How much should a company spend on marketing?
Determining the appropriate marketing budget depends on the company's specific goals, industry, and available resources.
As a general rule of thumb, established companies are often advised to allocate around 10-12% of their gross revenue to marketing. For startups striving for visibility or established companies in competitive industries, this percentage may need to be closer to 20%. It's the case of early-stage companies.
Ultimately, the target for a balance between investing enough to engender real growth without overspending unnecessarily: thus the importance of spending strategically.🎯
Focus on strategic marketing
Strategic marketing means allocating the right resources to the most impactful marketing actions. By impactful, we mean the action leveraging the highest ROI.
Find below the list of tactical budget-friendly, high-ROI marketing actions we use at Stimpack:
- SEO Optimization - $0: optimize it to rank better on search engines. Your goal is to organically increase web traffic to your sites.🌐
- Social Media Presence- $0: regularly posting valuable content across social media platforms is the best way to establish yourself and build a brand authority and audience in your business niche.😎
- Email Campaigns - $20/month: automate email marketing using platforms like Mailchimp to retain and acquire customers.
- Social Media Contests - (choose the reward you can afford): start a social media contest, challenge, or hackathon to engage customers and create brand awareness. This is one of our preferred tactics.
- Influencer collaborations - (varies): partnerships enable reaching out to a wider audience for a much lower price point than traditional marketing methods. Affiliate programs can help too: either via one-time or subscription commissions.
These tactics are particularly handy for early-stage startups. Please feel free to use them and get in touch with us to share your experiences.
📢 Feeling confident to invest in strategic marketing actions for your business: we have good news! Stimpack is the product growth platform you need: not only is it affordable, but it helps with most of the tactics above.🤩
Stimpack is your next-generation early-stage product growth platform
Typical marketing expense breakdown
In typical marketing budget allocations, expenses are categorized into several key areas. We compiled most of them, which comes down to this breakdown:
| Category | Cost description |
|---|---|
| Market Research | Estimated cost of $500 - $10,000 depending on the scale and depth of research. |
| Website development | Around $2000 - $5000 for initial development, with follow-up expenses of around $200 per month for maintenance and updates. |
| Paid Advertising | Platforms like Google and Facebook can cost roughly $1000 - $10,000 per month. |
| Email Marketing | Services range from $10 -$1000/month based on the size of your email list. |
| Social Media Marketing | Requires a budget of around $1000 - $3000 per month for consistent posting and monitoring. |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Estimated cost of $300 - $1500 per month. |
| Content Creation | Expect to allocate around $500 - $2000 monthly. |
| Sales Promotion | Variable costs are often a percentage of overall product pricing, typically around 5% - 20% of the product price. |
All of these categories can be optimized: by achieving some of the tasks yourself, delegating others to friends, opting for cost-optimized tactics, and using affordable tools such as Stimpack.
The list is not exhaustive and could mention other cost categories such as PR (public relations) or participation in trade shows & events. Note that these are just large estimates after research, and do not reflect our spending.
Finally, focus on organic sources of brand expansion, alongside product-led growth methods. These are often budget-friendly ways to spread the word.📈
That's all for today folks, stay tuned with Stimpack, your early-stage product growth platform 🤗
Curious about Stimpack for early-stage startups and solopreneurs?
Stimpack is your next-generation early-stage product growth platform.
Our all-in-one product will help you create digital products, gain early traction, find your first early-adopters and future customers; and launch products faster than ever.
Where can you find us?
We are on social media,
Twitter: @StimpackHQ
Founder's Twitter: @SaidAitmbarek
Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/stimpack
Blog: blog.stimpack.io/