If someone were selling $100 bills for $50, would you need a budget to work out how many to get?

Marketing budgets CAN be this simple IF you can successfully test and measure results, and know that for a certain expenditure you will win a certain number of clients.  Naturally there is variability and changes over time, which menas you need to keep testing.

This is an article I contributed to Other Side Up on customer acquisition cost.

Customer Acquisition Cost OSU

The thing is, most businesses guess. Now, you HAVE to guess at some point in order to start (hopefully an educated guess). After that if you don’t measure and keep guessing, you might as well be gambling.

The choice over being a generalist or a specialist is a tough one.

For many businesses that don’t actively pursue a field, the default position is to be a jack of all trades because they don’t make a choice. You get pulled in all sorts of directions by clients and you follow. Normally you follow the money, wherever it is at the time. It is a short term solution.  In some ways you end up getting good at a variety of things, but you are seen as great at none (even if you ARE great…).

I remember meeting a guy at a business breakfast a few years ago and he had a business card with a business description on each side. One was for his role as a small business tax specialist. One was for his role as a MLM in acai berry juice. I wondered if you went to him for tax advice if you would have to sit through “the plan” at the end. (And would you get billed for that time?) . Perhaps he was an excellent accountant and perhaps he was an excellent multilevel marketer. If I needed either, I would probably search elsewhere and find someone that knew what they were.

Here’s part 1 and part 2 of an article I wrote on this for Other Side Up.

Nicheing part 1 OSU

Nicheing part 2