Well, January was a blur. We started the year with a 4-day workweek coming out of the Christmas break, and we had a 4-day workweek two weeks later with MLK day. We've been operating out of a temporary office, as many of you know. A big thanks to Greg Blakemore and the Nehemiah Group for the home away from home. We rolled out a new cadence to the way we serve our Partner clients and just finished up The Squad Vitals, our monthly reporting package that was delivered to every one of them earlier this week. We did much of this while one of our most experienced team members, Joel Gerdis, released a worship album and went out a small music tour.
In the midst of the month that seemed to fly by, we had our best month in our 9-year history in January. God has a sense of humor. It was a busy few months with some transitions, a couple client departures, and a lot of new client arrivals. We brought on a new team member (you rock, Alea!) and we are in the midst of a move to a new home in Eastpoint Business Center.
So, as owners of The Marketing Squad, we've paused and reflected and decided to pull back on our own marketing for a period of time. Why you ask? Well, why not. It's the middle of winter, it's still dark and grey outside and a good slumber never hurt anyone. That's a pretty lame answer, I know. How about I hit you with the real reason?
The real reason is three-part:
1) Although we want to lead the way with our own marketing, business development, and lead generation, we want to be externally focused on our Partner clients. With everything we've put in place to serve our partners better, we really need to concentrate all our energy and effort on perfecting the new structure/system to delight our clients. Then we'll refocus on our marketing.
2) We really want to lead the way with our own marketing, but that's not what we've been doing. We paused to reflect on what we've been doing with our blog and on social media the past year. One thing is clear: the drone attacks and social hacks must stop! We want our voice and our expertise to add value and not just be part of the noise in the digital space. A brief hiatus is in order to re-tool and re-focus. You'll like the content better and we'll feel better about how we're representing ourselves online.
Even though our website has a nice new look from our rebranding in 2016, the sitemap, content, and user flow doesn't really reflect who we are and where we are going. We've been working with some outside consultants, and they helped us realize how our website doesn't tell our story very well.
So we're excited to give it a reboot in the next 45 to 60 days. Rather than spend time and energy creating content on our blog, sending email updates, and pumping out social media posts, we think it would be a little more strategic to put that energy into our alignment. After all, that's what we preach to our clients.
3) We want to set the example that it's okay to stop, pause, and turn off the hamster wheel. We have several clients that work in industries where scheduled shutdowns are common. Well, there is no reason why we can't stop the conveyor belts, blow out the lines, clean up the shop or take inventory. So if we can do it, hopefully, you'll feel comfortable doing it as well.
So although it will be dark for a while on our blog, social media, and email, we're still taking new partner clients and new projects. And before you know it the sun will come out tomorrow. Or if you prefer, Here Comes the Sun.....
Stay tuned as hibernation won't last long!
The other day I was logged into my Twitter account (natively- not through a tool like Hootsuite or Hubspot) and I decided to have a conversation with someone. Someone I had networked with before replied to something I tweeted on the tweeter. I thought to myself, wow, I have a chance to engage in a conversation. I remember when I first set up my Twitter account in 2007. I used to have all kinds of conversations and I used to meet lots of new people. Well, these days we just auto-publish droves of information that hopefully people click on, read ,and share. The rest felt like history.
So I decided to go down this road with a conversation. I replied back. It was a humorous reply to me, so I hit back with a little humor myself. A couple jokes led to a conversation about business. How are things going for you? Are you still doing _________? Are you still over at ____________? The next thing you know we started sending a couple DM's about how we might work together a bit in the future. I realized how naturally a conversation in social media can turn into a sales call, a recruiting opportunity, or relationship with a new vendor. And sometimes, it just turns into a new friend. Sure, call them whatever you like, a follower, a connection, a like, but they are still a new friend.
It started back with a chance to have infinitely more conversations than were possible in a normal non-social setting. There was Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and then Instagram. People could find lost acquaintances, reconnect with high school mates (Aussie much), and easily make new friends at an event with the click of a button. We could now come back from a conference, a meeting, or a networking breakfast and go make connections with those we just met. It made business cards less important, that's for sure.
So what has happened to this great new world we had at our fingertips? It's gotten completely away from conversations and onto streams of content. Not many people are talking (aside from sports and politics). Most people are just sharing. What a pity.
Let's you and I start the conversations again and make these tools become what they once were, and what they were intended for.
If your business is like our business, then the key leadership team or owners are likely sitting down this month and laying out goals and budgets for 2017. If you operate your business on a calendar year versus your tax year (for C corps) then this post will hopefully catch you at just the right time— to make you think. Think about what? Adding a line item to your budget for marketing.
We meet a lot of businesses who are looking at hiring new sales people. They have a line item in the budget for sales. They are always willing to hire an additional sales person. We love selling and love sales people, but is hiring that sales person always the best decision— especially if you haven't added a line item to your budget for marketing? When I say marketing, I'm also talking about digital advertising. We see a lot of small businesses up to 10 million a year in revenue that don't have a marketing line item in their budget.
Well, first let me say that we are recommending it to clients as we meet them, but I wouldn't say it's a novel idea. The USSBA (US Small Business Administration) recommends businesses with revenue less than 5 million per year invest around 7-10% in marketing. The one caveat they mention is that these businesses would typically be operating on a 10-12% net profit margin.
So I like math. Let's do some math. If you don't like math, just bear with me, it'll be over shortly.
If your business is pulling down 1 million per in revenue you'd invest $70,000 on the low end and $100,000 on the high end into your marketing.
Let's break down a couple more scenarios:
So that's a good chunk of change, but it's well worth assuring that your sales people have leads to follow up on and to make certain your brand reaches a growing audience.
Let's focus on how to start planning and creating your unique marketing budget for 2017.
First, let's get started with a list of marketing expenses you should already have:
Things to consider adding:
I tend to think it's best to lay out which expenses are recurring (monthly, quarterly, or annually) and which ones are one-time expenses. Whether you use a spreadsheet, Quickbooks, or a tool like LivePlan to build your annual planning, the key is laying out your budget in annual numbers (start with % goals and work into specific numbers) and then break it down into monthly expenses.
Let's look at an example.
For example, you may say staffing is going to be 40% of your overall budget. You might think ongoing digital marketing is 30%, with digital advertising at 20%, and 10% would cover all other expenses like brand collateral, networking, events, and etc.
Using the midpoint of investment for the 5 million revenue business we'd be at $265,000 annually.
$265,000
From this high-level approach, you can then break these categories down into as many line items as you like and build this out into a monthly budget.
These are just ideas and are not the gold standard for budgeting. The SBA has some great marketing budget information that can also help. We don't have a monopoly on good ideas so feel free to share what's working for you in the comments below. Thanks for reading along and good luck building your budget and achieving your goals in 2017.
Someone at The Squad (her name is Kristina, and she will hunt you down to get your content 🙂 ) asked me to write a blog for Halloween. A few weeks ago, someone else said it would be cool to write a blog in the form of a Mad Lib. So I'm writing a Halloween post in the form of a Mad Lib. Why not?
Take a moment and grab a piece of paper or just type in the comments. You've got 10 minutes and you look like you need a diversion. Trust me. Put the work down for just a second. Fill in the blanks below on your paper or in the comments.
The other day one of our marketing consultants came across a website that was so scary it didn't _____________ when it loaded in their browser. They initially thought they needed to reach out and ___________ the business to see if they were willing to sit down to discuss __________________.
Since Halloween is about wearing costumes and hiding behind masks, they initially thought the website was just ____________ but after a second look it really did ____________________________.
The black background and white fonts were very old school, spooky, and hard to read, but they weren't nearly as bad as the _______________. The website wasn't mobile responsive and didn't show up on search engines with the keyword phrase _______________.
The website didn't have any call to actions leading to landing pages, so there was no chance to convert ________________.
The website kept getting scarier and scarier the more the marketing consultant dug in. Every new page was like watching ____________ on Friday the 13th.
The website user flow was as contorted as a _____________ and it led to a bounce rate of _______ %.
Our team took this business through our website redesign process. We completed a questionnaire, a strategy and user flow meeting, developed custom wireframes, a sitemap, and a design mockup. We got approvals, coded up the new mobile responsive website, added in the copy and other content, and then launched it.
Now this unsightly website can take off its __________ mask and be proud to face the world. Plus, it will convert visitors to leads.
If your website is scaring people away, then give The Squad a call. We can help today.
If you're reading this, then you NEED to know you're 90 days away from a new website. It's fall and before long it will be winter. As many businesses start to plan budgets for 2017, business development and marketing are sure to come up in the planning and conversations. As a business owner, marketing director or general manager, you may find yourself tasked with the responsibility of managing your presence on the web and thus a big part of your business development, marketing, and sales.
Well, wherever your website is right now have no fear. You are 90 days away from exactly what you want and need. The factors are understanding where you are right now, developing a strategy and vision of where you'd like your website and digital marketing to be, and partnering with The Marketing Squad to make that strategy and vision a reality.
I am working with a few assumptions. I'm assuming you have a logo and a brand that is solid. I'm assuming you know who you are. If you don't then we're still able to help, we're just not 90 days away from a brand new website. We need to add a month or so to figure those things out first. For the majority of you out there, you have a solid brand, and you have a vision—you may just need some tweaks to your website. Some of the things we see time and again that you may be missing are:
Some of you reading this may not even have a website yet. It's becoming less common to NOT have a website, but you're out there. Don't be ashamed. Some really great word of mouth businesses never needed one. However, just for validation, added credibility to the next generations, and to magnify that word of mouth referral train, you need one now.
Maybe you're a startup and are just going to market. We can have you up and running by early 2017. That's exciting to think about.
So as you make plans for 2017, why don't you ring in the New Year with a brand new website or a website redesign? You owe it to your bottom line. It moves the needle. Trust us. We see if all the time.
Talk to someone on our sales team. We'll walk you through the discovery process, develop proposals, and have your agreement signed before you say boo on the 31st. Then we'll be off and running toward a new website for the New Year.
P.S. It will also be a nice Christmas present for your sales and marketing team. Thanksgiving will abound and you'll be in love it with by Valentines. .... End of cheesy Holiday references.
So next week, we're hosting an Open House over here at the SQUAD. If you haven't yet, take a quick second (well minute) and RSVP. We'd love to have you stop by, see our place, meet our team and have some fun. If it's a SQUAD event, you can bet we're gonna have some fun.
So now that you know we're taking a pause to celebrate the name change we made back in the spring, I want to assure you that one of our greatest core competencies and differentiators, content marketing, is still alive and well.
We hear time and again from clients that agencies they have worked with in the past may have been strategic, and they may have been creative, but they often struggled with execution and implementation. I'll be honest, as one of the partners in this business, I've seen first hand the challenges to staffing and managing the ongoing marketing programs of 25 + partner programs. It's not easy. It's much easier to have a starting and stopping point. Start a project. Finish a project. Call us if you need us. Here are your keys. Have at it. Please don't call— fingers crossed.
That can be the MO (aka modus operandi) of many digital marketing agencies. I'm not faulting them. It's the easier path to staff and plan for. If these agencies do engage in ongoing support of their clients, it's often in the form of hosting, boiler plate SEO services, or digital ad management. Some of these are set it and forget it strategies that don't require monthly strategic meetings, editorial planning, constant refinement, and analytics reviews for the sake of making meaningful decisions. If you just give me consulting and advice without the help I need to execute, then I feel a little cheated. Maybe you feel the same way. Well the good news is that we can help you on the front end and help you execute along the way. It's in our DNA as an agency. We're not perfect, but we are striving for perpetual improvement.
When you differentiate yourself with ongoing content strategies and management, then you have to have a focus on business development or it's all for naught. That's why everyone in our sales conversations, and every strategic monthly meetings has overtones of business development. If you're not looking to grow your business, well we're probably not the best fit to work together. And that's okay.
All that being said, please take a moment and RSVP for our Open House. Technically you don't have to, of course. You can just stop by the day of, but Brooke Moody, our office facilitator loves when a plan comes together. So make her day and sign up now.
Copyright 2026 The Marketing Squad | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Terms of Service
