The Right Answer To “What’s Your Budget?”

I was talking online marketing with a couple of people today.

When you’re looking at doing marketing for anyone your basically need to know 2 things:

1. A goal.
2. A budget.

80% Don’t Mention Their Budget

I always ask for both. What happens, in 80% of cases, is that people:

• don’t have a budget in mind, or
• they’re not prepared to tell me.

What they generally want me to to do is prepare a marketing plan on spec and then decide if they want to spend the money.

That’s bad for a couple of reasons:

1. I could spend hours doing a marketing strategy that cannot be financed (after all, if I quote $2,000 for online Pay Per Click advertising and the client has a budget of $100 then we’re not even close).That’s a waste of everyone’s time.
2. If I know your budget I can tailor the best solution to meet the goal. For any given problem there are numerous solutions – money gets you the best, easiest and quickest solution.

The Best Answer

I got the correct answer to the question “What’s your budget to achieve this goal?” twice today.

One guy was a client we’ve had for years. His web site does extremely well and makes him lots of money.

The other was a young entrepreneur we haven’t worked with before.

I asked both what their budget was: “Unlimited. If it makes sales I’ll keep spending money.”

Marketing Should Be Cheap

Your marketing shouldn’t cost you a cent. Your marketing is meant to be making you sales. If it doesn’t then stop it immediately.