Help with advertising budget

[Quinn & Lane]

How do you determine your advertising budget? Flat rate a month? Percentage of sales/profit?

What is acceptable?

I'm about to start getting serious about advertising. I don't even know where to begin! I already do a lot of social media advertising but I'm looking for something else that is affordable for a small business, and of course reaching my target market. Where did you start?

[81charduck]

I don't pay for advertising, which works for me & my business. It may not work for all businesses. ALL my advertising is free, except for brochures & business cards that I distribute locally.

[Craftarella]

Originally Posted by Quinn & Lane

How do you determine your advertising budget? Flat rate a month? Percentage of sales/profit?

What is acceptable?

I'm about to start getting serious about advertising. I don't even know where to begin! I already do a lot of social media advertising but I'm looking for something else that is affordable for a small business, and of course reaching my target market. Where did you start?

When I was ready to jump into paid advertising, I started small with daily ads on Facebook. They allow you to get very specific, targeted to your demographic. I have been happy with it!

[ORGANIC-DIRECT]

Having tried it all when it comes to advertising, nothing beats free, and FB can get expensive real fast as you probably already have discovered. Like all advertising, you have to weigh it against results. If you sales profits are higher than your advertising costs, only then do you want to ramp up advertising budget. You have to track your results carefully, especially when starting out. See what your competition is using, then copy it for you know it is working.

I like the automated posting software where your promtional posts work better than paid advertising, but very time consuming and this is why many business owners hire Social Media Consultants, also expensive, so choose wisely.

Success to all,

[fong47]

My opinion is paid advertising is the fastest way to get leads. I know so many people talks about free advertising but how much time are you going to dedicate doing free advertising? Your time is worth something right? Set aside a budget for paid advertising and more importantly, track and test! Track all your links so you know if its worth it or not. For example, if you just purchase a banner ad for $200 for 30 days, make sure track the links so you can see how many clicks your getting for $200 that you've paid for. If you only got 10 clicks for that month, it means that site is not working out. Testing is the key! But small and scale up once it converts! Good Luck

[homebusinesswebsites]

my advice, start out small, don't spend a lot. then if you need to spend more you can. you also need to make sure that the advertising that you choose will work for your business. why not try a few different advertising options, spend a small amount on each and use that to work out what is worth spending more on.

[Jamie C]

Originally Posted by fong47

My opinion is paid advertising is the fastest way to get leads. I know so many people talks about free advertising but how much time are you going to dedicate doing free advertising? Your time is worth something right?

Excellent advice from Fong.

Personally I have a basic calculator that I created for setting my advertising budget.

You are welcome to check it out...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

[Online Sam]

Some Growth Hacking strategies could help you Quinn. Design sharing into your product which encourages sharing and referral.

You can always add this easily and cheaply to your marketing and see a positive return.

Go get em mate.

[QueenMaa]

I use freeadboards, safelists and viral marketing sites. They allow you to place ads and with the safelists you can send out a mailing to other people. I like these sites because you can place text ads and banner ads. You can upgrade some offer liftetime memberships and some are yearly or monthly. I try to upgrade with the ones that offer lifetime memberships. This is a great way to get traffic. Being consistent is how you get results and writing good ads.