Tips For Creating Your Marketing Budget
It’s true what they say. You have to spend money to make money. But spending money frivolously isn’t a luxury most small and mid-sized companies have. Instead, these companies need to be smart when it comes to budgeting their funds. Frequently that results in skimping on marketing efforts to keep the business running as usual. Ultimately, it’s a Catch 22. You can’t justify spending the money when you aren’t making enough money. But you can’t expect to grow your business without shelling out a portion of your budget for marketing. Here are some tips and tricks we’ve put together along the way to help you not only create your budget but also advise you on the returns you can expect from different marketing tactics. Determine Your Marketing Budget The amount you spend on marketing is different based on your product and services. You should expect to set aside a certain percentage of your annual revenue. First, determine if you’re a B2B or B2C company and then identify if you sell products or services. Once you have that information, you can expect to set aside the following percentage of your annual budget: Company Type Percentage B2B Products 6.3% B2B Services 6.9% B2C Products 9.6% B2C Services 11.8% Now that you’ve identified the number of funds you should set aside for your marketing budget, it’s time to break that down for the different marketing channels. Here are the average percentages companies use to allocate their budget: Type of Marketing Percentage Digital 45% Print 35% Event 15% Misc 5% Digital Marketing Digital marketing should receive the largest allocation because there are so many different channels to capitalize on. Under the digital marketing umbrella, you’ll find things like search engine marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. With so many channels to choose from, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Start by determining which channel will garner the highest return. For an eCommerce business, spending your budget on search engine optimization and email marketing might be your best bet. But for service-based companies, you might see a better return spending your money on building your social media presence and content inventory. Print Marketing Print marketing is still a highly effective way to bring in new leads and nurture existing relationships. With strategic direct mail marketing campaigns or stylish and informative pamphlets and brochures, you can expand your customer base with ease. But print marketing campaigns can be hit or miss without the proper execution and planning. Printed materials tend to be cheaper as the quantity increase. However, if you don’t spend the time and money to research your target audience correctly, buying in bulk can result in wasted collateral. Event Marketing Attending and hosting events is a great way to expand your prospects. This even allows you to reconnect with previous customers or touch base with your current clients. Start by identifying which kinds of events will get you the most bang for your marketing buck. Maybe attending or exhibiting at a trade show or convention is more cost-effective than hosting a networking event. Spending your budget to create a booth that stands out on the show floor is a great way to attract new customers. You can do just that with a high-quality backdrop and even custom floor graphics. But don’t discredit the value that can be gleaned from bringing your clients and colleagues together for a happy hour or educational event. Miscellaneous Expenses As important as it is to spend your marketing budget, it’s also essential to have some funds set aside for any various things that may pop up during the year. Preparing for these incidentals will help to keep the rest of your strategic marketing plan on track. Having this small cushion can help you go above and beyond to hire a publicist if your company wins an award or even if you need help with damage control. Or maybe a particular campaign is performing well, and you’d like to capitalize on that momentum. Having a portion of the marketing budget free and ready to be used when needed is a game-changer. Once you determine your marketing budget for the year, don’t forget to #GoToShout for all of your print, digital, and event marketing needs. Contact us today to get started on your campaigns.
Drive Sales While The Sun Shines to Give Your Business The Best Chance!
July and August are considered by some as the “slow months” for business. Of course, this totally depends on the field of business you operate in, but as it’s the time of year when most people take vacation leave, business naturally slows across many sectors. However, rather than swimming with the tide, try using this slowdown period as an opportunity to set up for the success of the fourth quarter which is often the busiest time of the business year! Not taking your foot off the gas can mean you’re ahead of the rest when the crunch time arrives, giving your business the best opportunity for sales success. Here are some great ways to ensure you utilize the time to maximum effect! Use the time to build your marketing strategy for the coming season Having a bold, dynamic and well-planned marketing strategy ready for the fourth quarter means you can focus less on planning how to get potential clients through the door, and more on how to convert these into sales! Don’t waste time in the summer just because the winter seems so far away because before you know it you’ll be swamped in the run-up to Christmas! Get your marketing collateral orders in early By following the step above, you will be in a good position to order the material and design from your printer for the coming sales season. This gives you plenty of benefits such as extra time which can be used to make any adjustments or tweaks to your material or strategy, and will also avoid the stress of last-minute hiccups as you will already have planned everything to a tee way in advance. Take advantage of the “down-time” to boost your customer base While other companies slow down for the summer, there may be an opportunity to take advantage of their slow pace during these months and convert new customers to your service or product. Customers like high-quality service, on-demand, all year round. If other companies’ service quality drops but yours stays consistent and strong, it’s likely that customers will migrate and stay with your business now and into the future. Maintaining business as usual during the “slow” summer months will present ample opportunity to “poach” customers from rival businesses. What’s more, consumer group studies have asserted that people are more likely to make purchase decisions when the weather is good due to higher feelings of joy associated with the summer months, which puts any business in a better position when it comes to driving those sales while the sun shines! The months of July and August should not be simply written off! They’re a time when your company should regroup and push for sales that will encourage customer interaction in the future. It’s also a brilliant time to get an early start on planning your marketing strategy so that any hiccups or changes don’t get in the way of that all-important fourth quarter sales drive! At SHOUT!, we understand the need to keep the pace up in the summer and to get an early start on your next season’s marketing strategy, which is why we’re offering two great deals to give you that little boost you need! We will offer a 15% discount for any print order made in July, and in August we will beat any print quote by 10%, so make sure you take advantage of this great offer to give your business the best head start this summer!
How To Maximize Marketing Campaign Metrics
Marketing isn’t a one size fits all approach. To really maximize results it’s important to think strategically about what tools to use based on the type of campaign and overall goal. Figuring out what marketing pieces make the most sense isn’t always easy, but taking the time to lay out the objective makes it easier to figure out what tactics should be used. Beyond deciding on the types of marketing pieces, such as direct mail or branded flyers, you also need to figure out who the target audience is and what message and voice will resonate with them. Let’s look at a few examples of where different marketing pieces and messaging should be used. Seasonal Campaigns Seasonal marketing is a great way to take advantage of an easy opportunity to develop creative campaigns. With limited time for these it’s important to develop a timeline and stick to it. Work backward to figure out how much time will be needed to design and develop pieces then get them into the hands of potential clients. Your messaging should play into the theme of the season or holiday, while speaking to your target audience. Always include a call to action to encourage next steps. Options to promote seasonal campaigns: Direct mail Coupons Seasonal catalogs or booklets In-store banners Custom greeting cards Need help coming up with seasonal holidays or promotional pushes? The experts at SHOUT have a strategic approach for determining tactics that fit the initiative. Promotional or Guerilla Campaigns Have a special offer you’ve created or want to reach out to as many people as possible? Your message and design needs to be direct and eye-catching. These campaigns are meant to surprise audiences and are a clever practice that even limited budgets can benefit from. Options to push promotional or guerilla campaigns: Flyers Direct mail Banners Floor or wall wraps in unexpected places Items for sales calls Sell sheets Brochures Catalogs Infographics Office Settings If customers visit your office or store location you want to make sure there are branded materials on hand that reinforce your overall messaging. Options include: Brochures Flyers Banners Wall or floor decals Loyalty cards Trade Shows At trade shows there’s always a variety of people in the audience – those who have never heard of you, loyal customers and those who know you but don’t use your product or service. Crafting messaging that means something to all of them can be difficult but it’s not impossible. One potential way to address the array of individuals is to have a special item for your current customers. It doesn’t need to be anything big but it can go a long way toward strengthening the relationship. You need to stand out from a crowded trade show floor to get traffic to your booth, so make sure your materials are designed to provide value and pull people in. Options to promote company at trade shows: Brochures Sell sheets Custom die-cut business cards Attractive booth displays Don’t forget about before and after the trade show either! Direct mail offers a way to generate excitement and get people to your booth before the show even starts. It’s also an opportunity to qualify leads and to maximize your return on investment by following up with contacts you made at the show. When planning your next campaign think about the overall goal, print items that will support the objective and how to craft a message that speaks to your target audience. If you want a successful marketing plan that makes the most out of your budget, be sure to strategize accordingly!
From Run of the Mill to Flying at the Top Using New Printed Technology & Direct Mail Techniques to Boost Your Business’s Visibility in this Tough Climate
The world has become a tough place for brand and marketing departments of commercial businesses. Gone are the days when a few billboard and brochure campaigns would make your business the number one in the market. Nowadays, whole teams are employed to maximize the visibility of commercial businesses, and even then that’s often not enough for them to make the cut! So, how can YOUR business ensure it hits all the marketing goals required to compete? By utilizing the often overlooked power of new printed technology is how! And we’re going to tell you exactly why this will change your business from run of the mill to flying at the top! Print and direct mail is not dead We live in a world that is being taken over by digitalization and we focus more and more on online medium and less on printed promotion. There are benefits that are still efficient when it comes to print products versus digital promotion. Using Direct Mail and Print has increased reader’s attention, targeted communication to a specific type of person using local demographics. Having a tangible direct mail piece printed and delivered offers a customized experience for the senses that web or online medium cannot replicate. Print is also very reliable, Generations X and Y and baby boomers sometime show more brand loyalty to print and direct mail promotion. Together with Digital Marketing, Print and Direct mail will offer you the most success marketing your brand and business. Increase your visibility SEO, Social Media Marketing, and online traffic dominate the focus for marketing departments, with new and exciting platforms popping up left, right and center, but this has led many businesses to ignore what is right in front of their eyes, and that’s the REAL WORLD! Focusing on increasing your visibility in everyday places like popular shopping districts, busy public recreational areas and at iconic landmarks will massively increase the visibility of your company’s brand and link it with the affluence and experience potential customers associate with where it’s placed. Get creative and interactive! One of the downsides of online marketing channels is its lack of physical interaction. This puts a limit on how creative your marketing strategy can be, therefore limiting the depth with which your marketing campaign can reach. A creative, interactive and inspiring use of print design material brings your company out of cyberspace and demonstrates how innovative it can be. This may be the use of wall wraps on the outside of an iconic building, making your brand visible and integrating it with the cityscape, or a creative fully wrapped vehicle that displays your brand, making physical print technology a mobile marketing wonder! Staying loyal It’s all very well implementing new technologies in printed graphic design, but how does it really help to boost your brand’s identity and recognisability? Well, integrating your brand and design into the cityscape and using an iconic outside space as a backdrop to frame your brand’s logo makes potential customers identify with your brand in a place they hold dear to their heart, such as their home, a holiday destination, or an iconic place they idealize. This instantly helps reaffirm customer’s association with your brand as homely and iconic, leading to increased customer traffic and hopefully increased sales! Developments in printed technology are moving at a faster pace than ever before in order to keep up with the massive influence of online advertising. This means new, innovative techniques are available on the market, making it a great way to put your business ahead of the rest! At SHOUT!, we use the latest in print media technology to provide our customers with a wide range of exciting and inspiring options for their printed media marketing campaigns, giving them the freedom to express their creativity and make their business stand out! Call us today and talk with one of our dedicated team members to find out how we can make your business thrive in this tough and competitive environment.
The Power of Print: How to Utilize Old Marketing Methods for Modern Success
When it comes to implementing an effective, vibrant and professional marketing strategy that grabs the attention and initiates a call to action, printed material is an integral component. With the explosion of digital platforms such as social media, website advertising, and search engine marketing, graphic print seems to have been pushed to the wayside as an outdated form of marketing. But this idea is now being pushed back, with many analysts highlighting that more and more people are simply “numbing out” digital forms of marketing due to its frequent and impersonal content. Market researchers have also found that potential customers actually prefer a tangible, physical message that can be held, read and considered a material possession. This actually builds a rapport with the company who is represented by the marketing material. Here at SHOUT! we’re embracing the importance of print as a strategic marketing tool, and have thought of new, innovative ways to integrate graphic print into your marketing strategy and get creative to ensure you reach a larger target audience and demographic! According to the 2015 Direct Marketing Association Response Rate Report, even regular direct mail is more than seven times more effective than all digital channels combined. Add personalization on top of that, and that rate can jump another 4 times. Do the BASICS, and do them RIGHT! Graphic design business cards have been the most basic of business printing marketing strategies for decades. But nowadays more and more companies are using digital alternatives to pass on their details to potential customers and clients, which are often lost in the complex web of emails or simply just forgotten about. With a good quality, professionally designed and individualistic business card, your clients or potential customers will have a personal piece of property with which to remember their interaction with you or a representative of your company. At SHOUT!, our professional graphic designers use the latest in design print technology to craft clever and innovative graphic design business cards that emphasize your company logo design, while helping to cement the bond between your company’s brand identity and the potential client. Make Your Marketing Mobile Digital marketing strategies have laid down some new challenges for more traditional forms of marketing, and this has meant that print marketing has needed to become more creative! Designers and marketing strategists are now looking at spaces in different ways, applying modern print technology to realize new and exciting methods of catching the attention of potential customers. Vehicle wraps are a creative way to completely transform what would otherwise have been a redundant surface, into an exciting, mobile and different advertising machine. SHOUT! uses new technologies that can create perfectly seamless wraps for vehicles of all shapes and sizes, creating a whole new world of possibilities for new marketing campaigns. Transform the Way We See the World Other great ways to WOW! potential customers and stick your company’s brand in their mind is to completely transform their environment using floor, wall or ceiling graphics. With people so used to seeing advertising in the usual locations such as billboards, shop window posters, or on the subway, why not grab their attention by transforming their usual space and surroundings? Using high definition printing technology, SHOUT! can transform shop walls, event space dance floors, or even subway station ceilings using this exciting and innovative technology that will immerse potential customers in your company’s brand experience! With New Year and Christmas just around the corner, now is the time to start implementing a marketing strategy that makes use of all marketing techniques available, including the much overlooked printed graphic design. With SHOUT! by your side, you can change the way people look at the world around them, and in turn, make your company’s brand really stand out in time for the big end of year push! Contact us at SHOUT! today to find out how we can help you realize those print design marketing strategy ideas you’ve always dreamed of. Call us at (908) 284-1700 x. 15 and let us help you get ahead of the rest this coming festive period!
Smash Your Competitors Out of the Park with One Simple Change to Your Business
When you’re running a business and you have a list as long as your arm of tasks to complete, ensuring your promotional products consist of high-quality graphic design is unlikely to be anywhere near the top. Too often business owners don’t realize how investing in personalized and quality graphic design can be a real game changer in the world of business, especially in the age of competitive business that we now live in. Luckily, here at SHOUT! we understand the importance of high-quality graphic design and how this can turn your business around, rapidly generating new clients and smashing all other competition out of the park! Here are just some of the ways that investing in graphic design for your company can be a real game changer. Creating a Recognizable Brand Brand image is everything in the modern world of business. Gone are the days when you could corner a market just by setting up an office, nowadays companies need recognizable branding that sticks in the mind of potential clients from day one. You need a logo that will make you instantly recognizable, colors that are instantly associated with your brand, and materials that represent class and affluence. You need to come across as professional, attractive and memorable. This image cannot be achieved with a half-hearted branding strategy, disjointed company design, and by using cheap materials, and for this reason, prioritizing high-quality graphic design is essential. Creating a Cohesive Company A properly implemented branding strategy is not only for potential clients. You should ensure the workplace is bathed in the company colors, logos and design material that the customers on the outside see. This will create a more cohesive working environment, leading to increased efficiency and morale. On a personal note, it means that you as the company owner can stop banging the drum about how great the company is, and let the professional and attractive working environment do the talking for you! Communicating Through Graphic Design The consumer market is now more demanding than ever, with the average customer only giving a split-second glance at marketing material before deciding whether to act on it or not. Graphic design has developed into much more than just simple logo and brand design, it is now increasingly being used to convey vital information to potential customers in quick, easy to understand and aesthetically pleasing ways. This may be a small picture or diagram that shows how your company’s businesses model works, or simply a highly appealing and very professional quick summary about a new product on the market that will act as a lead-in for potential customers. More and more businesses are using this strategy to up their game, meaning that those with cheap and badly designed graphics are more and more often, being left behind. Design in the Long Run Businesses are constantly going through branding overhauls, where logos, brand colors and brand material is updated to fit in with contemporary design styles. This would happen far less, maybe even never at all if a high-quality, properly implemented and professionally handled graphic design strategy had been followed. In this way, shelling out at the beginning for a high-class branding package with top-quality graphic design will save your business time and most importantly, money in the long run, as costly branding overhauls will become a thing of the past! SHOUT! provides top of the range graphic design material that will complement any high-quality branding strategies your company wishes to implement. These are perfect for company events such as launch parties, conferences, holiday parties or even staff celebrations like office Christmas or New Year’s parties. At SHOUT! we provide a FREE Digital Marketing Snapshot Report, allowing you to take a look at what we can offer, with no obligation to buy. We are also offering a $50 gift card for anyone who spends $500 or over, making this the best time to inquire about your graphic design needs! Call us at 908-284-1700 and let us help you get your business ahead of the rest in this busy and competitive market!
Salvation Army – The City College of New York
Wedding event at Trump Hotel in Washington, DC. Special gold treatment is an upgraded material treatment but available to planners looking to do an enhanced presentation to an amazing event.
Floor Graphic – Wedding / Trump Hotel (Washington, DC)
Wedding event at Trump Hotel in Washington, DC. Special gold treatment is an upgraded material treatment but available to planners looking to do an enhanced presentation to an amazing event.
Floor Graphic – Wedding / American Museum of Natural History (New York)
SHOUT was approached to create a spectacular graphic presentation for a June Wedding within the Ocean Room of the American Museum of Natural History. With over 500+ attendees, the Bride and Groom desired having a focal point floor graphic covering the dance floor that would serve as the centerpiece of their big night.
What Coca-Cola’s “Share A Coke” Campaign Can Teach You About Print Impact
What really caught our attention in a recent article was how Coke used print to help create a successful campaign. The article showed the huge role print played – billboards and banners were used to help promote the campaign. But it was a very specific type of print advertisements, ones that used bold, high-quality and consistent graphics.