The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you byEsther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking about stopping advertising to save money. Now, before you go thinking, hang on, isn't this a marketing podcast? Why are they telling us to stop advertising to save money and stop marketing to save money? What do we mean, Melanie, please explain it.
Well, we don't actually mean that at all. A lot of people think one of the best ways to save their business to keep the longevity going, especially upon hard times like financial crises. Normally one of the first things to go is the advertising and promotion. And you know a certain saying, don't you, Esther?
Yes. There's a quote from Henry Ford, and it's"Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time." So, just like we can't stop time from marching forward, we can't really stop advertising and help it save us money. Because at the end of the day, if you stop advertising, people won't know who you are, so therefore won't buy from you, so therefore less money coming in. So we're not saying go a head and spend millions and millions and get yourself into debt while doing it, but there are ways and means to keep spending, whether it be five a week, 500 a week, whatever you've got in order to keep your business going.
And money isn't just for ads either. Sometimes it's just to keep the lights on, basically, which is another problem we're having at the moment, isn't it?
Yeah. I mean, advertising is your website, it is your hosting, it is your emails, it is maybe even your email marketing platform.Maybe it costs you money each month, maybe it's using a platform like Agora pulse, which we love, to help with your scheduling of your content. May beit's paying someone to write blogs for you. Maybe it's keeping a member of staff in a job. There's lots and lots of things that go into the advertising and into the marketing of your business that's not just ads on social media oron Google, Bing, whatever. But you have to also, first of all, take a step back and see what's working. Is there a way that you can cut down your advertising spend on ads, for example, and increase it somewhere else? Or do you have to increase your ad spend and decrease your employee spend? We really don't want you to do that one. That would be awful.
No, but there's other ways to make your money go further aswell. You may be trying to do too many things yourself. Maybe you're doingadministration or following up accounts. And if you were out there beingyourself, meeting people and connecting with people and doing videos and goingalong to networking events and you handed over that sort of administrativestuff to a virtual assistant or to a part time member of staff. Although thatis obviously an extra cost, it could actually end up saving you money becauseyou're getting somebody else to do the work, the background work, and you'reputting yourself out there and widening the top part of your funnel.
Yeah. And think about how much you can earn per hour if youpay a little bit to somebody else. So if you're doing all those menial tasksthat some people like, I personally don't, but if you're the one doing them,then your time is not spent working on something that will make you money. Soif you can get a virtual assistant, get somebody in house if needed, if there'sloads and loads and loads of it, then it could actually be a saver. You have tospeculate to accumulate, you have to invest, think of it always as an investment.So where do you need to spend?
Well, I've got to stress, every single size and shape ofbusiness has to have a budget, even a complete startup.
Oh, absolutely.
And I know that even startups well, yeah, we know we need tohave a website, we know we need to host, we need printing and rent costs if youneed a location and that sort of stuff. But it shouldn't end there.
No.
Okay. And when people think costs for marketing, theynormally think social media or digital marketing and it really should extendbeyond that. You might want to do radio ads or depending on the type ofbusiness you are, TV ads, newspaper, they still do ads as well and obviouslythey're a combination of in your hand, tangible and intangible advertising withthem. So your budget needs to go beyond just paying for all of your costs andas a startup, or indeed as a scale up, you need to better understand who youraudience is first, to understand where your audience is going to be, whetherthat's going along to conventions or events or networking or joining amembership. Like we're both members of Women's Inspire and we're both membersof Digital Women, amongst other ATOMICS as well. The reason why we're membersof these things is because they're A, very useful to us and B, that's where ouraudience is.
Yeah, and sometimes it's not just about where the audienceis, but it's about where you can upskill as well and that's one of the mainreasons why I would join a membership, is what's in it for me, not just what Ican offer.
That's why I said it's useful to us first.
But what can I learn from these other people that are in themembership? You know, what can I learn from the courses that they offer, theevents that they hold? Yes, going to events can be cost. I was recently at onein London, so that was the cost of the plane, the accommodation, the food, I'msorry, food in London is just ridiculously expensive. And if it's all budgetedbecause obviously, for reasons, health reasons, we just put it down to that. Ihaven't been out for a year, so there's money. There was money in the marketingbudget, but sometimes we can be tempted to dip into that to pay other things,or not use up all our marketing budget. But there should be. We're not sayingthat you have to have a $20,000 a year marketing budget, and in that you'regoing to be hiring somebody and you're going to be using Canva Pro and you'regoing to be or not even Canva Pro, but hire a graphic designer or you're goingto be hiring an entire marketing team. I don't think 20 grand would stretch fora team.
It wouldn't go very far.
But you know what I mean. There are things that you can sortof if you know that your busy months are July and August, then you'll need tohave your marketing in place at the start of the year so that you are full andcompletely booked up for July and August. Whereas if you're seasonal forChristmas time, then you might not need to use your marketing budget until Julyand August. So you have to figure it out. You don't need to be spending thesame amount each month, but you do need to be spending an amount. And if youthink, oh, no, I can do it all myself, then you're spending your time, which isprobably more valuable than the money that it would cost you.
And that's the other thing, actually, and it is to do withthe funding, the budgets itself, and that's also what your wages are going tobe. Because I've actually had a couple of people tell me only very recently,you've got to look to put your hourly or course rates up, because everything'sgone up. We all have overheads, whether it's a small business or a largebusiness, we all have overheads and they've all gone up. So don't be afraid togo up and follow the market. Your customer will understand. They're all goingthrough the same experience with everything. When they go and get their carfixed, everything's gone up in price. When they go out and buy electricalequipment or even food shopping, everything's gone up in price. So they're notgoing to be surprised.
Yeah, exactly. And we're not sitting here claiming to befinancial experts.
No, we're not.
If you want a financial expert, go to Carmel Seery. We'vehad her on.
Carmel Seery, hands down.
You can find her at carmelseery.com I want to say. If I'mwrong, I will put it in the show notes, but go and cheque her out. She willunderstand what your cash flow looks like now and help you understand how thatwill move and improve and modify, profits, all that scary money stuff. I mean,we're just here to tell you, don't stop marketing. Don't stop believing. Butyou can't take out an essential element of your business and expect yourbusiness to grow. That's what we're saying here. At the end of the day, youneed to keep the lights on. And the way to do that might be to light a candleand spend the electricity money on your marketing. Extremes, possibly. But ifthat helps you to understand that it's really, really essential, then, yeah, wehope that helps.
And it's so true what Henry Ford said. It really is."Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time." it just shouldn't happen.
Exactly. And on that note, we will leave you for today, guys. If you have any questions about finances, do reach out to Carmel, because we will be useless. But we will point you in the right direction of people that can help you. And we'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing.Until then, bye bye.
Bye, guys.