Digital Marketing Zero Budget Unrealistic Goals
Occasionally we come across clients who want to achieve “big things” and have big ideas but just lack an overall understanding of how internet marketing works or for that matter how business or the real world see to work.
Not long ago we were approached by a young lady who was extremely passionate and full of energy. She told us she wanted to achieve big things, very big things. The young woman explained she has a product and she wants to be everywhere. She said, “I wants to be all over Facebook, Instagram, google plus and off course google search.” She excitedly told us she wants to come up at the very top of page one for hundreds of search terms closely or even remotely related to her business and she was ready with her extreme marketing presence, ready to conquer an entire industry.
We were very impressed. We were like wow, she understands the power of marketing and being everywhere a potential customers might be and put her product/service in front of them. We were impressed with her energy and her confidence and were pleased she clearly understood that for her business to succeed she would need a strong marketing presence and being everywhere would really help.
Then we asked her a few questions. Do you have a website? What is your marketing budget for Facebook, for Instagram, and for Google Adwords and Bing Ads campaigns? In order to achieve her vision of achieving “big things” and being everywhere she would need a budget.
She responded. “About $20 per month.” We were in shock, we assumed she was joking and playing with us. We asked again, what $20 per day, is that for Facebook ads or Google Adwords. Her response. “No that’s the total budget, that’s what I have $20 a month and I want value for my money spent. What can you do? How can you help me to promote my business? I am very ambitious and want o be everywhere, I want to be all over the internet.”
I was for about 30 seconds literally speechless, then I responded. “Your budget $20 per month. Add a zero, and you get $200 that is the absolute minimum you would really need to promote any business on the internet. Now add another zero, $2000. This is a fairly strong budget for most companies in most industries and they should make some reasonable money with a budget of $2000 per month but it’s not enough for you, you want to be all over the internet. Well add another zero. $20000 this is a healthy budget for most companies with several staff, a decent sized office and an dozen or so high value clients but to truly be all over the internet somewhere between $200000 and 2 mill would be, well a start. Now she was speechless.
I smiled and told her, “we are not good at our job, we are really good but we are not magicians, we cannot make miracles, businesses need marketing to success and marketing costs money. The bigger your goals are the bigger your marketing budget need to be. Earn some money come back in a year with a budget of somewhere between $200 and $2000 per month and let us see what we can achieve. I further told her that as far as costs go 50% – 80% of costs involved with a new business are allocated for marketing. I was cautious not to break her spirit. Her idea was sound and she saw the need for strong marketing, now she understands she needs a strong healthy budget to back it up. Money makes money if it is managed and spent wisely. If you have a website that is great, to make it work for your business we can help you with your digital marketing needs for a very affordable price.
Author Rod Sinclair
Digital Marketing Expert