Marketing and Taxes

Q: What does one have to do with the other?
A: As a business, you have to spend the money on both.

Every year April 15th seems to come earlier and earlier and if you are smart about how you handle your withholdings you will get a very small refund or you have to pay in a little bit. Your marketing efforts can be managed in a parallel fashion. If you have the right message, the right delivery method and the right design, you will earn the business back many times your initial investment.

BUT, you have to do it right. More often than not, a business owner knows just about everything about their product or service but they are not a marketing expert. This same type of knowledge/skill-set division is why so many medical billing companies exist today. Medical professionals simply want to practice medicine. They don't want to run a business and are happy to turn those duties over to the experts.

Many times, business owners are persuaded to spend their advertising and marketing budgets on single source vendors. For example, a local radio rep walks into a retail electronics store and convinces the owner or manager that he has the best station in the market to attract customers. The business owner unwittingly spends his monthly budget on the ONE station that the sales rep is selling.

Now, this may or may not be the right move, but in order to truly evaluate the options in the market, you need to have a non-biased marketing consultant that will look at the big picture. A marketing consultant can evaluate the local/regional radio stations, determine which ones will be the best for the businesses demographic and make recommendation on the most effective placement

In a similar fashion, a marketing consultant can look at your entire marketing campaign and make recommendations on how to improve your image, brand awareness and your marketing budget efficiency.

I ran across a great article about marketing and post cards. It talks about "doing it right" and is really applicable to what I am talking about here. Check it out, it's definitely worth the read.

Taxes and marketing are both necessary expenditures if you are a business owner, just make sure you are using your marketing dollars wisely. When you need law advice, you seek a lawyer right? Why wouldn't you seek the help of someone who specializes in marketing? Take a look at hiring a marketing consultant, they know marketing just like you know your business.