What should your marketing budget be in 2023?

man in a frame with a yellow box behind him

Here we are again, another new year and a whole host of exciting campaigns to plan and deliver. Our team are buzzing to be back, and we thought this topic of budgets would be a great way to start things off.

Digital marketers are known for their creativity and strategic decision making but budgets are always a tricky one, because where on earth do you even start?

With help from the FABULOUS team at HubSpot, we’ve compiled a list of the industries that we work with to answer the big budget question!

Also, you’ll get to understand why you need a marketing budget and how we’ve come to our conclusion.

Why on earth do I need a marketing budget?

I must admit that budgets aren’t my thing. I like to plan and be organised (like any marketer) but budgets aren’t always realistic.

I KNOW AND HE’S WRITING AN ARTICLE ABOUT BUDGETS…

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However, marketing budgets are the exception for me and perhaps I am being biased, but you can’t go wrong with working out how to grow into your budget each year.

I suppose you could say the same for any budget, but I’ll leave that one with you to ponder over.

Marketing budgets typically help you when you’re deciding what to do first, which campaigns will need more or less resources, which ones will just tick over and reliably spend your money, as well as delivering results.

As a business owner, I know that I am looking for a return on what I invested in – this could be anything from marketing to staff to even our office! So, you’ll be glad of an end of year review to reflect on how well your budget did against your marketing metrics.

What does a marketing budget include these days?

I mentioned the lovely HubSpot earlier and they actually conducted a study of 1,000 marketers who gave their budget percentage weighting across each social media channel for this year.

Take a look…

A graph with different colours and heights

The study has also shown “…video will be a bigger investment in many marketers’ budgets…”

So, with the rising star that is TikTok, there are plans made by digital creatives to increase their budget even more!

However, it’s important to think about more than just the amount you allocate to the social media platforms, there is also:

  • Content production & editing
  • Influencer marketing fees
  • Agency fees
  • Internal marketing staff
  • Advertising spend (aka media spend

But that list could go on and on, but as a general rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to break them down into categories:

  • Paid Media (ads, influencer fees, content)
  • Earned Media (PR, partnership content)
  • Organic Media (any marketing that doesn’t require any physical money being handed over)

What should my budget for 2023 be then?

In recent years, the average percentage of revenue that is allocated towards marketing has increased.

“B2B product industries allocate, on average, roughly 7.8% of revenue to marketing. This is similar to B2C services (6.5%) and B2B services (5.9%). B2C Product allocates the highest amount at 15.1% of total revenue.”

Sources: HubSpot, CMO Survey

But, if you’re looking for a more specific answer, then here is a breakdown of some of the industries we work with and what their suggested marketing spend should be:

  1. Consumer packaged goods: 9%
  2. Consumer services: 6%
  3. Manufacturing: 13%
  4. Mining and construction: 3%
  5. Service consulting: 13%
  6. Technology: 21%

 

These are just recommendations and are a selected few from some of the clients that we work with. As a start-up or young company, these may not apply straight away, but it does not mean that you should not be budgeting for marketing in your first few years.

Need some help with your 2023 budget?

Not only are we marketers but we have the commercial expertise to support you with realistic calculations and define measurements for success.

Pick up the dog and bone and chat to me or my crew about planning your 2023 campaigns.

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