A key thing for any business is having a budget and making sure that it is followed. What most businesses do not think about is budgeting for design when it comes to their business. Why should a business even care about design and including it in a budget? Design can impact a business but it can also get expensive if you do not have a budget. So what does budgeting design for your business look like?
Why to budget design for your business
Every business has to have a budget for everything from payroll, to expenses, toilet paper, etc. You know the important stuff for a business. A lot of things that a business forgets to include in their budget is design work. Why is this? It is not an intentional thing it is just something that a lot of businesses think about or just count it as part of a marketing budget without adding a line item for it. But doing this hides what is getting paid via market and what is actually going towards design work.
Design work should be counted as its own thing when budgeting for your business. It needs to be done to make sure that the design work matches the business goals for that year. When you do not say “We are spending X amount this year for marketing and design work that will go towards Y.” you can start to spend too much with impulse buying. But if you line up your business goals, sales goal, and marketing goals you can set specific budget for what you would be spending on design work. Then no one will be thrown off when marketing asks to use a sum of money for a project.
How to build a budget for design work
Budgeting for design work can be harder than putting together a budget for typical business. This is due to design work typically not having a usual cost, deliverables vary from designer to designer, and there being a lot designers out in the world and they can be somewhat hard to find. There are ways to get a rough budget for what your design needs are going to be for a year.
To start out define clear and definite goals that will be happening this year. From there start to gather quotes from designers. To get the best range of estimates you should use local and online designers. To find local designers you can ask other businesses or colleges for recommendations for a designer. When getting quotes from designers be upfront about your expected timeline for these projects. When you are expecting to start and when you’re expecting to complete the project. Designers are business people just like you and like to know when new clients are coming in or are expected to come in. Once you get some quotes in it is a good practice to take the highest quote and add 10% – 25% for any additional fees that come up. Remember you are making a budget and you do not need to have it to the dime but a rough budget number.
Quick tip: if you have recurring design projects always ask for annual quote updates to make sure your designer is inline and you are getting the best price.
But how do you capture those potential projects that might come up out of the blue? It is hard to even attempt to capture these items since you do not know what the size might be and how many there might be. The best possible way to find these is to take your total of all design budget items and add an additional 30% – 45% for any additional items you might not be able to plan out.
Conclusion for budgeting design for your business
All businesses need to look at how they do their budgeting and add into design work not have it hidden under marketing. Yes this can add some additional work in your budgeting process every year but it can also help your business stop from using expenses potentially out of control and can lead to spending on projects that might not lead to the best ROI.
