Spending Money on Marketing – How Much is too Much?

As a freelance writer, new clients are your lifeblood. The more gigs you land the more money you will earn. Pretty simple, right? Your marketing plan is going to determine how much success you have in this area of your business.

While true that some marketing strategies are free, others are going to set you back a few dollars from time to time. This leads to one very important question: how much is too much to spend on marketing related tasks?

My best advice is to set a monthly budget for marketing expenses. This gives you a “set” amount of money to spend, month after month, allowing you to see what does and does not work while hopefully landing some new clients along the way.

No two months will be the same, but your goal should be to earn more through your marketing methods than you are paying out. For example, if you spend $500/month on marketing you want to receive at least this much in new business.

It is one thing to spend money on marketing. It is another thing entirely to do so in a smart and efficient manner. In other words, don’t spend just to spend. Have an idea of what you are doing and what will give you the best chance of success.

Are you tracking every dollar that you spend on marketing? You need to know where all your money is going. Maybe you spent money on a direct mail campaign. Maybe you purchased online advertising. No matter what it may be, chart your spending and results to improve your chance of success in the future.

How much you spend on marketing will be based on the finances of your business and what you are comfortable with. If nothing else, start small and see where it takes you.

Profile image for Chris Bibey
Chris is a full-time freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He specializes in web content, sales copy, and many other forms of writing. Chris has two books in print, as well as hundreds of articles in local and nationwide publications.

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3 thoughts on “Spending Money on Marketing – How Much is too Much?”

  1. Hi Chris

    I took advantage of $50.00 of ad money from LinkedIn. I’ve done PPC before on Google, but it was a steep learning curve for me because at the time I didn’t have too much knowledge about how to effectively use PPC. Fast forward to 2012, and I’ve learned and keep learning about PPC ads.

    I keep receiving phone calls from Facebook about creating ads on the super social media network. I had to laugh for two reasons:

    1. I didn’t think a giant of a company like Facebook would have employees cold call or need to have employees cold call business owners. 🙂

    2. You’d think Facebook would utilize Facebook (or email) to entice business professionals to sign up for Facebook ads instead of cold calling.

    I guess Mr. Zuckerberg wants to use every single avenue to get business owners and professionals to sign up with Facebook ads. Kudos to him.

    Reply
  2. I’ve found that one extremely effective marketing tool that will reduce your marketing budget is consistent networking, particularly off line. Of course, there will be fees for joining certain networking groups if you go that route; however, those fees can be significantly less than one would spend on many of the other less effective marketing/promotional methods.

    Reply
  3. Another alternative to think about is instead of spending marketing dollars for external projects, focus on growing what you have, your current customers and referrals. Support them well enough and they’ll do a better job than you could ever do in spreading the word, telling others about the great service you’re providing.

    Reply

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