Oh dear! Perhaps this is a bad idea on my part seeing as I’ve now opened a can of worms. Here I am going to have to justify the price many marketing companies place on marketing and branding.
So here’s a simple cost structure:
Cost for strategic thinking: Pay a company to help you formalise your strategy, where and how you intend to win your business. Look at the sales cycle and the materials required to support the process. Review and ensure it makes sense.
Cost the creation of the materials required: Include copywriting, image selection and production. Look at how often the same collateral can be tweaked and used through the process.
Look at supportive costs: Social media (how much noise do you wish to make?), how much do you NEED to make to create the desired effect? Exhibitions etc etc
Run the three areas as separate items and don’t move from phase one (strategic thinking) until you are sure that you have it right and believe that what has been structured should return the kind of new business you expect.
Alternatively, you could look at it like this:
1. How much new business do you expect to win?
2. How much would it cost your business if you got it wrong?
3. How much time and effort will it take YOU to support the initiative?
Number 3 will give you a much truer idea of return on investment when you add it to overall spend. But remember to add repeat business into your calculation to give you a more accurate figure.
So what do we think marketing should cost?
Well the strategic thinking should be around £3,000. Anyone who has been in the business long enough should have a gut instinct on what needs to be done and where the business is lacking regarding sales.
The creative side should correlate to how much business the client wishes to win. We have had clients who want to win a million pounds worth of business and wince at having to potentially pay £15,000 to win it. We've had clients who have come to us and said that they paid 10's of thousands for a logo or website. So in their case who was the monkey?
There are basic costs to creating, designing and marketing. A logo should take around 5-10 days. It's a bloody logo. Any more than that and they are taking the piss. If they tell you that they must get market research on their designs, in my opinion they 1. Don't know their job well enough and 2. They are having a laugh at your expense. This cost should also encompass multiple versions and for the use on various materials (biz card, letterhead etc).
A basic website should cost £15,000. Why? Because to win business you need to build an online presence that convinces a visitor, when arriving for the first time, to react. This means that you need convincing arguments, structured navigation, strong underpinning materials, carefully designed pages with good thought provoking imagery. Not just someone who is good at designing. This will get you a pretty website but it probably won't win you any business.
In our mind, a 10 times return should always be the rule of thumb. For £100k you spend £10k, for a £million you spend £100k and so on and so forth. This allows you plenty of scope to pay for your personnel to win the business, deliver and still have a sizable profit.
Still not sure how much you should spend?
Give me a call, it’ll probably take me 15 minutes to give you a good estimate.
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