SBA is an independent agency in the U.S. that aims to support small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This figure, reported by SBA, gives you an idea of how much budget you should consider allocating and raising for your marketing plans.

Suppose you’re running a startup business and planning to increase your marketing budget through a loan. How do you raise funds for this budget?

What options do you have if you want to apply for a loan to fund your marketing objectives?

This article discusses how your business can raise funds to increase your marketing budget and lists the different loan options that can help grow this budget.

Businesses set up their budget for different purposes, and marketing is among the numerous items that need budgeting.

For many enterprises, including small businesses and startups, allocating a budget can be challenging, especially when funds are insufficient. In this case, fundraising by taking out a loan is one way to increase the marketing budget.

If you’re running a business, raising funds through a loan should be a well-thought-out strategy to avoid getting into trouble later. Fortunately, some debt relief solutions, like the ones that help you get out of payday loan debt and other business and personal loans, can assist in debt management.

Keep reading to learn how much loan you should consider taking to help raise your marketing budget.

How to Raise Funds to Increase Your Marketing Budget

Budgeting and raising enough funds is a crucial element of any marketing plan. But before creating your marketing budget, identify your goals and the proper channels to reach your target audience.

Figure out your short- and long-term goals and set KPIs (key performance indicators) for your marketing strategy.

Examples of these goals include the following:

• Decrease the website bounce rate (percentage of online visitors that don’t take action) by 5%
• Generate 100 new social media followers monthly to help boost brand awareness
• Appear on the first page of Google for three main focus keywords
• Generate a sales funnel that produces 20% new customers within the next three years

Consider getting a quote from a digital marketing agency when determining how much money you must raise. Such agencies, like Modern Marketing Partners, provide various services to help you achieve these goals. These services include:

• Web design
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Paid search
• eCommerce
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Analytics and reporting
• Email marketing

You must adjust your budget accordingly depending on your marketing goals and the services you need. If you’re taking out a loan, some experts suggest allocating 10% to 30% of the loaned amount to marketing costs.

Additionally, your marketing budget should depend on the type of business you’re running. The U.S. Small Business Administration provides the following advertising budget estimates:

• On average, businesses spend 1.08% of their revenue on advertising.
• Retailers may spend about 4% of their revenue on advertising, while restaurants spend around 1.93%.
• For B2B (business-to-business) product companies, 6.3% of their revenue goes to ads. Meanwhile, service-oriented B2B companies spend 6.9%.
• B2C (business-to-customer) product companies spend an average of 9.6% of their revenue on advertisements. On the other hand, B2C service companies spend 11.8%.

From these estimates, you can get an idea of how much budget to allocate for your marketing. You can also determine how much funds to raise with a few calculations.

Aside from your budget proposal, you should also have strong business credit. This way, you’ll encounter fewer obstacles when you need financing for marketing.

When you approach a lending institution for fundraising, a solid business credit report can positively affect your bottom line through better funding options like:

• Better credit terms from suppliers
• Lower financing costs on credit cards and loans
• Lower insurance premiums

In particular, lenders will look into the following elements when deciding to approve a business loan:

• Capacity: Includes business revenue, cash flow, and outstanding debt
• Character: Consists of the owner’s credentials like education, experience, reputation, and references
• Collateral: Includes tangible assets like inventory, vehicles, accounts receivable, or real estate
• Capital: Consists of the owner’s investment in the business, like stocks, equipment, and property
• Conditions: Includes industry conditions, economic status, and competition

Should these credit elements appear in favor of your business and the loan you’re taking, the lender will likely approve your application to take a loan for raising marketing funds.

Types of Loans for Your Business

Once you’ve determined your marketing goals and budget, you can choose which loan type to take. Financial institutions usually offer the following types of loans:

• Small business loans: Provides simple repayment terms to reduce cash flow strain
• Credit line: Recommended for businesses that need to take a specific amount of money only
• Working capital loans: Provides financing for enterprises with a cash flow shortfall or entrepreneurs looking for a new business opportunity
• SBA loans: Excellent for small businesses that need to grow their operations and require long repayment periods

Once you get approved for a loan, the next step is to utilize the money you raised for marketing. With the right marketing strategy, budget, and a seasoned digital marketing agency partner, you’ll likely see your plans succeed and enjoy the investment returns you deserve.

The post What’s Your Marketing Budget and How Much of a Loan Should Go to It? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Marketing is an important part of growing any business and reaching more customers. Unfortunately, marketing isn’t always cheap and companies can spend a lot of money without getting the returns they desire.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to market your product or service successfully. In fact, there are several cost-effective strategies that can work for almost any business, no matter the size.

Here are a few marketing strategies that companies with a limited budget should be implementing and using.

Email Marketing

One of the most tried and true marketing strategies for companies around the world is email marketing. This tried-and-true strategy allows customers who sign up to get information about your new products, services, and other deals and news via email. 

It is a very affordable approach to not only reach your target with your products, but also to increase brand awareness and loyalty. Of course, if you want successful email marketing, you must consider email deliverability. You need to ensure your emails are successfully being sent to subscriber’s inboxes, or they won’t be effective at all.

Also, for added results consider having a call-to-action (CTA) somewhere in your email so people are more likely to convert for you. While this conversion is usually a sale, it could also be a site visit, a follow on social media, or a variety of other things.

Social Media

With there being billions of social media users around the globe, social media is an incredibly valuable marketing tool for businesses. You can reach a lot of people very quickly, while also doing helpful research, too.

While you can indeed pay for social media marketing, it costs nothing to create an account, gain a following and use posts or tweets to advertise products or services. It can take some work, but if you’re able to grow or have a product/post go viral, it can be a huge boost to your business, and is very low cost. 

Sending out ad content and sharing product information and deals from time to time is fine, but you want to refrain from making it all you post. Part of social media is being social, so be sure to engage with your followers, ask them questions and respond to the things they say or ask.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is relatively new, but has proven itself very valuable. The influencer marketing industry has been growing dramatically in recent years, and this is only expected to continue. This strategy is all about working with individuals with larger audiences who hold a lot of influence over this group. If they say great things about your product, there is a good chance their fans will want to check it out.

Of course, if you work with a major celebrity with millions of fans or followers, influencer marketing can be pricey. But thankfully, there are many, smaller micro-influencers who are much more affordable to work with, but can still get your product or service in front of the right people.

Whether you go with a mega-influencer or one who is a little smaller, it is crucial to make sure their audience is your target market. If you work with someone in a completely different industry than your own, your results may not be as strong as you would have liked.

Affordable Strategies to Help Your Business Grow

Any of these marketing strategies are sure to help your business, without costing an arm and a leg. Whether you utilize one of them or all of them, they can provide you with a lot of value for a relatively low price. Also, while these are great for companies with limited budgets, they can (and are) still used by massive companies and corporations, too.

The post Cost-Effective Marketing Strategies for Companies With a Limited Budget appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Business-to-business brands and corporate America develop budgets based on one of three approaches: 1) a percentage increase (or decrease) over last years budget, 2) task and objective budgeting, or 3) a percentage or (forecasted) sales based on industry or competitive benchmarking. Often budgets are developed using a combination, or hybrid of these approaches.

This blog is part of a series on marketing planning and budgeting including Marketing Planning Best Practices, and a Marketing Planning Checklist.

In good times, management is inclined to simply increase budgets gradually based on prior budgets. Given the economic turmoil of the past few years, we will suggest that budgets are no longer “rubberstamped”, but rather closely scrutinized.

With detailed tactical, project and functional planning, task and objective budgeting becomes more feasible, and is intuitively appealing for relating directly to planned activities. Sometimes called zero-based budgeting, task and objective budgeting involves a detailed build-up of anticipated marketing expenditures, often prioritized to allow for elimination of budget items and programs.

Percent of sales is more often a vestige of times when advertising was the largest expense, and also when advertising expense was widely reported through information service providers. The author suggests the use of the Schonfeld report, one of remaining resources that tracks advertising and marketing expenditures of public companies. The report lists expenditures as a percentage of sales, allowing for some benchmarking which can be useful, for example, when requesting budget increases. Below are marketing expenditures for several leading brands:

What are some tips you’d like to share about marketing budgeting? What are some of the challenges you face when planning your marketing budget and how do you overcome them? Share your experience with others in the comment box below and be sure to share this blog through the social share icons below!

The post Marketing Budgeting Best Practices appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Our Marketing Planning Series includes:  1) Marketing Planning Best Practices, 2)  Marketing Budgeting Best Practices, and 3) the following Marketing Planning Checklist.

Of course, marketing plans come in a number of “shapes and sizes”, from the annual tactical plan, to project or functional plans, to the detailed strategic marketing plan. A given marketing program may range in complexity, budget and requirements. Different markets and products likely require vastly different marketing strategies and tactics. So a Marketing Planning Checklist should allow for a range of marketing scenarios. This checklist is based on a typical business-to-business marketing scenario.

Marketing Planning Checklist for the Modern Marketer

1. BACKGROUND
   • Company or brand
     1. Historical sales, margins, volume
     2. Economic drivers (macro)
     3. SWOT analysis
   • Market Analysis targets
     1. Market sizing
     2. Market segmentation
     3. Customer identification (incl. demographics)
     4. Channels of distribution
     5. Sales process (incl. cycle)
   • Market Research
     1. Secondary research (internet, associations, publications)
     2. Syndicated research (analyst reports, research/consulting
     3. firms, other)
     4. Primary research (surveys, interviews, focus groups)
   • Competitors
     1. Market share
     2. Branding/positioning
     3. Key marketing initiatives
     4. Intelligence
   • Prior Marketing Programs and Results
     1. Sales
     2. Inquiries/sales leads/new customers
     3. Website traffic statistics (Google analytics, host stats)
     4. Other Measures
2. OBJECTIVES (QUANTIFY)
   • Sales (Revenue, Volume, Margin)
   • Market share
   • Other measures (ROI, payback, breakeven)
3. STRATEGIES
   • How to achieve objectives, not specific tactics
     1. New products
     2. New markets
     3. Promotions
     4. New Programs
     5. Customer initiatives
4. TACTICS
   • Branding
     1. Re-branding
     2. Naming
     3. Identity
     4. Sub-branding, trademark registration, identity standards
   • Internet
     1. Website development, re-development, microsites, landing pages
     2. Search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM)
     3. Social media (profiles, content, blog and forum posts)
     4. Email campaigns (landing pages, registration forms)
     5. Webcasts, webinars, web conferences
   • Advertising
     1. Media (research, planning, placement, traffic)
     2. Print (trade publications)
     3. Online (banners, directories, Google AdWords)
     4. Broadcast (TV, radio)
   • Publicity
     1. News releases
     2. Press list
     3. Press kit
     4. Press events
     5. Article (writing and placement)
     6. Media relations
     7. Distribution (internet, wire service)
   • Sales Promotion
     1. Programs
     2. Training
     3. Contests, coupons, sweepstakes
   • Collateral
     1. Brochures, product sheets, flyers
     2. Catalogs, manuals, instructions, installation
     3. Educational pieces (white papers, guides, how-tos)
   • Trade Shows and Events
     1. Exhibit design
     2. Booth graphics
     3. Pre-show promotion
     4. Webcasts
   • Channel Marketing
     1. Dealer or distributor programs
     2. Promotions
     3. Merchandising support, POP, packaging
     4. Training programs
     5. Launch kits
     6. MDF and Co-Op programs
   • Direct marketing
     1. Direct Mail
     2. Email
     3. List Procurement
     4. Telemarketing
   • Photography and Video (supports all tactics above)

What would you add to the above marketing planning checklist? What items are essential in your company’s marketing plan development? How often does your firm revisit this plan and do you stick to it through and through or alter it from time to time?

Share your thoughts and experience in the box below. And be sure to check out our other marketing planning resources below:

Marketing Planning Resources

Marketing Budgeting Best Practices

How to Select the Right Marketing Agency

The post Marketing Planning Checklist appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.