Your Marketing Budget Is Not About Money

Web-Feet spends countless days working with clients on developing their marketing budget.

We also work with business owners who want to grow their business through marketing. We can happily say that it is a 20 / 80 mix of business owners understanding what they get for their marketing budget.

In the world of marketing, we have seen many times marketers who submit a marketing budget to their manager without any explanation and then wonder why it gets rejected.

We have learned a pretty effective process, while there are no guarantees, increases the chances of getting marketing money approved. I will share the process with you.

Money Doesn’t Matter.

Don’t make the budget about the money. Presenting the budget and asking for approval is like walking into a shopping mall and a store associate asking you for $100 before telling you what they are selling.

Marketers need to put their sales hat on before walking into a marketing budget meeting. As a marketer, what do you intend to deliver to the business in exchange for a budget? Simply saying that you can’t do your job without a budget is weak, and you need to reevaluate whether marketing is the right career choice for you.

My marketing budgets are derived from a marketing plan which is derived from business goals. It’s these goals that I am selling.

An example of goals Web-feet have “pitched” include:

• Marketing will consistently deliver a minimum of 70 sales-qualified-leads within four months of launching lead generation campaigns.
• Marketing will launch a website for new product X by June 1, 20XX.
• Marketing will generate 40 customer reviews on reputable third party websites within the first six months of the fiscal year.

We make sure the goals are always marketing goals because that is what the marketing budget pays for. Some marketers think they need to deliver sales, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Can You Achieve The Results?

Once you finally break it through to them of what the pitch is and how they will achieve results you got to be able to make the magic.

Entrepreneurs are curious people and for good reason. They strive to understand how things work. Business owners will not trust new staff, and I agree. Marketers need to earn trust and respect.

This is where you whip out your high-level marketing calendar that is very clearly organised and presented. When the questions come be prepared to defend your position with details.

Cost?

Finally, it’s time to disclose the price tag. There is a strategy to this and so don’t just go and blurt out the bottom line figure.

When selling your pitch you want to make sure that you ease into this and not just smash out a big number to scare a person away, like a bold price on buying a car?

The same concept applies when presenting your marketing budget. Your initial presentation should be a monthly expense, not the annual cost. This will make it much easier for business owners to swallow and increase your chances of getting the budget approved.

Approved? No?!

If the owner isn’t buying just yet, then tie your marketing budget to sales and monitor it on a monthly basis. If the sales numbers are dropping, then agree to decrease the marketing spend accordingly. This is simply a check to ensure things don’t get out of control.

If compromising doesn’t work and you can’t agree on a budget, then you need to decide if you simply want a job, or you want a career. If all you want is a job, then stick around and do what you can for the company.

In Summary.

As a marketer, you need to keep a good grasp on what is realistic. Generating a $500k budget when company revenue is $250k isn’t going to fly. Keep your budget in perspective otherwise your manager will go home from work wondering why you were hired.

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