How much do you budget each month for marketing? If the answer is “zero” you might want to re-think that because it means you’re doing all of your marketing yourself or you’re not doing it at all.
While marketing professional services cannot be completely outsourced or delegated, there are many tasks that can.
And if something can be delegated, it should be.
So you need a marketing budget to hire talent, buy tools, and generate traffic to your websites. You should also have funds available to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
Just as a separate bank account for savings makes sense, it’s good to have a separate bank account for marketing. It’s also wise to fund your account with automatic deposits from your general business account.
You should set up this account even if you’re not yet sure how you will spend the money. Putting $100 or $200 a month into your marketing account (to start) will not only allow you to have the funds available when you decide what to do, watching your fund grow every month may “force” you to find ways to spend it.
My daughter gave me a gift card for my birthday and I immediately deposited it with Amazon. I haven’t spent it, but it’s burning a hole in my digital pocket. Knowing the money is there means that every time I log into Amazon I go looking for something to buy.
The same thing will happen as you accumulate funds in your marketing account.
Knowing you have the money available, you’ll think about marketing more often. You’ll consider doing things you may have previously rejected or put off. When you’re busy doing legal work, your subconscious mind will be working on marketing ideas, and prompting you to take action.
What about budgeting time for marketing? After all, so much of marketing professional services–networking, speaking, relationship building, (some) writing, and other things you can’t delegate–require your time.
Yep, you can budget for this, too. Just as you can set aside regular time for personal development (e.g., 15 minutes a day, an hour a week), you can (and should) do the same for marketing.
Don’t dabble with marketing or try to do everything yourself. If you want to build a successful practice, you have to invest in it. I can’t tell you how much to budget for marketing but anything more than zero is a good start.
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[…] I talked about the need to establish a marketing budget for your practice. A reader emailed me a link to an article with a similar theme. The author was […]