Branding is not just about being seen as better than the competition.

It’s about being seen as the only solution to your audiences problem.

You need to allocate time to work on your business – shift gears to thinking about how you solve customer problems.

Start with a micro-review, an audit, to outline what do you do well? SWOT! Then Macro, who is your audience and how do they like to be engaged?

You must also be aware of what is happening in the marketplace and your competitors. Once you have defined what you do really well – Invest in that message, invest in branding and use all the right forms to demonstrate how to solve your customers problems.

Let us help you on your journey, we are a boutique digital marketing and creative communications team, we assist businesses to devise their strategy to market, we help find their unique selling points and then integrate and capitalise on digital marketing + communications.

Here is some of our work,
https://helloexanimo.com/portfolio-category/case-studies/

Let’s work together,

https://helloexanimo.com/

EMAIL

angela@helloexanimo.com

ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

PHONE;  0466 619 631

The post How are you helping your audience? appeared first on Ex Animo.

Good marketing drives revenue in most successful businesses and doesn’t just happen overnight.

The right strategy, approach, creative and plan will guide the expenditure and investment.

Traditionally there are three ways to approach setting a marketing budget.

• 1. Strategic Investment,
• 2. Percentage of sales or margin
• or
• 3. Review of last year

Strategic Marketing Investment

This approach begins with understanding the current value of a customer. Then assess the current cost of acquisition, retention budget and the dynamics of the sales funnel.

We all know it’s on average 10 time more expensive to gain a new customer than retain a current customer. Hence marketing really is an investment and it is vital to look at all aspects of the prospect nurturing process and consider;

• How new potential customers enter in the top of the funnel?

• How much you need to invest to find those new prospects? – How long a potential customer/prospects need to be nurtured before they become sales leads?
• How can we help move prospects through the sales cycle? – How many leads are required in order to drive a sales opportunities? and, finally, how those opportunities are won?
• Then understand how to keep customers with us and build repeat purchases and loyalty?

This analysis, combined with a calculation breakdown will greatly assist the investment/budget process to and accurately devise targets and project expenditure to drive sales and return.

Percentage of annual projected sales, or gross profit.

If using projects sales or gross margin approach is preferred, before setting the percentage look for; companies similar in size, business maturity, stage of the business/products, level of competition to your company. IDC International Data Group records that on average;

• 46% of companies spend less than 9% of overall revenue.
• 24% of companies spend 9 to 13% of overall revenue.
• 30% of companies spend greater than 13% of overall revenue.

The rule of thumb suggests the majority of successful businesses spend between 10 and 12 percent of gross margin.

Previous year spend

Sadly an approach is a process that just looks at the previous year’s spending and simply deciding where they want to add more or less spending. While this seems to be a logical tactic, it’s the wrong approach since it positions the marketing budget as an expense, and marketing as a cost center. It isn’t strategic nor will it enable growth or opportunity to test and trial new media or communication tools.

The best way to develop a marketing budget, is to treat the budget as if it’s an investment in-order to deliver an expected, quantified return over time. 

Let’s work together, contact us today

EMAIL; angela@helloexanimo.com

ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

PHONE;  0466 619 631

The post Marketing cost or investment ? appeared first on Ex Animo.

We pride ourselves on assisting our clients tell their own unique Brand Story… Let’s work together! #digitalwhitespace

The post Brand story! appeared first on Ex Animo.