How much should you spend on marketing your home based business?

How much to spend on marketing, the question often confuses online business owners. There's no doubt that marketing is a necessary expense and not some luxury which only large businesses afford, but businesses with limited funds should be careful when budgeting their marketing campaigns. Also, the cost incurred at marketing will add to the prices of the product, this is another reason to keep a check on your marketing expenditures.

Marketing is not all about spending:
Marketing is normally linked to some expensive crowd-pulling techniques but reality is that marketing success is not always a result of heavy spending. Good results can be achieved by smart planning, selecting your target market wisely, finding low cost mediums to reach these customers, and some effective message which is prepared while keeping in mind the targeted customer's psychology. Huge fund allocation may be helpful but it’s not an alternate to these basics in any case. When choosing your online business, make sure you don’t have to compete with large corporations, right in the beginning.

Avail Low cost tools as much as you can:
While large companies spend hefty amounts on pay per click campaigns and advertisements, you can depend safely on low cost (even free) mediums like blogging, e-mail marketing or submitting into free directories. These resources can take some time in generating results but patience pays in the end. Start from these inexpensive techniques to make your customer's base. Another advantage these mediums have over those advertisements and other expensive mediums is the level of interaction you can have with your customers.

Increase your marketing budget as your business grows:
A positive aspect of internet marketing is that you can start with minimum amount and decide on whether to increase or not, from the response you get. It doesn’t matter which method you are going to use, whether you decide to try some PPC marketing, affiliate marketing, user generated content or hiring some marketing company; you can start from the minimum amount possible. If the results are satisfactory you can increase your spending later on.

The budget required for online business advertisement varies from business to business, depending on the competition, product or services you are offering, and of course your financial capacity. Although excessive spending can hurt the business, but trying to save more by cutting down your marketing expense drastically is not a wise move either. The trick is to maintain a balance between these two extremes.