Starting a new business venture is no easy feat. It then takes perseverance to scale that business to be profitable. The first step in launching your startup venture is knowing and understanding consumer demand. Conducting preliminary research to gauge the market landscape will be beneficial in the long run. If there's market demand, you will be better positioned to garner investments for your business and scalability.
According to CB Insights, the lack of a market need is the top reason startups fail, not necessarily their budget. Once you've determined that there is demand, you’ll want to prep your launch and get the word out about your business. Allocating funds for your operational costs should be your next most important step in ensuring your startup venture is successful.
In doing so, make sure to allocate a marketing budget. It will be crucial for your growth.
Potential Challenges of Marketing Budget Allocation for Startups
When you launch any business, seeing a return early on is difficult. Knowing what efforts and areas to prioritize will make a difference in your productivity and efficiency. You'll have to consider how to manage your operational and marketing budget allocation. This is why laying a strong foundation is important to deliver ROI.
Expect to be very hands-on in the beginning, so the prioritization of your time and resources is key. Allocating your marketing budget appropriately and funneling money into channels that have a higher ROI, can put you in a position to be successful in the first year; an achievement most startups don’t attain. You’ll likely lack historical data and customer insights, this is why proper marketing budget allocation, for things like market research, can make all the difference in choosing effective channels and strategies to reach and engage your target audience.
Understanding the Startup Marketing Budget
Consider your goals in your first year of business. What are your revenue goals? What will success look like for you? While most businesses won't see a profit for the first several years, as a startup founder, we encourage you to aim for tangible and quantifiable goals. There is no one-size-fits-all formula but a commonly suggested range in allocating your marketing budget is around 7-12% of your goal annual revenue. Calculate your total number of sales/increases to identify your goal gross revenue. If you don't have a gross revenue estimate yet, determine how much you are projected to make and use those numbers as benchmarks.
By considering revenue as your basis for goal setting, you can ensure that your marketing investments are aligned with your startup's financial capabilities. Some industries or competitive markets may require a higher marketing investment to reach target audiences and stand out from competitors effectively. For this reason, conducting proper market research to aid in anticipating customer needs, and identifying the right target audience to reach them effectively.
Study your competitors. From major players in your market to small and midsize startups. This approach can give you a competitive edge in setting industry benchmarks and metrics that are scalable in your startup phase. Try to maintain realistic expectations regarding the outcomes of your marketing efforts. It takes time to build brand recognition, attract customers, and achieve significant results. By setting realistic expectations, you can avoid the temptation to overspend in the hopes of immediate results, ensuring a more sustainable approach.
There are other important factors you must consider when allocating your marketing budgets and managing expenditures, such as seasonality and industry trends. These factors can impact supply and demand. If and when this happens, you will need to adjust your marketing budget allocation accordingly.
Key Components of Marketing Expenses
When you do sit down to set your marketing goals and projected expenses for budgeting, break down the budget into monthly allocations to ensure a consistent flow of funds. Regular monitoring of actual expenses against the projected budget will help you to identify discrepancies or unexpected costs.
Make an expense list to keep track and identify recurring costs. The infographic below visually represents what those recurring costs could be. From hiring to subscriptions to automate your marketing activities, advertising, content creation, events and ongoing market analysis and research.
Identifying recurring costs
Every type of business has re-occurring costs, such as software, employees, overhead, insurance, etc. Here are some of the most common reoccuring costs for startups we have worked with:
Choosing the Right Marketing Channels
As the saying goes, everything is not for everyone. The same applies for your startup. It's important to go where your audience is. Every marketing channel is not viable for communicating to your audience because they may not be there. Depending on the channels you decide to invest in, make sure to allocate a marketing budget based on the potential engagement and activation within each individual channel.
Social Media
Social media platforms are an easy adoption for startups looking to begin promotional activities right away. The beauty of social media is that you don’t have to make any initial investment other than building an organic (non-paid) following to reach your target audience.
After doing some market research, choose the best 2-3 channels your audience are already on and engaging with. There are several things to consider when choosing the optimal social media channels to promote your business:
Consider platform popularity
Assess platform features
Analyze competitor presence
Based on engagement, you can gather insights to aid in your marketing budget allocation for each individual social platform.
Advertising
While social media allows for promoting your startup business organically, allocating a marketing budget for ad buys can heighten your visibility and allow you to reach more people.
Setting up a Google account grants you access to a number of Google features and integrations. These include Google Ads. With a Google Ad account you can access:
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google search results and partner websites
Bidding on relevant keywords
Pay only when users click on ads
Immediate visibility and reaching potential customers actively searching
Precise targeting options (location, demographics, interests)
The insights you gain from audience engagement and market research will aid in your ability to make the right calls for keyword optimization, bidding, and audience targeting.
Leveraging these insights will once again become useful when you make adjustments and allocate your marketing budget for future campaigns.
Content Marketing
In addition to social media marketing and digital advertising, content marketing has become a value-add to reaching your audience. As implied, the content shared is often deemed valuable, informative, and relevant to your target audience.
This is really about leveraging optimizable content (SEO); content your audience is naturally searching for that addresses their challenges and needs. This type of content can be distributed in multiple ways and on multiple channels at the same time to garner awareness and leads. They could be blog posts or articles, videos, and infographics to name a few.
The key objective for utilizing content marketing in your overall marketing strategy for your startup is to:
Attract and engage the target audience
Establishing expertise, credibility, and brand authority
Building long-term relationships with customers
Boost organic search visibility and drive organic traffic to your website
IRL Marketing (in real life or in-person marketing)
Although digital marketing has become a more prevalent form of marketing than that of using traditional and grassroots methods, let's not lose sight of the importance of implementing traditional means when you allocate your marketing budget. In-person events, meet-ups, and direct access to your audience are great opportunities to activate and directly engage with your communities. Consider:
Participating in industry conferences and trade shows
Local events and community gatherings
Farmers' markets or street fairs
Hosting or sponsoring workshops or seminars
Collaborating with other local businesses
Setting up pop-up shops or temporary installations
Attending networking events or meetups
Partnering with local influencers or organizations
Organizing charity or community initiatives
Tech expos or industry-specific events
Hosting customer appreciation events or launch parties
Utilizing outdoor advertising spaces (billboards, posters, etc.)
Distributing flyers or promotional materials in targeted locations
Creating unique branded experiences or activations
Maximizing word-of-mouth marketing through offline interactions
Avoiding Common Start-Up Mistakes
We've explored a number of opportunities and approaches to allocating a budget to ensure your marketing needs are met. Now let's discuss some of the potential drawbacks should you mismanage your budget and how to avoid them.
Relying on trends
As a startup, you may be tempted to invest in the latest marketing trends or tools without thoroughly evaluating the relevance and potential return on investment. It is essential to assess the value and fit of each opportunity before you allocate a marketing budget for them. Bandwagon hopping onto trends can seem attractive at the time but just because they work for other startups doesn't mean they’ll work for yours.
Not tracking EVERYTHING
Failing to track and analyze the performance of marketing campaigns can lead to wasteful spending. Be sure to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly measure the success and impact of your marketing activities to make informed decisions. Implementing this practice in the early stages will be crucial for properly allocating your marketing budget and put your startup in the best position to attain success and longevity.
Lack of laying a foundation
As we’ve noted above, implementing the right processes in place can aid in achieving long-term success. That practice can be applied to many different aspects of your business outside of marketing. One common mistake some startups make is expecting immediate results from their marketing efforts. You have to allow for enough time to implement, test, measure, and rinse and repeat to gain traction. Certain strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO), require significant time and effort before yielding substantial results. As a startup, understanding these things will help you in building a strong marketing foundation early on.
Failure to Test and Iterate
We can’t say this enough. We strongly encourage startups to embrace a culture of experimentation and iteration. By testing different marketing strategies, messages, and approaches, you will be able to identify what works best and optimize those efforts. Knowing what works and what doesn’t can empower you in your decision-making as well as reduce the risk of wasting resources on ineffective tactics.
Ignoring Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is a valuable resource for startups, use it! Many startups fail to seek and listen to customer input actively. This can lead to missed opportunities and loss of revenue when customer feedback is ignored. Far too many companies focus on what they want to tell the customers and provide to them and not enough on what the customers actually need. Incorporate customer feedback into your marketing strategies and adjust campaigns accordingly.
Think of your customers as your focus group. They can provide you with real-time market analysis that can lead to more effective and customer-centric marketing initiatives.
Key Takeaways
In hindsight, before launching your startup, it's essential you do your due diligence and conduct proper market research to assess market needs and identify your target audience.
Make sure to set aside funds for marketing, when managing your budget allocation, based on competitive analysis, industry insights, and your overall revenue goals.
Allocating time and budget to the right digital marketing channels is more important than just having a budget. You'll want to explore whether your audience is within those channels and the volume to which they engage to allocate a marketing budget that correlates with where you can get more ROI for your buck.
Don’t forget to consider some traditional marketing channels, like in-person events, meetups, and direct conversations and correspondence with your target audience, when you’re allocating your budget. You may be surprised at the return you see using some traditional routes.
Lastly, if you want to be efficient with your marketing budget allocation, you should test what works and what doesn't, utilize the proper tools that can get you there, as well as, keep track of your expenditures against your overall budget to avoid misguided spending.