In a small business, one of the biggest marketing challenges is determining how much to budget for Marketing and how to allocate that budget across the main elements of the Marketing Mix.
A purist would start by defining the objective and then developing strategies to achieve that objective. The budget would be whatever it costs to execute the planned strategies. The problem with this is that very often the cost exceeds the value, so something has to give.
Either we need to find less expensive strategies that will still accomplish the objective, or we need to adjust the objective so it’s something we can afford. Usually it’s a combination.
We also need to consider each of the applicable elements of the traditional marketing mix, to be sure we’ve done both a macro and a micro examination of the budget needs. Areas for consideration may include: |