Since this story is about a subject that can seem mysterious at times – digital marketing, I decided something mysterious, like the Seven-Per-Cent-Solution, would be a good title.
It's also a good title because 7% just happens to be the percentage of gross revenue that a small business should spend on marketing. Just ask the SBA.
This, of course, means that if your business is grossing $500,000 per year, a good starting point in determining your marketing budget should probably be around $35,000 annually.
But believe it or not, the Seven-Per-Cent-Solution was already taken! Who knew?
Actually, 7% may be a bit too low anyway. In many cases, 8% is closer to a reasonable starting point.
And even though 7% is considered the starting point, many businesses spend even less. And if there's one area that a business should not underspend on, it's definitely marketing.
Digital marketing offers a great ROIEqually concerning is that many businesses don't have a coherent plan for their marketing budget. So the money they do spend is, at best, probably not utilized as well as it could be. And sometimes, it's almost totally wasted.
One of the major reasons businesses underspend marketing is that many business owners look at marketing as an expense. Which it is. Sort of. (Especially without a coherent marketing plan.)
But you know all those cliches that say it takes money to make money. Well, phrases became cliches because there's truth to them. And spending money on marketing is definitely one of those cases.
But in reality, marketing done right is a great investment. And establishing a digital marketing budget is a great way to start.
And since I'm the founder of a company with SEO in its name, it would be a good guess that I'm going to talk a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). But I'm not talking about SEO because it's part of my company's name.
SEOI'm talking about SEO because, on average, it delivers a 200 – 250% return on investment (ROI). That means for every dollar that a business invests in SEO, they can get $2.50 back. And once a business owner is comfortable with this fact, it becomes much easier for them to write a check.
In general, since SEO offers the best ROI, as a digital marketing agency, we recommend it to almost every business looking to grow its sales.
And since local SEO, particularly the Google Maps Local 3-Pack, can offer even better ROI than “regular” organic SEO, we tend to focus a bit more on local SEO for small business.
Especially helping them by setting up local SEO packages to help them rank in the Google 3-Pack.
We find that SEO for local businesses is a particularly underserved area. And this is often the case for mid-sized businesses as well.
