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Did you know that Restaurants spent $33 million dollars on advertising during the 2021 Super Bowl, up from just over $5 million the previous year?
In 2021, companies spent an estimated $485 million U.S. dollars on in-game advertising during the Super Bowl. The average cost of a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl 2021 was $5.5 million USD!
Companies that promote during the Super Bowl are not one offs. They promote their business aggressively all the time. Their on-going promotion has built up a significant effect, which is easy to see.
Ok, now let’s tie this into small to medium sized businesses as they don’t have these kind of advertising budgets, not even close!
So, what can you do with your marketing dollars and how much should you spend on advertising per year?
Before I answer that, let me touch on one error that most small to medium sized businesses do: they promote only when their production board is slim and low on future jobs. The habit here is to promote only when jobs are dry. This is an error!
Why? It will take time to build up the flow of leads to your company. For example, to get your business ranking on Search Engines and to get you on the maps, this all takes time.
With Google Ads, yes, we can get a campaign generating leads right away and this is good. But speaking from experience, the small to medium sized owner is now stressed out, doesn’t have much money for a Google Ads click budget, passes the stress to their advertiser and now everyone is stressed, trying to get that minimal budget to save the day because that company didn’t utilize marketing dollars throughout the year to promote their business.
Tips to handle this:
1) Create a Promotion Account for your business separate from your main income and expenditures account.
2) At the end of every week, take 10-15% of your income, before taxes, and put that money in Promotion Account. This money is only to be used for promoting your business, nothing else.
If your average sales are $500,000, then you need to spend $50,000- $75,000 per year promoting your business. Your business should always have jobs and that is done by continuously promoting your business – year round regardless of whether or not your business is seasonal.
Pitfall: some of you will still want to keep all the income in one account. If you keep it all in one main account, you will spend it. So, just like taxes, separate promotional money out of the main account and tax set asides.
The other pitfall is not using the promotional money or just spending when your jobs are low – this is way late in the game!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If you are not spending $1000- $4500 per month on this all-important service, you are behind the eight ball. Everyone is searching for something online, 24/7. Google tells us 75% of searchers go to that first page, the maps, and the top 10 results. Your business needs to be on Page 1, in the top 10 results and on the relevant maps. That is how you keep your job board full!
SEO grows month after month, year after year, like a tree. Are you ranking on the major Search Engines for all your services?
If not, call us for a strategy chat and your free SEO assessment right away. You really can’t afford to wait any longer.
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