Have you committed your company to a marketing budget? Many businesses consider their marketing budget one of the most important expenses including payroll to their employees or the lease payments they make on their building. Where do you break in your marketing budget priorities?

Is marketing one of the first things that you cut when you are looking to save money in your business? If your marketing and advertising is truly working for you and it brings in new clients why would you cut off the hand that is feeding you? Or are you unsure if your marketing budget is giving you the return on investment that you are looking for and therefore cut that expenditure first.

You must commit to a marketing budget but you must also know that it is giving results and if it is not getting results within you need to adjust and change your marketing mix. What should your marketing budget be? Should be percentage of sales revenues? Should be percentage of anticipated or projected sales?

Should you allow advertising executives and salespeople to help you establish a marketing budget? No, none of these ways to establish a marketing budget makes sense. You need to establish a marketing budget which allows you to send a simple message to your target market and potential customers has efficiently as possible and figure out how much that will cost and estimate how much revenue you can receive if all your target market knows about your company. You should probably think in those terms rather than anything else when establishing a marketing budget. Please consider this in 2006.