In this article I am not going to present solid facts, nor I am going to perform a comprehensive study. I am here to present my own opinion based on what I’ve experienced in my years of working as a marketing professional.
To put it in simple words, a big company is big because it has a big marketing budget.
If you have a $1M marketing budget you’re probably going to crush the one that only has $1K marketing budget.
Are there outliers for this rule? of course. Every rule has outliers. But at the end of the day if you have enough budget you most probably going to earn a bigger market share than your competitors
Why Small Businesses Don’t Invest Much in Marketing?
Because marketing is an investment in your own business that yields results on the long-run, and small businesses are short on budget and they can’t afford waiting ’til the future, they want results NOW!
So they postpone investing in their own business until now becomes past and the future becomes present and they figure out that they weren’t ready for such a moment so they become more of hurry to fight the fire that caught their business until the present becomes past and the future becomes the present.
And the cycle continues, either they learn their lesson and start planning for the future or they close their doors after one or two years of fire fighting in their business.
Marketing is an essential investment, it’s not luxury, it’s not only for big businesses, it’s for all business. Yet it seems that only big businesses learn that lesson and apply it.
Efficiency in Running the Budget
Leicester City winning the Premier League is a great example of the message I want to convey in this section.
When it comes to budget there are two factors that play an essential rule: the size and the efficiency.
The size of the budget is critical to what you can achieve and accomplish in the marketing of your business, you’re only limited to what your budget can cover, so if you have big budget you have lots of options and you can compete for a longer period -which is essential in marketing.
But the efficiency in running the budget is also a critical factor. It’s something that could turn the table to your favor if you know how to use it wisely.
A small budget can beat big budget if it’s run strategically. It’s the story of David and Goliath, Malcom Gladwell wrote a whole book about such a story.
How to Increase Your Marketing Budget
You need to learn the art of reinvesting the profits into your own business.
When you master that art your business will grow elegantly.
Everyone starts small, and one step after the other we get bigger, you’re not born a full grown man from the start, rather you grow step by step.
The same for your business, If I invested with you $100M at once you will probably lose it in 6 months or a year, that’s because you have no idea what to do with it or how to manage it. But if you cut %20 of your profits for reinvesting into your own business you’ll start noticing sustainable growth.
Gradual growth is the best kind of growth, we love and appreciate sudden growth, the leap, the exponential growth, but it’s in that gradual growth where we gain the experience, the roots in the ground, that allow us to enjoy the exponential growth.
