Suggesterfy

Hey @SuggesterfyDee - I am a SaaSCFO and also a founder of a B2B SaaS startup. We spending about 25% of our total opex on marketing. How much you spend really depends on your business model. For example, if you are buying adwords, and paying for other advertising, then it could get big fast.

There are many ways to promote a start-up without a budget. We use content marketing extensively and it pays off. For example, we run a blog https://blog.getscreen.me/ and on Medium https://medium.com/@softwareobserver

There are many ways to grow your marketing without paying a cent using FB/IG/Twitter etc. I have built a FB group of over 30K Realtors and Loan Officers, even if just 10% could be your client then this is a great start plus you get to test messaging on them at zero cost which you can use latter when doing paid marketing. The other thing to consider is what yiu are comfortable with spending and the payback on that, will spending $100 get you a client that will pay you $200 day 1 or $200 over 12 months?

doing the right thing is the most important part.. also the most difficult 😅

if you find the right channel, you should probably put all the money in you have, but for that, every dollar you invest, should give you back at least $2 pretty short term..

and how fast you get your money back obviously depends on your business model...

how much you invest into marketing also depends extremely on your overall budget.. if everything is covered from a tech and overhead perspective, you should put more into marketing.. if youre really early stage you wanna use more of your budget to get to proct market fit and then start testing channels..

when you find a profitable channel, invest as much as you can... put some money aside for rainy days, bur invest everything that doesnt go into tech into that marketing channel.

whats your business model?

Aim to spend as little on marketing as possible until you get product market fit and you know what the value of your LTV or longer term revenue per user is.
I have spent some money on things like events (spaces, drinks) to do some marketing but that's more to build relationships.

I think it's essential before starting spending on marketing that you do some cold outreach. Whether it's calling your potential target group or doing it on Twitter/Reddit, this will give you valuable information about your exact target group. And when you have a small budget, start a niche for your target group and then expand from there.

The exact amount is impossible to set. In the beginning, just set an amount and then optimise from there. When you feel your funnel is super optimised, slowly turn up the volume on your marketing and expand the target.

Hey @SuggesterfyDee! Good Q and some good answers below.

My answer for this is like my answer for everything. It depends.

We have a small and bootstrapped marketing business that was a total side hustle. For the 1st year of the business, the only marketing we done was writing blogs and cold emails (really inconsistently).

We have now got a decent level of MRR now, so we’re able to do some PPC advertising etc.,

If you’re like us, you’re bootstrapping and trying to keep costs low but have the luxury of time then I’d get your organic content going as the sooner the better. Focus on evergreen content that will work for you in the next few years.

If you have some budget, I’d suggest still try and keep it low to determine your lifetime value and avoid overspending. It also depends on the nature of your business and what marketing channels would be best for you.

Thanks and hope that helps!

Adam