Setting Marketing Budgets For Local Advertisers
Most local businesses I work with budget a certain amount for advertising and marketing. The problem is they mostly do it wrong. They’ll go by their direct competitors (“Every dealer around here spends X per new car for advertising”) or from some study or report in their industry (“The ABCXYZ Industry Council says to budget 2 percent of gross sales”).
This is bad because they get stuck with the results these methods produce.
It varies by industry–I have an art store client with expensive items who spends as high as 25 percent of gross sales–and buying season-i.e., jewelers will spend the majority of their budget at Christmas, while water parks advertise in the summer. But the range I suggest is to spend 5-10 percent of gross sales on marketing and advertising.
