 

Those companies that view marketing as an investment understand that if they want to grow their business, they need to continually invest in the creation of new leads and new customers. They put a marketing budget together and that is to be used purely on marketing and will help grow the business successfully. 

 

Perceived Value of Marketing vs Cost of Marketing 

Successful business owners know and understand that the value of an effective marketing plan goes way beyond its cost. An effective marketing plan will help your business grow. It also works to get all your team and people you outsource to, on the same page. Everyone knows that goal, and they are all working towards it.  

The common place for improvement in many businesses is sales. Businesses want to increase their sales, and this can be done through an investment in marketing. Studies show that businesses that have developed a marketing plan and have a marketing budget grow 30% faster. The research also shows that 71% of fast-growing businesses set aside time to plan! 

 

Marketing Expectations 

Some business owners have unrealistic expectations of marketing. They have tried marketing before and feel it didn’t work because they wanted results at once. However, this often isn’t the case with marketing. Todays buyers have all the tools they need at their fingertips to shop around, research and compare. Consumers often won’t buy from one marketing ‘touch.’ Instead, it takes time to build up that trust, so they feel like they know you and your business and want to buy from you. 

Some companies feel like their marketing efforts should be similar to sprint. However, the most effective marketing plans are actually more like a marathon. This is why marketing for businesses needs to be seen as an investment. By blending high-quality content marketing plans with other tools such as social media or printed media, you can create a powerful integrated approach that will give you a long-lasting impact. 

 

The Impact of Not Seeing Marketing as An Investment 

Today, in this online world, companies can’t afford NOT to invest in marketing and see marketing as an investment. If you want your business to grow successfully you need to have an effective marketing plan.  

Not investing in marketing for your business keeps your business where it is now. In the same place, with no new prospects. You’ll have a business model that no longer works. On top of that you will have your overhead expenses such as rent, business rates, staff wages and depreciating assets that aren’t going away. 

Worst case scenario, you’ll have a business that is close to going under. Sadly, this is a common case as businesses don’t focus enough of their time or budget on marketing and sales but focus on new equipment or new employees instead. 

 

If you are ready to see marketing as an investment for your business, call us now. We can help create a marketing plan for your business and help your business grow successfully.