“Should we do this?”
It’s the question you ask yourself with every proposal, solicitation and cold call that comes across your inbox.
As a business owner, you know how many people are out there trying to get your money.
“Advertise with us!” they say.
Everyone wants to suck your time, energy and cash. So how do you keep that at a minimum, while still giving new opportunities a fair shake?
The easiest way is to recognize and solve for the Infinite Budget Fallacy.
”Should we do this?”
This is the question that comes to mind with any new opportunity. But that’s actually the wrong question.
Because your budget isn’t infinite. Every dollar you spend on Thing A is a dollar you can’t spend on Thing B.
When you consider your budget as a finite resource, the question changes –
“Should we stop spending money on <other thing> to try this new thing?”
And that creates a fundamentally different and more simplified decision.
Maybe you want to move some marketing dollars from something that isn’t working well.
Maybe you’re happy about your current marketing activities, which means you have to grow your marketing budget to try this new thing.
You end up with a few different ways to do it, but one thing is clear – you aren’t blindly considering every new opportunity in a bubble.
And of course more goes into your marketing decisions than this simple heuristic. But at least this helps you navigate the decision from a more efficient and productive starting point.
When you realize that to try something new, you either have to kill something you’re doing now, or grow your marketing budget, you can make quicker, easier decisions.
Your budget is not infinite. Stop considering new opportunities as if it is.