I've heard this asked repeatedly over the last weeks. Do we need to do marketing? We are only a small business with little money - do we need to do marketing? We don't want to become a huge business - do we need to do marketing? We are an engineering company that get all our work from government contracts  - do we need to do marketing? We are only a holdings company - do we need to do marketing? Notice the question isn't "should we do marketing" or "why should we do marketing" but "do we need to do marketing"? It is almost cynical in its assumption. The question really hides a statement; a conviction that "we don't need to do marketing". We, in our situation, don't need to - we can save that money. I'll leave it to you to decide whether you need to do marketing, or not. My interest is in how you come to your conclusion. How do you decide whether or not your business needs to do marketing, or not? Here are some tho

First, let’s get one thing straight, as a business owner you can’t complain about marketing not delivering results if you haven’t kept to your end of the bargain and allocated a budget. The marketing budget sets the rules of the game – it makes it possible to measure - to some degree of accuracy - that magical number called “return on investment”. Everyone wants ROI on marketing spend, yet few know what they plan to invest, i.e. a marketing budget. But how do you set a marketing budget? This is another piece of the puzzle that is often neglected by business owners quick to criticize marketing performance: a marketing plan. The marketing plan should describe the desired results expected from marketing activities and how these ties into overall sales targets. Only now can the marketing budget be set. A plan informs the budget and allows you to do what is called “zero-based budgeting”, meaning you to build the budget from the ground up based on what’s needed to achieve the goals. This i