Determining your Internet marketing budget really depends on a couple of factors – how much do you want to spend and how well do you want it done?
A big portion of the marketing appeal online is in how you present yourself, whether your look is traditionally professional or one following current trends. Either way, you have to know your budget and what this marketing will cost you.
When creating a website you will be spending a decent bit of money. If your website is badly designed, full of broken links, and hard to navigate, you will may as well say “Thanks for coming, now go away.”
If you want to have a fast, attractive, and easy to navigate site, you need the right designers. This can cost you several hundred to several thousand dollars.
A good rule of thumb is you will be spending 2x the amount of money it cost you to create your website on Internet marketing. The first year is the most important.
You aren’t going to reach #1 on the Google search list by spending $100 a year on marketing. The Internet is huge and there are more and more people advertising on it daily.
Keeping ahead of the crowd can cost some money. However, you can easily determine how much you can reasonably afford in your advertising budget.
In a nutshell, break down your sales projections all the way down to net profit and see what you have left over. In the first few months, this is your budget.
After 6 months or so, depending on how well you are doing, you should be able to settle down into having a budget of around 8-10% of your net profit.
When you first start up, if you have a website professionally designed, it will eat up most of your advertising budget. Once it is in place, however, you can focus on more budget-friendly marketing tools like free classified ads, social media marketing, and email promotion.
These options will cost little to no money and draw a lot of traffic to your professional website. Once the prospect gets to your site, your design should help you close the sale.