The Real Cost of Low Budget Clients in 2022 – In this article I write about what it means to take on board a low budget client in digital marketing.
You will learn who low budget clients are and the pros and cons of working with them.
This article is part of a series of blog posts focusing on analysing stress in digital marketing:
Let’s start with trying to define who low budget clients are.
Low budget (or small budget clients), also known as cost-clients[1]Lisefski, B. Are You Working for Cost-Clients or Value Clients? Sep 3, 2018, Medium.com, are clients with a limited budget that they can afford or are willing to invest in a particular product or service.
The threshold of ‘low budget’ is a tricky one as it depends on a number of variables including industry, suppliers, product or service.
In this article, ‘low budget’ is defined as a budget that is disproportionally low in comparison to the desired outcome.
As mentioned earlier in this article, the ‘low budget’ threshold depends on a number of factors.
Sometimes low budget clients will trigger your inner creative genius and will push you to excel and find untapped opportunities.
However, most of the times low budget clients tend to be rather costly in terms of time and resources.
So you want to be very careful before taking a project based on a low budget.
In my experience, cost-clients share one or more characteristics.
These are some of the most common traits of low budget clients, based on my experience in digital marketing:
As you can see, the list tends to highlight rather negative characteristics. If you or your agency are not comfortable with one or more of the above, you might want to consider avoiding small budget clients.
The following is a list of things you can put in place to avoid working or being contacted by low budget clients:
Low budget clients are not always to avoid. In some circumstances, you might actually decide that they are worth your time and effort.
To choose whether to work on a low budget project, I normally ask myself the following questions:
If the small budget project ticks the boxes above, then I might actually decide to take it on.
Regardless of all this, just remember: your time is sacred[2]Balmer, C Ho to Put Off Clients with Small Budgets (and Why You Should), Nov 2, 2021, Talentedladiesclub.com so spend it wisely!
References
Pasquale is Founder at Increasily.com, a H2H marketing agency based in Dublin, Ireland, and owner at print-on-demand ecommerce Mintycase.com. Pasquale has worked in Digital Marketing and Account Management since 2004. He currently lives in Dublin with his wife, stepdaughter and cat.
Pasquale Mellone