Inconsistent Marketing Leads to Inconsistent Income
⏰ Inspiration for your annual marketing budget planning.
I couldn’t have said it any better, so before I say anything more I first want to say, thanks GAIL!
🙌🏿🙌🏾🙌🏽🙌🏼🙌🏻🙌
Anyone who’s been in the design industry even for just a beat has certainly heard of Gail Doby—a celebrated interior designer with a background in finance and banking. Her business acumen and wisdom has guided numerous designers, architects, and other creative professionals to profitability and financial freedom.
Gail’s monthly business advice column in Business of Home landed in my inbox THIS MORNING, and I really wanted to share it with you because I had been sitting on a draft of this post since last week and this was the push I needed to get it out!
Read her wise words here then come back to me.
This month’s she’s talking about marketing 💕, here’s what you’ll takeaway:
When it’s time to hire marketing support in-house (the revenue number for this really surprised me!)
When to outsource your marketing (for firms less than 4 people this is a MUST…yes, you can have it all! But no, you can’t do it all)
How much time each week you should be spending on your marketing (Gail recommends ~10 hours even if you have help)
…and I’ll add to that some budgeting scenarios below for your marketing. I recommend small businesses in our industry budget between 10-15% of their annual revenue on marketing each year.
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So depending on your ambition and goals, my napkin math looks like this in three scenarios:
📈 If your annual business revenue is $100K
…and you can manage 10% to allocate to marketing that’s $10K/ year.
I would spend this on a really well done brand design so that you have the solid visual and narrative foundations you need to implement it yourself across your website and socials—it will be consistent and GORGEOUS from the beginning, and you won’t need to spend the money (or time!) again in a few years to redo it all over again.
💵 For revenue between $250-500K/ year
…a 10% allocation for marketing is $25-50K or between $2-4K/ month.
At this level, I’d recommend investments in your content strategy, upleveling your website, outsourcing to take your socials off your hands, creating community engagement with an event strategy or email campaigns, etc!
🚀 If you’re at $500K-1M+/ year
…a 10-15% allocation is $50-150K or between $4-12K/ month.
For this you might be tempted to hire someone in-house (depending on your market), but I’d still outsource to an agency that can more quickly and efficiently manage your website, social media, or content marketing (provided you have clear guidelines to direct them so they stay on-brand!).
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📌 If you don’t have a solid (and inspiring!) marketing plan, but want one fast, consider booking time for our Brand Roadmap service.
For creative professionals ready to define their brand’s next chapter, this foundational service uncovers the core essence of your brand and provides a clear, actionable strategy for your growth.
We’ll start with an in-depth, two-hour virtual workshop to uncover your brand’s essence and map out your business goals.
We’ll get to know everything about your business—where you are and what’s getting in your way, where you’ve been, and where you want to go.
Two weeks later, we’ll meet again to review your comprehensive roadmap outlining how your brand should be developed and marketed to achieve your goals.
We’ll tell you exactly where your biggest, boldest brand opportunity lies, and what you need to start doing (and stop doing!), to own it!
Then, choose your next step forward: Implement our recommended plan on your own or with your in-house team, or hire us to build it out for you.
The cost of your Brand Roadmap is applied to all additional services if you move forward with us for implementation.
If this sounds like the right thing for you at just the right time, you can book a call with me here.
Consider it only a few hours out of your week spent marketing and just a small % of your allocated budget to have everything figured out for you!
*About the author
Ericka Saurit (enchanté in case we haven’t met! 👋) is a designer and brand strategist, obsessed with how our built environment shapes the human experience.
Through this blog and her popular newsletter, she shares stories and insights about marketing, branding, and the home industry’s creative pulse.
*My hope is to spark ideas that help you grow your business and build a brand that truly shines.✨
