When you meet a smart marketing sales person and they give you the numbers, the millions they have on social media, their monthly traffic, their ad clicks, banners views etc. You are led, if they are any good, to believe you only need a tiny fraction of their billions of views to contact you to get a sale, this is the way marketers have been selling for decades, you are forgiven for not asking, but you should ask:

BUT WILL ANY OF THESE BIG NUMBERS GET ME ANY SALES????

The most prolific offering any sales person can give that will hardly ever come against an objection to handle is ‘Try Before you buy’ There is no pain factor for the buyer, so it is a ‘slam dunk’ deal every time!

The caveat here is; what does it cost the vendor selling the service to give away free stuff?

Well a lot more than it costs to do mud at the wall marketing, and with more and more website and two thirds of the world on the internet the wall of noise is louder than ever.

We have as a digital media marketing business, over 300,000 people on targeted groups and pages on all the top social media platforms that we have diligently growing and nurturing since 2008, however even we struggle to be heard for any messages we post and have to pay now to get above the others on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, it costs more and more each year, it is definitely getting to a saturation point.

You also need a PhD in social economics to understand the way people think and to split test so many posts and pages to get ahead. Do you have the time? and with you average 200 friends on Facebook and maybe the average 500 contacts on LinkedIn, what chance has the average business got doing their own advertising?

Then someone comes along and says how about you forget about all the marketing and pay only when people appear at your door? What’s that worth to you as a business?

Well if we go on the average spend on Facebook advertising across the board of 5,000 (five thousand) U.S.D a month, well it does if you are a serious business person!

Another way of budgeting for marketing is:

The 5% Rule

To understand the recommendation, first, let’s define ‘marketing budget.’ Your marketing budget refers to all costs for marketing, advertising, public relations, promotions and anything else you might blanket under that very wide-cast net called ‘marketing’ on a day-to-day basis: for example, Google Ad Words, social media, print ads, sponsorships, collateral and even tastings.

As you’ll see below, the ideal budget depends on your current marketing foundations. BUT, as a general rule based on the latest research, expert opinions and years of marketing experience, we say:

You should spend 2–5% of your sales revenue on marketing.

Then there is the research done some time back that suggested one new client to your business is worth 2,000 U.S.D. taking into consideration all your costs, your expos, marketing on all the mediums its not far off that.

So, with social media costs and client acquisition costs it would be fair to say one new client who becomes loyal to your business is costing you say $3,000!

Added to all this is reaching out to your loyal customers on a regular basis through various mediums, brochures through the door, Google ads, Facebook ads, time blogging and sharing, and time is money!

So, back to the pain of marketing;

What if we could drive people to physically turn up at your shop or office and ask for your services, thereafter your clients get reminded every day through your own branded app, see your offers every day, find new targeted clients through offers that you create in the app, and be able to message your customers by email directly every month, what would you pay for such a service?

Be prepared to be shocked