Budgeting can feel a lot like throwing darts in a pitch-black room. Blindfolded. After being spun around 10 times.
From nailing down the components of your marketing strategy to deciding how to divvy up the budget, this process can feel so aimless you might be tempted to just wing it. After all, the odds of hitting the mark seem the same, right?
Not if you flip on the lights. By following a few guidelines–and enlisting the help of a trusted marketing agency–you can craft a strategic marketing budget that hits the target. So, do your future self a favor and keep these tips in mind for your next budgeting session:
Why Set a Marketing Budget?
How important is a marketing budget, really? After all, isn’t flexibility crucial to any strategy?
It’s true that a marketing budget may evolve throughout the fiscal year, but setting an initial framework keeps your business proactive rather than reactive. While you might feel confident estimating costs for low-hanging fruit like pay-per-click ads or collateral, it’s easy to overlook less obvious expenses—like video B-roll or customer testimonials. By reviewing your marketing materials holistically before the new year, you can anticipate hidden costs and avoid scrambling to cover surprise expenses mid-year.
Four Factors to Weigh in Your Marketing Budget
No business’s marketing budget will look the same, but these five guidelines will help you customize your 2025 budget to your brand’s objectives and needs.
Past Performance
The best way to plan for the future is by analyzing past performance. So, take a look at the marketing tactics you implemented in 2024 and the results they yielded. If certain strategies underperformed, you can either adjust your approach or allocate the budget elsewhere.
For instance, if your PPC ads generated fewer leads and conversions than expected, could improving the ad quality or refining your target audience help? If not, it might be worth reducing or cutting PPC ads from your budget and investing in more effective tactics like social media or SEO.
Brand Strategy and Audience
Next, before you overhaul your strategy and budget, take some time to refresh your team on the brand strategy and target audience to ensure you don’t veer from your core messaging. For example, if you are a B2B brand that’s marketing to senior-level executives, pushing content on platforms like TikTok likely won’t resonate. Not to mention, you will be diluting your brand and straying from your foundational identity. The closer you align your budget with your brand strategy and target audience, the more impactful your marketing investments will be.
Internal Capabilities
If you’re finalizing the budget for your outsourced marketing team, first assess how much your in-house team can handle. For example, if video is a priority, can you manage the filming and just outsource the post-production? Or, if an agency is running your social media accounts, can you provide the behind-the-scenes content yourself? Identifying the services you do not need to outsource is essential for scaling down your budget.
Competitor Analysis
The best marketing budgets aren’t made in a vacuum. So, before you cross the t’s and dot the i’s on your budget, zoom out and consider what your competitors are doing–and not doing. This analysis will uncover successful tactics your team can try out next year, while also exposing gaps that you can fill to differentiate your brand.
Say you discover that one of your competitors is generating significant brand awareness and leads from trade shows. If your team hasn’t explored this avenue of marketing yet, you might consider allocating a part of your budget to a trade show strategy. On the other hand, if another competitor is absent on a key social media platform that caters to your target audience, you can capitalize on this unsaturated space to reach more users.
Did You Mean to Leave That Out?
Although it’s true that marketing budgets differ from business to business, these two tactics should be staples in any strategy– and yet, they’re often overlooked:
SEO
Search engine optimization may not deliver immediate, tangible results, but that in no way makes it superfluous. A healthy presence in organic search is the lifeblood of brand awareness, web traffic, and leads (because, as we know, the best way to hide your laundry is on page 2 of Google). It takes an ongoing and strategic effort to dominate the search rankings, so be sure to set aside money every year for SEO audits and strategy adjustments.
Video
We hate to say it, but that sales video you shot at your old office five years ago isn’t exactly what we’d call… evergreen. Refreshing your video content every year showcases how your company is leveling up, from your personnel to your office space to your production quality. So, be sure to earmark some funds every quarter to update and produce new videos around testimonials, company culture, and your suite of products.
The Bottom Line
Creating a marketing budget doesn’t have to feel aimless, dizzying, or random. By following just a few simple guidelines, your team can remove the blindfold, flip on the lights, and confidently aim for your target.
So as you prepare for your next budgeting session, keep these fundamentals in mind: evaluate past performance, consider your brand strategy and audience, analyze your competitors’ tactics, and leverage the power of SEO and video.
If that still seems a bit daunting, don’t fret: Our team at Atomic Idea can guide you through the process of designing a marketing budget that suits your company’s unique objectives and needs. Schedule a free consultation with our team today to learn more.
Your 2025 self will thank you.
