How to invest €10,000 in marketing in 7 days? 💸

The main issue for many marketers isn't the lack of budget. It's the doubt about how and how much to spend.

If any of the following scenarios sounds familiar, keep reading:

1. You are given X monthly budget (but the management) and told to spend all of it, maxing out on results.
2. You are told to launch a product but not told how much marketing budget you have.
3. You don't know how to calculate the optimal marketing budget for a new product/market launch.

Let's consider each of the above scenarios.

Scenario 1: Management tells you to spend €X (e.g. €50,000) every month.

The problem with such fixed budgets is that it's always not enough or too much. You should plan your marketing budget according to ROAS (return on ad spend) and seasonality.

What to do as a marketer: Understand what's the maximum CAC (cost-per-acquisition) that has positive ROI. And scale your top marketing channels to the maximum budgets to deliver that CAC.

Sometimes, a big part of scaling is optimisation: improving the campaign setup, ad copy, optimisation events, and visuals. So that when you 2x the budgets, your CAC won't double as well.

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Scenario 2: You are told to launch a product but not told how much marketing budget you have.

This is in fact the same as problem #3: not knowing how to calculate the optimal marketing budget for a new product/market launch.

Again, I would start with understanding the maximum CAC you can afford:

1. How much is a new avg. customer worth to you in the next 12 months? If you don't know yet, make a (pessimistic) hypothesis.
2. How much runway does the company have? Do you need to get a payback in 12 months? Maybe it's 3 months or 24 months.
3. How much can you spend on acquiring one new customer? Consider the non-marketing costs as well, and agree on the CAC with the management/growth team.

Now that you know the CAC – let's say you can afford to pay €10 to acquire a new customer – you can start choosing the right ad channel.

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How would I spend €10,000 as a B2C marketer launching a new product?

Let's start with a disclaimer.

Do not follow the recommendations as a 100% foolproof marketing recipe for your brand.

Your marketing channels depend on your customer personas: where do they hang out?

For most B2C brands, the answer is: on social media. If you're targeting Gen Z, you should look towards Instagram and TikTok. If you're after a slightly older audience, consider Meta and Display ads.

Before launching the marketing campaigns to spend that €10,000, I would ensure that:

1. There is a strong product/market fit. Your product is better than competitors' or cheaper. (You have to be better somehow).
2. There's a growth engine built into the product, e.g. referrals.
3. You have an attractive launch offer to promote – acquiring new users will be cheaper and there's a word-of-mouth effect.

This said, below are two marketing mixes I would consider myself.
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Note that these do not include everything you can do for free: from posting to social media groups to crafting viral TikTok videos.

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💸 Marketing mix 1: Gen Z audience

How I'd spend €10,000 in 7 days when launching a new product:

• €1,500 Content creator collabs: 3 content creators to create UGC-style video content introducing the new product.
• €500 Social media giveaway: ideally co-branded with a more established brand
• €3,000 Meta & Instagram ads: one purchase-optimised ad campaign
• €3,000 TikTok ads: one purchase-optimised ad campaign
• €2,000: generous promo codes for user-to-user referrals

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💸 Marketing mix 2: Gen X audience

How I'd spend €10,000 in 7 days when launching a new product:

• €2,000 Google Display ads: targeting the main news publication websites
• €3,000 Meta & Instagram ads – one purchase-optimised ad campaign
• €4,000 PR: articles, interviews, TV talkshows, paid content marketing articles in popular publications + boosting these as Facebook posts.
• €1,000 Social media influencer collab: with 1-2 accounts with lots of relevant and local followers
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What happens after the first 7 days? REPORTING!

Set up reporting for all of your marketing channels, so that you can tell how many new users came from them. For non-digital channels, use unique promo codes.

And now that you've experimented with at least 3 channels, double down on the best-performing ones.

I would also test one new channel 1-2 times per month to scale the results / bring down the CAC.

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In case you missed it

If you haven't read my past 5 newsletters, you can find them all here. Including...

• What are the biggest marketing trends in 2024?
• 10 audit questions to ask your marketing team… Or yourself
• Seasonal 2024 marketing budgeting guide​​

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2024 Update: I've signed new projects and am 100% booked

Merci everyone for reaching out with all the fascinating collaboration proposals. 🙇‍♀️ You got me very excited.

I have signed two long-term projects with amazing sustainability 💚 startups, as well as some smaller gigs, and am booked until June 2024.

I still consider one-off marketing audits and workshopping requests.

1. Hire me to conduct a 20h marketing audit for your company. Read more about my auditing service and philosophy here.
2. Hire me to create a marketing workshop/training for your team.

If you’d like to collaborate, reach out at marketing@karolakarlson.com or via LinkedIn. We’ll book a 30-minute intro call and take it from there.

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Coming up next week: How I'd spend the first €10k as a B2B brand

In next Friday's newsletter, I'll share a hypothetical use case for marketing a new B2B brand. Similar to this week's exercise, but for brands targeting businesses.

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Merci! 🐿️

This is the 6th Marketing Things newsletter and I appreciate all of you who have subscribed. Support this newsletter by forwarding it to a fellow marketer who might like it.

Thanks for reading!
Karola