Your Marketing Budget

Briefly discuss how much money you intend to invest in marketing as percentage of your projected gross sales. You can break it down on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. Ideally, you will have already determined the amount of your marketing budget when you created your business' various financial statements. The figure you choose will depend greatly on your type of business and your goals. It can be anywhere from 5% to 50% or more. If you're a heavily marketing driven venture - a company selling products through direct mail and direct response advertising, for instance - then you will likely allocate more than a company that will build its client base through networking and relationship marketing.

Here are a couple of other things to consider when you're creating your budget:

• By putting down a figure, you are committing yourself to supporting your marketing program. You will know how much you can afford to spend on different forms of advertising, PR, and other tactics.
  
  
• Be sure to keep track of how effective each marketing tactic is. You want to get the maximum return on your marketing investments.