In my career, I’ve discovered the one question clients are most hesitant to answer is, “What’s your budget for this?”
“Um, well,” they’ll say, “we’re not sure.” I can’t decide if they honestly don’t know or if they’re playing a car lot haggling game. Either way, I can’t wrap my head around this answer.
If you don’t know your budget, you need to figure it out. You know what you can spend for salaries, insurance and office supplies. You should know how much you have to market your company and its products and services.
If you know your budget, share it with your marketing/advertising/public relations partner. It will help us develop the best strategic plan for your budget.
It doesn’t matter what your budget is. We’ve worked with big budgets and small. Sure, more money gives us more time to tell your story and allows us to explore additional avenues and implement more tactics, but we’ll help you make the smartest choices whether you have $5,000 or $500,000.
Next time you’re meeting with your communications firm, share what you’re willing to spend. That way we don’t have to play guessing games and can focus our time working on what’s important, marketing your business.
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As someone who now sits on the other side of the desk–I have to offer one side of the story. It’s not that we don’t know our budget–most people have a general idea (or know at least if they’re closer to $5,000 or $500,000). But, sometimes, we rely on you–the communications professionals–to help us understand what a realistic budget is. Could we really get our Web site re-designed for $15,000 or is that chump change?
Ideally, I think a budget should be worked out like everything else in the creative/communications process: in tandem.
I agree whole heartedly. As a Small to Medium business specialist, I’m often challenged by budgetary constraints. I simply tell a customer that anything can be accomplished with enough cash. There’s nothing wrong with asking for the sale or determining what you have to work with.
I tell customers that a successful project contains 3 key elements. Cost, Efficiency, and Expedition. Of those, a customer can have only 2. If you want it quickly and correct, it will cost you plenty. If you want it cheap as possible and done right, it might take a while to complete. If you want it cheap and quick, you might expect a few hiccups on the way. That’s the way of the world, and if you can’t determine what your cost constraints are, then you haven’t completed your objective of pre-sales qualification.
It’s about time someone said it! Good Job Steve!
To Kristen’s point, working out budgets in concert is always the best way to go. I think what Steven’s talking about is when we don’t get much information to work with. Too often we in the agency world hear: just tell us what it’ll cost. As if our process is to consult a magic 8-ball that tells us the perfect budget for a client’s particular situation. We need as much disclosure as possible in order to go down the best path in making our recommendations.
As budgets are being determined, though, there’s another consideration: developing a realistic idea of what can be accomplished for whatever the budget turns out to be.
A wise colleague of mine uses a great analogy. If you have $ 10, you can choose to go to McDonald’s for a full meal or you can choose to go to St. Elmo for the best shrimp cocktail on the planet. You can’t, however, take your $ 10 to St. Elmo and expect to get a steak dinner with a nice glass of Cabernet. Perhaps, given those options, you’d choose the shrimp cocktail, because your level of satisfaction and overall experience would be better.
And so it goes with marketing budgets. If, after discussion, it is determined that Kristen’s website needs to be done for $ 15,000, we will work to develop the most strategic and creative website possible for that budget. Some people may think $ 15,000 is “chump change” but if it’s what we have to work with, one of our jobs is to develop a solution for the budget at hand. But we ask our clients to remember that just as you can’t get the St Elmo steak dinner for $10, you can’t get a $ 30,000 website for $ 15,000.
It is not uncommon for clients to hope that the old adage “it takes money to make money” has somehow been laid low by the space/time continuum. With good records about what certain budgets have returned in terms of dollars spent to dollars generated, figures are easier to estimate.
Is there any guarantee that past results will predict future results? No. But if there isn’t a positive ROI with you as a marketing partner, you will not keep the client long anyway. In the currently popular “present market climate,” some of those past results will be even more difficult to relate to future dividends.
One thing remains true and that’s what makes it an adage: “It does take money to make money.” And, when some of your competition is busy ignoring that truism, you have a chance to steal the march on them.
We all need to remember that and to invest in the future…no matter how difficult it is to predict.