As an entrepreneur you will probably wonder whether you spend enough on marketing. Of course, it is not easy to give a uniform answer for all companies. Every industry requires a specific approach and its own budget. Yet there are rules of thumb for this.

Personally, I like the rule of thumb that could be quite right for B2B companies that have already had a few start-up years. The rule of thumb for these companies would be:

“5% if you want to continue, 10% if you want to grow”

So do you spend less than 5% of your turnover on marketing? Then you would actually slowly deteriorate! Of course, this rule of thumb can only apply with a budget of a little size. With a turnover lower than € 250,000, the marketing budget becomes too small at 5% to really achieve anything.

How do I know if I am sitting correctly?

Often it works best to take a look at the competitors or comparable companies in another industry that you see as successful. What are their marketing budgets spent on? Through which channels do they do this? Do they shoot with hail or do they reach exactly the right target group? Spend some time ‘Googling’ for search terms related to your own services or products. Is it always the competitor that is visible? And why is that? Is there a bit of an uncomfortable feeling bubbling up now? Then you are not quite right yet.

Then what do I spend money on?

If you have then decided to put in a substantial amount for marketing, you naturally want to spend every euro well. You can spend your marketing budget really easily. This blog is not written to elaborate on all these things, but I still want to give you something to divide your budget into jars. You can divide your budget into:

• Outbound Marketing
• Inbound Marketing
• Personal belongings
• Sample balloons

Why this classification?

Outbound is the classic marketing: calling, advertising, fairs, etc. and is aimed at the short term to bring in customers on the basis of the best possible hail shooting.

Inbound is the new way of marketing: blogging, sharing knowledge, winning customers based on first sowing and then harvesting.

Staffing is really necessary, even if you only start with an intern who supports you as a management, because marketing in particular needs constant attention. And an intern also often provides surprising insights that you would not have thought of yourself. You need

trial balloons to discover what really works for your company, so make room for that in your budget.

How do you make it fun?

I do hear from some entrepreneurs that it is not their thing or that they just don’t like it. That may be of course, but marketing is the front line when it comes to growing your business. What helps is to compare your growth goals with your marketing resources and measure what delivers which channel or which action. For example, register for each new customer how they arrived at your company and try to discover how they were influenced during the sales process. And what also helps … celebrate a success!…

Data that is up to date is worth its weight in gold. The more information you store over a longer period of time, the more valuable this data becomes. If you have been active for a number of years, you have gathered enough information to be able to say something meaningful about the results achieved. And by gaining insight into how you arrived at this result, it is possible to implement improvements and to achieve an even better result in the next period. 

To be able to create powerful reports, you need advanced reporting software. A reporting program can be linked to, for example, your administration and ensures that data is transferred to the tool in real time. For users of SnelStart there is AdminView, reporting software specially developed for SnelStart users. In this blog we explain which reports are important for every entrepreneur, whether you are a SnelStart and / or AdminView user or not: these are the four financial reports that are important for every organization.

4 Reports that are important for every entrepreneur

1. Liquidity planning 

Money flows: every company has them. But what goes in and what goes out? And what is that money spent and how does it come in? If you have an overview of all flows, it is easy to prepare forecasts and goals.

Within AdminView we have the report ‘liquidity planning ‘. Here you have one overview of what the expected income and expenditure will be. If you click on the numbers, you can see exactly how these numbers are constructed. This not only shows you how your company is doing, but also what lies behind it. That saves you a lot of searching for where the figures come from.

2. Period comparison

Liquidity planning allows you to look into the future, but past results are just as important. That is why it is smart to keep all data from previous periods and not to overwrite it. 

If you have created a budget in a second SnelStart administration, you can compare it. This way you know at once what you have budgeted and what it really is. You can also compare multiple SnelStart databases in this report. If you click on the numbers you will see exactly how these numbers are structured. Budgeting with AdminView and SnelStart is easy.

3. Payment behavior

Another thing in the line of money flows is payment behavior. Your own payment behavior and the payment behavior of your customers. Payment behavior is very important; the longer a customer delays to pay, the more difficult it becomes to properly manage your cash flow. After all, you also have payment obligations to suppliers. 

A reporting tool shows which customers have not yet paid and which customers are always late with payment. This way, specific steps can be taken in this regard.

4. Stock

Your stock also causes fluctuating cash flows. This is because you have more or less stock at one time than at another. It is therefore good to know how much money you have in stock. This is not only important for yourself. Suppose you get on fire and your stock goes down. Of course you want to turn this into insurance work. At that time, the insurance also wants to know the value of your stock.…