The beginning of a new year is a great time to reflect on last year’s company’s marketing budget so you can increase your sales for 2020. First, we should ask ourselves: Why do we need a marketing budget in the first place? The answer is: Isn’t spending a small amount of money to advertise to your company’s target demographic to gain a lifetime/repeat customer always worth it? Yes, it is!
Assigning a yearly budget for your marketing plan might feel overwhelming and out of your wheelhouse, but it’s crucial for your business. You need to trim the fat on your budget and redistribute it to where it will help the most. A big part of that should be in promotional products, which include branded apparel such as t-shirts, jackets, hats, bags, pens, mousepads, tumblers and more. Promotional giveaways are the most affordable way to advertise your company and get the biggest bang for your buck.
The first step in reanalyzing your marketing budget is to look at last year as a whole. Take a hard look at where your budget went last year. Look at your return on investments and what marketing ideas paid off the most and why. Then focus on the next step and how you can follow-up on that success for 2020.
To do this, create a spreadsheet that includes all of your marketing spendings from last year. When that is complete, add in the dates when you purchased promotional products, when you distributed them, and your return on investment.
Next, we need to outline our sales process. We need to figure out how your customers found your company. What the knowledge they needed to obtain before they bought your product. Then what were some of the major constituents that contributed to their final decision in purchasing?
The next step is probably the hardest, which is setting your goals. You need to ask yourself how much revenue you will need for the following year. How many sales are required to meet cover that goal. Finally, you need to know many customers you will need to get those sales.
Always as a general rule of thumb, you also need to do a little snooping on your competition. We need to figure out who our major competitors are and how are they marketing themselves. Once that is done, we need to make a plan and see what would work best for our company.
With all this information, you can now build your marketing budget and you should have an idea of what you need to do for the upcoming year. If you still need help, meet with one of our Logo Depot sales representatives. Click here to see their profiles.
These representatives can navigate you through the overwhelming amount of promotional products that Logo Depot offers. They will assist you by showing you items that will best represent your company’s image and brand. They can show you new 2020 products, traditional items that have stood the test of time, and anything in-between. We hope to hear from you soon!