How To Market Your Small Business On a Budget

typical marketing budget for small business

 

It is always a concern for anyone who runs a small business as to how they will get their name out to the public. By definition, a small business has not yet reached a broad audience, and this leaves it vulnerable to competition in the sense that its profits can be swallowed up by larger players in the industry. Is it any shock then that some people are very eager to discover ways that they can avoid being beaten by larger competitors? Obviously, they want to do everything within their power to ensure that they stand a fighting chance of getting back at these people and perhaps winning away some of their market share. We want to take a look at how different companies across all kinds of different industries can do this, and we want to look at what the typical marketing budget for small business in those industries might look like.

Driving School

Many people in the current generation are delaying driving as they see it as a costly expense that they may not necessarily have to engage in at this time. This is highly dependent on where a person lives, of course, but there are some people who can get away with not driving all that much. They may take public transportation, or they may walk to many of the places that they need to go. Whatever the case may be, they may not necessarily get right at driving if they don’t feel that they need to do so at this time. Thus, the demand for DMV driving classes is now higher than ever. How could this be? If people are delaying learning how to drive, why would the demand for classes be up?

The reason why driving schools are seeing many interested customers is that many people who might have learned how to drive when they were in high school in previous generations are simply not getting that same learning experience today. Schools do not often mandate driver’s ed of any kind, and that leaves many of today’s students without even the basic skills of driving in their base of knowledge. Therefore, you might want to consider what the typical marketing budget for small business in the driving school sector are and see if you can up your own budget to be higher than that. There are likely many people who would benefit from taking lessons from you, they just need to know that you are available to teach them.

Pawn Stores And Gold Buyers

A pawn store and gold buyers tend to have a lot in common in that these two businesses are often housed in the same building. Many pawn stores also buy gold as part of their business model. Customers may hold gold and need to trade it in for some cold, hard cash at this time to take care of some immediate emergency financial needs. Plenty of people find themselves in this position from time to time, and it is nice to know that pawn stores are available to them to get them the assistance that they require immediately, so they can move on with other concerns in their life.

The typical marketing budget for small business in the pawn stores or gold buying business is usually fairly high. These industries tend to advertise a lot on daytime television programs and the like. They seek to find people who are in great need of their services, and many of those same customers may also be out of work at this time. If you are out of work and stuck at home, it is not unusual that you might fill at least some of your day with television programs to help get past the boredom of it all. If that is the case, then you may stumble upon some ads for pawn stores and the like. You are the target audience for these programs, so it makes sense that these types of companies would have large budgets for television advertising.

Lawyers

Lawyers have some of the highest market budgets that you will ever see. A DUI lawyer has to compete with every other DUI lawyer on the market. It is not easy to do this, and many have to claw and fight their way to relevance with the public at large. Thus, a DUI lawyer is going to have a relatively large typical marketing budget for small business when it comes to getting the word out. People see advertisements for lawyers on television, on the radio, on public buses, and even on benches in parks. Anything that a lawyer can do to get his or her name out to the public as often as possible is something that they are going to do. You can fully expect that they will attempt to continue to put their name and face out there for you to see day in and day out. Get used to it as it is going to be the primary focus of that lawyer for a long time to come. The good news is that if you are a lawyer, you can set your typical marketing budget for small business pretty high and not have any problems justifying it.

Server Hosting

There is money to be made for hosting computer games for the various people around the world who want to engage with them every day. You just need to have the capacity to host large-scale games all the time, and you are all set. Your job in this realm is to make sure you can keep servers up and running for some of the world’s most popular games. Right now, the minecraft server hosting business is incredibly popular and incredibly lucrative. All you need to do is look at the typical marketing budget for small business in the game server industry to see that most of those budgets are pretty small right now. A lot of people simply rely on word of mouth to find out about the latest game servers, and this means that they don’t necessarily hear about some of the multitudes of servers that are available right now. It might be to your benefit to plow additional funds into advertising to get your name to a broader audience than what the other guys are doing. You may just make a splash and generate a decent amount of business for yourself in the process.

Used Vehicles

Maybe you want to look at the typical marketing budget for small business in the used cars market. It seems like there are a lot of places with used escapes for sale, but how much do they spend to get people in the door? This is yet another business that tends to have a high marketing budget on average. They expect that the best way to get people to hear about what they have to offer is to constantly pump people with messages about those same offerings. They understand that people are very busy and may not take the time to figure out the difference between one dealership or another, and that is why they stand at the ready to help people better understand the options that are open to them. They realize that people’s lives are busy, and they want to take some of the budgets for figuring it all out of their hands. Thus, they will put a lot of money to work on advertising to get the word out. You can get into this business relatively inexpensively, but you had best expect that you will have to budget for a lot of advertising along the way.

Rug Restoration

People love their decorative pieces in their homes. Many put down good money to get oriental rugs that help bring the decorations of their home together in a very beautiful way. While this is all fine and good, people need to know that there are oriental rug restoration companies that can help them maintain those same rugs for a decent price should anything happen to the rug. The companies that are involved in oriental rug restoration know that their role is to help people get back the full beauty of the rug that they bought so long ago. As far as the typical marketing budget for small business in this industry, it is usually not all that high. This is another industry that leans pretty heavily on word-of-mouth marketing. They hope that people they have dealt with before have had a good experience and will share that experience with their friends and family as much as possible. They want people to know about the great work that they do, but they don’t spend a lot of money or time on marketing in most cases.

AV Companies

Audio visual companies are special in that they produce literal masterpieces for their clients. They make a cinematic experience that we can all love and appreciate. They get compensated for the work that they do by people who need this work accomplished for their company. They seek to help others, and in doing so to help their own bottom line as well. It is a give and take kind of business that operates best when people are open to the idea that they may need to temporarily turn over some of the power of getting things done to another company so that they can focus on the day-to-day grind that makes up the nuts and bolts of their operation. It is not always easy for some business owners to give up this kind of control, but they will surely be happy if they do, because these companies make a big splash in advertising for their clients.

As far as the typical marketing budget for small business in the AV sector, it varies widely from company to company. The smaller operations tend to not put as much focus on advertising, but they can certainly look to add to their marketing budget if they feel that they are somehow lagging behind the competition.

Commercial Electrical Work

Businesses large and small need trained experts who know how to fix electrical systems to come work for them. The purpose of this is to get someone who knows how to make some significant changes to the electrical systems as they are set up at this time for the company. You see, a lot of businesses don’t even realize that they need help with this until a problem arises. Regardless, the good news is that help is available to those who ask for it. The typical marketing budget for small business in the commercial electrical work field is going to be moderately sized. They need enough of a budget to let people know that they exist, but they are unlikely to be on the airwaves day and night. They tend to find a happy medium somewhere in the middle and let it go from there.

Employment Agencies

Finally, we take a look at what an employment agency may do for its advertising budget. Right now, employments agencies are insanely busy. There is a shortage of labor that is running through the entire economy, and it seems like employers cannot get people hired in fast enough. As such, they have turned to employment agencies to help them out with this. They are looking for assistance getting more people in the door to start working. Obviously, they need people who are qualified to do the work, and that is where employment agencies shine.

You are likely seeing a lot of advertising from employment agencies at this time. This is because they are trying everything they can think of to help get more people into the companies that they service. They need to pull out all of the stops because there are just so many openings that are unfilled at this time. People should want to work, but it seems like it has been like pulling teeth to get some people in the door. Thus, employment agencies are stepping up their game to try to convince more people to work. Advertising budgets in this sector right now are a bit higher than they typically are.