What's the proper budget for Mobile Marketing?

If you're treating your music career like the small business that you are, you're likely spending some time right now planning for 2015. You're setting goals, making a schedule of activities and trying to predict revenues and match them to a budget of expenses. Marketing is certainly a line item in your budget, and so it's a reasonable question - Mobile is here, what's the right number to dedicate to mobile marketing?

 While the circumstances of small businesses are as varied as the products and services they provide, a very common rule of thumb for small businesses is that about 4% of revenues should be devoted to marketing - all the expense efforts you need to undertake to get new fans and keep existing fans. Promotion, publicity, getting airplay, web site, social media, etc. all are marketing expenses.

What about mobile? Mobile Marketing offers unprecedented ways to reach fans and engage them, leading to a propensity for the fan to support you with purchases. Mobile optimized web sites / Apps, text based campaigns, mobile coupons and offers, QR codes, and other marketing tools can be effectively deployed to acquire and engage fans.

Here again, generally, the 4% rule is applicable. Four percent of your marketing budget should be targeted to Mobile Marketing activities. Here's a brief guide:

Band Revenues Marketing Budget Mobile Budget

$100,000      $4,000    $160

$250,000      $10,000   $400

$1,500,000  $60,000   $2,400

$5,000,000  $200,000 $8,000

Use these percentages as a guide to model your own marketing budget for 2015 and PLAN your way to success! And, if you have other ideas about how much of your budget should be dedicated to mobile marketing, share them here!