Free 2024 Hardware Retail Budget Template

Planning your budgets for 2024? Never had a marketing budget plan before? Get the Free Downloadable Spreadsheet Template that store owners around the country are using to make an effective and efficient plan.

Ok, so you’re here because you’ve either never created a marketing budget for your team, have a budget but don’t feel confident in it, or have a strong budget and want to test it against your peers. In this blog, we’ll review every line item we recommend a hardware store client should consider in building their annual marketing plan.

2024 Budget Index

Part 1: Building An Accurate Budget

Let’s begin with your current revenue and your projected revenue. Typically we’d look at the past 2 to 3 years to create a trend to help us project next year’s revenue numbers, but with Covid, we’re actually including years 2019 to 2022 for historical reference. (FYI- take a peek at 2014 real estate numbers if your store sells building supplies and lumber, it’s what realtors are using to compare this recent market shift) Ok, so here is a scenario:

  • 2019 $4M
  • 2020 $6.5M (60% YOY)
  • 2021 $9M (40% YOY)
  • 2022 $10.8M (20% YOY)
  • 2023 $11.7M (8% YOY)
  • 2024 $12.5M (7% YOY)

2024? Well, in this scenario, we’re seeing some flattening. Now, we are not economists, but we do read a lot on industry trends, and we would hope, without factoring in inflation/recession, that with solid operations, a decent pipeline, and consistent marketing, one could expect to grow 5%-10% in 2023 based on these numbers.

Obviously, you will also want to consider your typical predictive factors like your town’s growth, your competition, your growth and expansion efforts, etc. But if we were to give a decent guess based on multiple factors and this store owner’s gut, we’d say we’re hoping to hit 7%. Which would’ve been solid if we said this in 2018, but we live in a new reality.

Based on this gross revenue number and how aggressive you’d like to be, we recommend the following 4 options.

table showing growth plans for budgeting marketing spend

The above graph lays out four example marketing plans that a business may choose to use depending on its goals. The graph illustrates four potential marketing budgets of a fictitious business that is doing $6 million in revenue and outlines what percentage of revenue should be spent on marketing to achieve its goals.

Businesses that have more than enough business and are not ready or able to take on a plethora of new customers may choose the “Maintain” plan. At only 1% of their gross revenue, this plan is spending less than the industry average and very affordable. This plan is not expected to bring new customers into your store or bring awareness of the brand to new customers; instead, it is the minimum needed to keep your brand relevant with existing customers.

The “Basic Growth” plan utilizes the industry average of 2% of gross revenue being invested in marketing. Businesses that are operating well, but could take an uptick in customer base typically use this plan.

The next two plans are for businesses that are looking to grow faster than others in the industry. Businesses that need to find new customers NOW or that have a large market share to gain (or potentially lose to new competition) will consider allocating 3% – 4% of gross revenue towards marketing.

Part 2: Let’s Talk Marketing

Now that we have a budget in place, let’s look at the most important thing any business should look at when it comes to marketing, and that’s your content.

Whether you’re designing flyers for your B2B sales team because that is where you need to focus for big growth, or you’re highlighting your team members on Facebook to build authentic relationships with your customers, you’ll want to dedicate a portion of your budget to content strategy, creation, and distribution.

This is typically where we tell customers that Direct Mail and circulars work sometimes but can be cost-prohibitive, and if you can reach your customers on social and email, why rely on the postal service??

What Do We Mean By Marketing Content?

Marketing content is all of the bits and pieces that fulfill your overall marketing strategy and marketing tactics. From the shortest of tweets to the biggest of billboards, and everything in between can be considered marketing content.

Marketing content generally falls under one of these three tactics: 1) Ways to attract new leads. 2) Ways to engage leads. 3) Ways to delight leads. Let’s break this down further and provide some examples.

Attracting Leads

This marketing content will be your first point of contact with potential customers. Specific content that would fall under this category includes:

homco display ad

Display ads and Remarketing campaigns

Display ads are visual ads that are shown on the display pages of search engine results pages. This type of ad has the potential to reach millions of people all over the world. Remarketing specifically retargets users who have already visited your website.

serp results for hardware store near me in flagstaff

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Frequent SEO maintenance can add specific keywords to webpages to help boost your overall visibility in search engine results.

example of social ad for HomCo hardware retail store

Paid Social Media Advertising

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and a whole host of other social media platforms all allow you to advertise to their users. Using social media is a great way to target audiences with specific interests.

Picture of tv ad for owenhouse ace hardware

Print, TV, & Radio Advertising

As people say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” These traditional forms of advertising still work and include things like flyers, billboards, van or truck graphics, TV commercials, and radio spots. Traditional advertising is still a great way to attract local leads.

Engaging leads

This marketing content is designed to specifically target leads who are already familiar with your brand, be it by following your social media accounts, subscribing to your email list, reading your blog, or all three! Engaging content includes:

example of newsletter from country ace hardware

Email newsletters

Monthly newsletters are an effective way to directly engage your leads and provide them with plenty of information and calls to action to follow through with.

Picture of a HomCo facebook post for DIY

Organic social media posts

Frequently posting across all social media platforms is one of the easiest ways to keep your leads engaged. Posts can include a mix focused on monthly themes, departments, events, blog posts, or sales.

picture of owenhouse ace hardware blog about cooking turkey for thanksgiving

Routine blogging

Monthly blog posts whose focus is based on what users are searching for are a great way to engage your subscribers. Blog posts can also help support landing pages and help those pages’ rankings on Google.

Delighting leads

It is one thing for people to recognize your brand it is something else entirely for them to fall in love with it! Once you have an audience, show them what you are really about with the following types of content:

corn hole tournament sponsored by HomCo hardware

Stewardship/volunteering and sponsorships 

Use your business to help local charities and organizations and sponsor local events. Not only will it help better those in need, but branded signs, banners, and flyers are great ways to boost your business’ reputation.

hassett hardware staff member helping a customer in store

Amazing customer service and reputation management

Do you go above and beyond to make your store a friendly place? Does your store offer free cookies to all shoppers? Does your staff greet people with a cheerful smile and use branded messaging when saying goodbye? If so, let your audience know and include these things in your marketing materials.

example of homco events for in-store promotions

Event activations

Organizing, promoting and hosting in-store events, workshops, and classes is a great way to drive leads to your store and raise awareness throughout your community.

infographic showing different types of hardware retail marketing strategies

Marketing Made Easy!

Want a handy tool to remember important details about Attracting, Engaging, and Delighting leads? View our Types Of Marketing Content infographic! Share this infographic with your team to ensure these important steps are covered in your marketing strategy!

Part 3: Who Will Organize & Create Your Marketing Content?

In general, if you are looking to run marketing campaigns and create specific marketing content, that means that your business will need to do one of two things; either hire a marketing manager to keep it in-house or outsource to an agency.

1. Keep it in-house- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary of Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers in 2021 was $133,380.

2. Outsourcing- Using a marketing agency gives you the flexibility to acquire different rates depending on your marketing needs. Because of this, an average monthly marketing retainer with an agency will run you $2,500 to $12,000 depending on your store size and number of offerings (lumber, appliances, furniture, etc).

Looking at these numbers, it may be tempting to think, “Maybe I don’t need marketing at all,” or “Even though I am inexperienced, I’ll just do it myself,” but there is a large opportunity cost of not marketing; especially of not marketing correctly.

Without proper marketing efforts, your business will not be found by new leads, will not earn the trust of potential clients, and you are not beating your competition. All of these factors can contribute to a net loss in revenue compared to the expense of a marketing manager’s salary or agency expense.

Whether you hire a full time person, find an intern that you’re able to easily train, hire a contractor or an agency, having someone do this job as their sole priority is crucial to keeping your store relevant in your community.

Part 4: How To Use Ace.net

If you are True Value and rely on the workbench or Do it Best or an independent, you can skip this section, because you don’t need it.

Now, if you are an Ace owner or team member, you are familiar with the powerhouse marketing arm that Ace provides its dealers. Let’s dig into both the advantages and disadvantages of Ace.net.

You’ll notice in your new budget template that Ace.net’s marketing tab groups its offerings under four main categories.

  1. Ace Rewards
  2. Digital Marketing
  3. Traditional Marketing
  4. Promotions

Under each of these headings, Ace.net offers many guidelines, tools, and third-party integrations to help round out a store’s marketing effort. Although Ace.net can ease some of the burdens by providing ready-to-use materials for digital, in-store, and traditional marketing, many owners we work with feel overwhelmed by the amount of effort it takes to access the marketing data they want.

The struggle to accurately and easily identify and distill marketing data is frustrating. There is rumor of a new data interface, so stay tuned for an update should this change.

When making marketing decisions, you need accurate, easy-to-access data, so you can make informed decisions. This is one of the main reasons our hardware retail clients choose to work with us, to cut through the clutter and provide the data that they need to make the right decision for their store.

Part 5: What About Digital Advertising?

Now, before we talk about digital advertising, it is important to make the distinction between marketing and advertising because they are different things.

Marketing is the umbrella term for creating, communicating, and delivering content that has value in some way for customers, clients, partners, and other members of society.

Advertising is a part of marketing that specifically involves promoting a company, product, service, or event through paid efforts.

Example: writing an article about your new tool is marketing, and paying to have that article shown to everyone on Facebook is advertising.

Digital advertising is a very effective way to promote your business, brand, product, or service to those people most likely to be interested in it. Likely, you have already experienced the power of digital advertising.

Have you ever been talking to someone about wanting a product, and shortly thereafter, you see an ad for that product on social media? This very common scenario isn’t because spies are listening to your conversations; rather, algorithms can very accurately predict your behavior based on your past activity.

Therefore you could run an ad for your new camping product targeting users interested in activities like camping, hiking, backpacking, etc., and your ad will be displayed to those people most likely to purchase your product.

Part 6: Bring Your Digital Content In-Store

Ok, so you’re looking amazing with the content you’ve designed and are delivering all across the internet, and then you walk into your store one day and think, ‘wait, why don’t I get the same feeling I get about the store as I do online?’.

Then you consider what your customer is seeing (like you don’t do that enough) and realize that we need some in-store signage that speaks directly to my customers, my town, my people!

There are several ways that store owners can utilize in-store marketing to help drive sales and foot traffic.

Window display at HomCo

window displays

One option is to create eye-catching window displays that attract attention and convey a sense of what the store has to offer.

Homco young builders event

Events

Another approach is to host in-store events such as classes, seminars, and demonstrations, which can be a great way to engage customers and generate buzz.

example of a register sign for hardware retail store

Register & In-store Displays

Point of sale (POS) displays and other forms of in-store signage can also be used to promote specific products or sales.

Budgeting will depend greatly on the size and scale of the project you have in mind. For smaller projects that you can take on yourself, like using window paint to promote a sale, you will only need to consider the cost of materials and labor. For larger projects like brand-new signage, display graphics, and in-store branding, you will need to budget a lot more money.

Part 7: Let’s Focus On Branding (What about donations?)

Ok, so people talk a lot about branding, and remember branding is just one word, ‘reputation’. People also commonly refer to this line item as public relations. There is no better way to get your customers to stop saying, “I’m going to THE hardware store,” and start saying, “I’m going to MY hardware store”! (<—- this is our mantra btw).

Branding goes way beyond just the type of font you use and the color of your logo. It is the association that people have when they think about your business. A very important part of branding is the sponsorships, donations, and events your business supports.

If you want to be known as a local advocate, then supporting youth sports, creating high school scholarships, and/or hosting a free bike maintenance program are great ways of furthering that image. If you want to be known as sustainable, then supporting local environmental organizations is a good place to start.

Many times, when people think of marketing, they do not consider charitable outreach as a method, but donating to charities or helping out members in your community is one of the best ways to show members of the public what your organization is all about.

If customers align themselves with your organization’s values, the strength of that bond is greater than any that can be made with an ad promoting a product.

Let’s Recap

We know that marketing can be a bit overwhelming and that this blog presents a lot of information, so as a quick recap,

  • The first step of building your marketing plan is to first come up with an accurate budget using your historical data.
  • Once you have a budget, you will want to consider the type of content your marketing efforts will need and whether you, a member of your team or an agency will be most effective at delivering this content.
  • Once you have allocated a portion of your budget to content creation, you will want to create an advertising plan and budget. Advertising is the best way to generate new leads for your business.
  • The final step in your marketing efforts is very important, yet it is often overlooked, and that is building your brand by supporting efforts that you believe align with your values. This delights your customers and ensures that they are loyal to your brand.

Knowing these things, you should be able to accurately build an effective marketing and sales budget for your business in 2024.

Did you find materials from the blog to be exceptionally helpful? Interested in finding ways to better utilize your marketing budget? We make connecting easy! Submit a contact form, and we will reach out to set up a 15 min call.

We are passionate about working with hardware store owners and operators to get the most out of their business!

Rand Jenkins from Mountain Mojo Marketing Group

Rand Jenkins started Mountain Mojo Group, a full-service marketing firm with partner Austin Legget in late 2015. In addition to his leadership role at Mountain Mojo Group, Rand is also a visionary and strategist specializing in unique marketing solutions for local business owners. Rand is a founding member of the Hardware Innovators, where he and other hardware retail industry leaders collaborate on business solutions.

Are you interested in working with a passionate marketing team that is invested in connecting you with your ideal customer? If so, reach out for a quick 15 min call.

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