Marketing: How Much Will It Cost… Marketing: How Much Will It Cost…

If you are looking to work out your marketing budget and aren’t sure where to set your expectations, consider this: demand, competition, and timeframe for success will largely determine how much effort (time and money) you need to commit.

If we know there is high demand for the product or service, and we are targeting a small area with little competition, and our timeframe for success is conservative, then our marketing budget could be relatively low.

[Note that if we consider the likelihood that the competition will come, and they will, we could circumvent this risk by using marketing to innovate/reinforce our brand and standing in the community, and increase our social good and general value to the marketplace to insulate ourselves against the competition, but that’s a post for another day. Foxtel did this terribly. Uber (ride share anyway) did this reasonably well in Australia.]

The other measure to consider is, how genuinely important is the outcome? Work, time, stress, complications, and risk may overwhelm the purpose.

If we know there is at least reasonable demand for the product or service, and we are targeting a large area with a lot of competition, and our timeframe for success is aggressive, then our marketing budget will be very high.

[Masters did not do this well. Elon Musk, as a personal brand, did, up until the Twitter acquisition…]

If a cane-toad extraction solution came to fruition in Far North QLD that will exhume all cane toads from the region inside ten years, their marketing budget could be very low, in fact, they could almost wholly rely on the councils doing the marketing for them (though they shouldn’t – own your own marketing, it’s your story after all). A unique service, huge demand, modest region size, and conservative timeframe means that marketing can succeed at a relatively low effort.

If an accounting firm wanted to dominate the Australian market inside five years with offices throughout the country, their marketing budget would be upwards of $hitloads. A hugely competitive industry, large region to dominate, and an aggressive timeframe means that for marketing to succeed, a relatively large effort is essential.

The other measure to consider is, how genuinely important is the outcome? Work, time, stress, complications, and risk may overwhelm the value of the purpose. This can be enough to hijack the plans for growth and render any marketing spend as “too much” regardless of what it actually is.

The best way to find out what marketing costs is to find a marketing team who you think you can work with, and allow them to help you refine your purpose or target into a flexible plan that matches your objective (or even help you understand the practicalities of your objective in more detail… another post for another day). Once you have this, adjustments can be made until a model is reached that suits timeframes, budgets, and outcomes.