If you want to create a marketing budget – the first important step is to determine what’s a reasonable budget for your particular industry. That can mean as low as 4% for medical markets or really high ‘cost of goods sold’ services, and as high as 40-50% in B2C products – but generally, it’s around 6-12% on average.
Download the one-page marketing budget template
If you’re trying to be aggressive and quickly grow, it will be on the high side of averages – and if you are trying just to maintain, or perhaps don’t have the resources to deliver on any large amount of increase in work, it might be better to stay on the slimmer side. Only 2% of companies do no marketing whatsoever.
Here’s a one-page template that you can use to plan your marketing budget!
Things to consider when using the one-page marketing budget template.
It’s better to keep it simple (at least to start) – you’ll want to determine in a general way what your company spent on marketing over the past year and the revenue for this year. When you have that, look at what percentage it was this year – and dial it up or down based on how much quicker or slower you want to grow.
Using the bottom part of the one-page marketing budget template
The idea on the bottom of the template is to break down your marketing budget into what you want to spend on different, specific marketing methods.
- SEO / Content Marketing
- Email Marketing / Automation
- Social Media Marketing
- Video
- Paid Ads / Remarketing
- Website
- Radio
- Television
- Outdoor
- Environmental
- Trade Shows
You should use this list as a starting point – but it doesn’t mean that you have to stop here. You can add new elements, or subtract them if it doesn’t make sense for your business.
Consider what has worked in the past – regarding clear ‘return on investment’ and weight your budget in those areas + the areas that most people perceive high ROI. Content marketing, SEO, and E-mail marketing and marketing automation are some of the biggest areas according to polls of Chief Marketing Officers.
Once again, you have to look at the previous results – and other ones that have high ROI in your industry.
Check out our Marketing Budget Calculator if you’re still looking for some more granular numbers!
Presenting your marketing budget to your boss
There’s no virtue in presenting a long-winded document to a boss. Creating a marketing strategy requires in-depth research, but every boss I’ve ever had has appreciated me boiling down to the key points of my plan, and presenting them in a simple way.
If you need to do a cost analysis and a breakdown of your current website’s analytics, and a deeper ROI analysis you should do those things – but don’t let it stop you from making big moves in your marketing budget this next year. You should be prepared with a clear budget, specific goals, and have reasoning built out for why you need them.
This doesn’t mean you should present all of that information to your CEO – your CFO – or whoever you directly report to. It means you should have it available, but if you make the main points of your plan clear and prepare a simple document to present your marketing budget, you will make it easier to digest.
Once again – this is a starting point. But rather than getting stuck on the finer points, start mocking up a general plan and use it to kick off the discussion for your marketing budget!
Good luck – and I hope this One-Page Marketing Budget Plan/Template is useful for you and your company!
