Knowing Where & When To Spend Your Money

It may sound easy to spend money right?

But when it comes to helping your business grow, thrive and succeed how can you know you are spending your hard earned profits on the right things?

People will tell you come to our event, advertise with us, exhibit here, join our organisation, it will help your business. But money doesn’t growing on trees, so how can you know you are investing in the right marketing or if you are wasting your money?

I’m often asked “Should I spend money on advertising in this magazine?” or “Should I exhibit at this event?”

So here are my top tips to help you work out if it really is a great opportunity for you and your business success;

1. Find out who their target audience is. Does it match up to yours? It’s all very well raising your profile but if you are on the radar of people that are never likely to have the money or the inclination to buy your products and services is it really a good investment?
2. How many people are expected at the event? How big is their mailing list? How big is their readership? Your investment should be inline with the return you will get, right?
3. Ask yourself if I’m giving up time to attend this event, time to prepare for the event, time to follow up effectively (always follow up effectively to truly maximise on any events you attend!) then how much is that actually costing you? That has to be factored into what you are costing. Does it still look like a great opportunity?
4. What further promotion will this opportunity give you? When you find this organisation on line do they have thousands of followers or likes? If not what are the chances that you are going to benefit from online representation from this organisation? A great top tip for anyone hosting events or selling advertising space is the more added bonuses you can be seen to be giving customers the more they will come back and spend with you. If it costs X to advertise in your magazine but you include free twitter posts and Facebook promotion then you can become more powerful to your customers. As a consumer don’t be afraid to ask the organisation how they intend to promote their event, magazine, etc.
5. Find out if you get exclusivity. This can be very important and can impact on the cost and the benefit to you.
6. Ask if you will gain access to their mailing list, guest list, client database. Not many organisations offer this, but if you don’t ask you don’t get.

You could spend every penny of your profit on paying to attend exhibitions, trade fairs and shows or on advertising on websites and in magazines, so think carefully about the outcome you are looking to achieve and what ever you do decide to do know what your desired outcome is. How many sales, new leads, etc you are aiming to gain from this.

And lastly know in advance how you intend to measure the level of success your marketing investment.

I hope this helps you decide where to spend your profits, although I should warn you if your marketing budget is smaller than a budgies handbag, fear not. With my marketing production line there are enough answers to get you new leads and sales without spending any money! Click here to try it for yourself 

Or give me a call if you are having a tough time, I’ve a way of helping for all budgets!

07989 935556