Building Your Budget: Turn Your Passion into Profits
Jackson Russo 
Budgets and branding go hand in hand. Your budget is how much money you have to invest – because branding is an investment, not an expense.
Budgets and branding go hand in hand. Your budget is how much money you have to invest – because branding is an investment, not an expense – to make your passion profitable. Making sure you get a return on investment, or ROI, is crucial: it’s the difference between a hobby and a career. A pastime and a lifestyle.
When building a branding budget, you should ask yourself:
- What should my budget be?
- How much are my competitors spending?
- What is my ROI, and how do I know I’m on the right track?
Every single item needs to be categorized tracked, monitored, and manipulated – maybe something is working well, and something else is not. You need to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
But that’s all easier said than done.
The difference between an investment and an expense is ROI. It’s that simple. But how do you make sure you’re going to spend where it counts to get what you want?
Most people don’t know how to spend, how much to spend, how to track spending, or how to find out what’s working vs. what’s a waste. Common mistakes for tracking ROI, like looking at the wrong thing, expecting immediate gratification, or just not doing it at all can cost you your dream.
Department store magnate John Wanamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.” In Brand State U’s Building a Budget: Return on Your Investment course, I will help you demystify the business of building your budget for a brand that, unlike department stores, will last.
Learn How to DIY Your ROI
Knowing what questions to ask is a start. Finding out your plan of attack is how you finish. In the Building a Budget course, you will:
- Plan for success: You’ll learn how to identify prospective progress points and understand the sales funnel and sales process.
- Discover how to develop a budget: There are plenty of reports out there by recognized accounting firms that tell you the national and regional numbers of your industry. Let’s make the most of these resources. Here, I’ll show you how to prepare for an annual review, create your own strategy, bring fresh ideas to the table, and make the most of the budget you have.
- Learn how to get the marketing budget you deserve: We’ll go over how to ask for more, allocate your funds, plan your campaign, create content; and utilize paid advertising, workforce marketing, and software tools to your advantage. Then, I’ll show you how events can come into play, and how all of this adds up to lifetime value, or an estimate of the revenue to expect from individuals in your target audience.
- Get some investment 101: PIE isn’t just dessert. I’ll show you how to understand portfolio investment entities (PIE), how to calculate revenue growth as a percentage, and how to position your investments for optimized results.
- Master stretching your budget: Times are tough. That means you need to strategically invest in your website, traditional marketing, digital marketing, and social media. I’ll show you how.
- What’s next? You’ll just have to find out.
Looking at Everything – with Focus
Everyone is different. For many businesses, even your rent is marketing: High traffic areas = more people seeing your sign over the door.
At the end of the day, you may be tempted to not spend anything. But as Henry Ford said, “The man who stops advertising to save money, is like the man who stops a clock to save time.”
Smart companies who invest during lean times grow exponentially faster. And when the time is right, they’ve already positioned themselves to be on top for when things get good again. You decide what your future looks like.
In the Building a Budget project we will look at what these smart companies spend in your sector are up to, and how to develop a budget for how you can invest to reduce waste and better track your ROI.
That’s the beauty of small businesses and the self-starters who get them off the ground – and soaring. I want to help you build a budget project that helps your budget work for you, not against you, to make your passion profitable.
Sounds good? Good. Click here to enroll.