Many B2B marketers think about their budget like a straightjacket, with 47% blaming limited resources for poor performance.1 But what if your budget was actually a competitive asset?
This article presents a proven framework to develop a B2B marketing budget that not only matches your strategic aims but also actively helps you gain an advantage and increase your ROI.
Expect to learn:
A brief Google search will reveal that there is almost no consensus around B2B marketing budgets. Many sources claim that companies should allocate 2-5% of their revenue to marketing. Yet the 2023 CMO Survey suggested that B2B product companies are now investing approximately 7.9% of their revenue in marketing – while a recent Forrester study found that more than half of organizations are increasing their budget in 2025.
This fact should be taken to be liberating: rather than conforming to an industry benchmark, B2B marketers are free to determine how much they require based on their specific business objectives and competitive landscape – which turns your budget into a potential strategic advantage.
For most B2B marketers, a smart strategic budget will reflect the specific industry, company size and competitive landscape you are dealing with. This raises a few key questions:
All marketing should produce a positive return on investment (ROI), but different companies vary wildly in their ability to turn a profit. A software company with a large total addressable market (TAM) might be able to generate 1,000s of sales with a big marketing push, whereas companies that have small TAMs and complicated products that take a long time to implement are likely to invest significantly before seeing results.
This is important because your company has limited resources – and must be able to cover other operational costs. Most companies cannot invest 30% of their revenue into marketing if it will only produce a return in 12 months’ time.
Expert Tip: Invest in more robust reporting capabilities to gain greater insight into the impact your marketing spend has. Over time, this will allow you to make more informed decisions and be realistic about the time-to-ROI you are dealing with.
Not all companies are starting from the same place – and your budget must reflect the level of “groundwork” required. Companies with relatively immature marketing may require a larger investment to put the right teams, systems and foundations in place, such as migrating to a better CRM or undertaking more robust buyer research.
Equally, a B2B company with a large email list and an established brand can develop a marketing budget based more directly on their business goals. They can be more responsive to short-term market trends and competitors’ behavior and may, therefore, choose to allocate more of their budget to discretionary activities and “low-hanging fruit.”
Expert Tip: There are many ways to work around your existing marketing limitations, such as hiring a full-stack agency or freelancers that can fulfill your needs without placing the same financial demands on your company.
The impact of your marketing is heavily dependent on market forces that are out of your control. These include:
B2B and B2C marketing differ in a few key ways:
Ultimately, these factors make B2B marketing budgets more complex – which is why we created a framework to produce a strategic B2B marketing budget.
The following steps will help you create a marketing budget that supports your overarching strategic objectives:
Take a step back and figure out what you want to achieve with your marketing strategy. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Generate more leads? Get more sales? Gain recurrent, loyal clients?
Knowing your goals will guide where your budget goes. For example, if your primary goal is generating leads, you might want to invest more in content marketing and paid ads. However, if you want to be part of the 41% of marketers who measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales, you will need to invest in sales-enabling strategies and maybe paid ads.
This is where everything starts: knowing how much money you have available to spend on your business. There are two common ways to set your budget:
Now, it’s time to work backward from your revenue goals and understand how you need to work to achieve them. To figure out how many sales you need, consider metrics like:
With these numbers in mind, you can determine how many new customers or deals you need to meet your revenue targets.
Your budget isn’t just one big number: it should be divided across the different channels you’ll use – including the organic strategies that are apparently “free.” You must consider all the different marketing efforts you want to approach and understand how much money should go to each one:
Remember that your budget should also consider the money that goes into marketing resources, such as your staff and software subscriptions. If you spend all your money on paid ads, you will leave no room to hire people to do the work or to buy subscriptions to premium tools.
It’s always a good idea to budget for the unexpected. Set aside 5-10% of your marketing budget for unforeseen costs. Maybe the opportunity to expand your ad budget comes up, or a new conference is scheduled that you want to attend. Having some flexibility in your budget ensures you can act quickly when something unexpected arises.
Marketing isn’t always consistent, and some months will require more spending than others. For example, if you’re launching a new product, you’ll probably need to invest more in marketing around that time.
By breaking down your budget by month, you’ll get a clear picture of how much to spend during different times of the year. This also helps you prepare for seasonal fluctuations, such as higher spending during trade show seasons or big campaigns.
Success comes from being flexible and adaptable. While you should start with a well-thought-out budget, be prepared to make adjustments throughout the year. Some strategies will outperform expectations, while others might under-deliver. The key is being ready to shift your resources based on what’s working and what’s not.
Schedule regular check-ins, whether monthly or quarterly, to review your marketing spend and performance. These check-ins aren’t just about tracking where the money is going; they’re opportunities to analyze what’s driving the best results. Is your paid media bringing in higher conversions than expected? Should you invest more in SEO now that you’re seeing steady growth in organic traffic? By reviewing the data, you can pivot your strategy and optimize your budget for maximum ROI.
In B2B marketing, not every channel will give you the same results. Some will work better than others, so it's important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track how well your marketing is doing. KPIs like cost per lead, customer acquisition cost, and return on investment (ROI) will help you understand what is working and what isn't.
Once you have KPIs in place, use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and your email marketing dashboard to keep an eye on your marketing results. These tools provide helpful data about how each channel is performing and give you the chance to move some of your budget to channels that work better if anything is not working.
Now, you know all you should be doing with your B2B marketing budget, but there’s one little detail missing: what you should avoid. There are a lot of mistakes that can make your B2B marketing budget go the wrong way, and these are some of the main ones:
Building an effective B2B marketing budget can seem daunting, but it is far easier when you have a partner you can rely on to generate ROI fast.
ProperExpression offers end-to-end B2B marketing services, from strategy to RevOps programs, that generate more leads, improve your nurture process, and drive more reliable revenue. It has helped us increase inbound revenue by 466% for one B2B client – and it could produce similar results for your business.
Want a free 15-minute B2B marketing budget consultation?