blog post

9 Tactics to Set Up Your B2B Marketing Budget for 2024

Anjali Barnwal
Anjali Barnwal
May 20, 2024
8 min read

Creating new marketing budgets is on the horizon as we kickstart the new year. Though marketers have ‘been there and done that,’ it’s not a simple task. 

First, you see teams pigeonhole themselves by narrowly focusing on the previous year’s plan. On other occasions, budgets seem to ignore the potential new goals and opportunities.

Poor budgets stem from a lack of clear strategy or understanding of the market and audience. This leads to allocating funds based on ‘assumptions’ rather than tracked data and market dynamics.

Plus, brand awareness and impressions are not concrete numbers. So, planning a B2B budget around such data can be tricky. 

No wonder we often come across factors marketers have missed. A few mistakes marketers commit when building budgets. 

  • Poor data 
  • Neglecting the role of data analytics
  • Miscommunication between departments
  • Resource allocation without clear objectives
  • Investing in new trends without evaluating their effectiveness
  • Sticking too rigidly to traditional strategies without adapting to the evolving market landscape

The list can go on. 

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated. All you need is proper planning, open-mindedness, and a few tactics we’ll be sharing in this post.

#1. Set Marketing Objectives

A B2B marketing budget can turn abstract ambitions into concrete targets, ensuring that every marketing effort is aligned with overarching business goals.

A specific, data-driven objective is a must.

For example, Boost lead generation by 20% in the first quarter of 2024.

Next, determine how you will achieve this goal.

If they have shown high conversion rates, you can allocate a larger portion of the budget for LinkedIn advertising and email marketing campaigns.

How to do this?

    • Understand and assess your current market position
      Are you a new player looking to make a mark or an established brand aiming to enter new markets? Understand your broader business aims and align your marketing objectives to support them.
      For example, if you are expanding into a new market, you may focus on building brand awareness in those regions by 30% over the next year.
    • Know your audience
      Do not limit the audience to demographics but gauge possible business challenges you anticipate. So, dive into customer data and feedback to identify what matters to your audience.
      For instance, customer surveys help identify what they need. If they want more detailed product information, set a goal to create comprehensive product guides and tutorials.
      Think of how Adobe tailors its marketing to target creatives by selling its software by suite to creative professionals like designers, photographers, and artists.

#2. Calculate Total Budget

Your budget can make or break your marketing efforts. Hence, it is best to approach it with a balance of ambition and pragmatism that helps align your financial capabilities and strategic goals.

Two budgeting methods to follow:

    • Revenue-based budgeting
      Tie your marketing budget to a percentage of your revenue. Like, 10% of your $2 million revenue would mean a budget of $200,000.
      Gartner CMO Spend Survey suggests that the average marketing budget across industries is around 10.5% of a company's revenue.

      Consider this -
      • Percentage of revenue:Assign a fixed percentage of your company's total revenue. For best results, include a data-driven marketing approach for sensible budget allocation.
      • Industry benchmarks:The percentage can vary depending on industry norms and the competitive landscape. For instance, SaaS capital suggests an average of 10% of revenue for B2B SaaS companies.
    • Goal-oriented budgeting
      Align financial resources with strategic objectives to ensure your spending directly supports your key business goals. Goal-oriented budgeting

      Here, you'll need to -
      • Allocate budget based on goals: Direct funds towards activities with the most significant potential to achieve your goals.
        For example, if you want to enter the EU market, allocate a budget to create localized content for regional SEO strategies or collaborate with European tech influencers and businesses.
      • Monitor and adjust: Keep a tab to check if certain marketing activities are expected to drive results in the desired time frame.
        You invested in SEO and PPC campaigns, but the tracked mid-quarter results showed PPC yielding higher-quality leads. Then, re-allocate some funds from SEO to bolster the PPC campaign for better results.
      • Prioritize goals: Prioritize goals based on their potential impact on your business to allocate funds more effectively.
        For instance, if your focus is on customer retention, then a portion of the budget will go towards customer engagement and support initiatives, like webinars and enhanced customer service.

#3. Determine What Channels You Want to Use

Budget categorization involves dividing it into different channels, each addressing a specific aspect of your marketing strategy. 

 Budget Categorization

Here’s a quick break up of the cost for each strategy:

Marketing Service Cost Range per Month
SEO $500 - $20,000+
PPC 10-20% of monthly ad spend
Content marketing $2,000 - $20,000
Social media marketing $500 - $5,000
Email marketing $300 - $500
    • Content marketing
      Get data on the types of content that resonate with your audience. Accordingly, set a budget for marketing collaterals like blogs, whitepapers, and videos.
      For example, if whitepapers drive the most engagement, consider allocating more funds.
      The Content Marketing Institute reports that 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers.
    • Email marketing
      Spare budget for email segmentation and personalization tools after determining costs and yielding expected ROI.
      Allocate the email marketing budget to nurture leads and retain customers.
      HubSpot states that email generates $38 for every $1 spent, highlighting its high ROI
    • Social media
      Divert some marketing budgets to build a brand presence on platforms like LinkedIn for B2B SaaS.
      Use social media analytics to track platforms generating the most engagement and conversions for your content. Accordingly, match these with the platform's user base and engagement statistics.
      Hootsuite uses LinkedIn to share industry insights, demonstrating effective B2B social media use.
    • SEO
      BrightEdge Research suggests that organic search accounts for 53.3% of all website traffic. When opting for SEO, consider allocating the budget for
      • Subscribing to SEO tools for keyword research, SEO audits, etc.
      • Hiring an SEO specialist
    • Paid advertising
      Google notes that businesses typically make $2 for every $1 spent in AdWords.

    • Create a budget to run PPC campaigns, display ads, and publish sponsored content. Also, set aside a budget for ad designing, using analytics tools like BuzzSumo, Google Analytics, etc., to track their performance.

#4. Research Strategy Prices

Once you choose the right channels, consider researching prices that help allocate each budget.

Researching strategy prices for a B2B marketing budget requires considering different hiring options:

Budgeting costs to consider for each marketing team option

    When researching their prices to allocate budget funds, consider;
    • Requesting detailed quotes from agencies or freelancers, specifying your project or ongoing needs.
    • Comparing the services, including deliverables, reporting, and ongoing support.
    • Scouting job-posting websites like Talent, etc., to check the average salary for different job roles.

Evaluate each option's long-term value and return on investment (ROI) by calculating the estimated revenue or cost savings achieved through the chosen marketing strategy.

For example, check how much additional revenue the content marketing generated from increased website traffic and lead conversions. And then compare this expected ROI with the budget allocated to content marketing to determine its long-term value. Lastly, choose the strategy that aligns with the marketing goals and budget constraints.

Now, if your strategy requires a wide range of marketing services, go with an agency. But, for highly specialized tasks, a freelancer would help. And, if you need more control over the talent, hire on-site.

#5 Allocate Funds 

Precision and insight are key when allocating your marketing budget. It helps make informed decisions on where to invest your resources for the best return.

What’s an ideal solution here?

Use predictive analytics for efficient fund allocation

Historical marketing data helps identify patterns in customer behavior and campaign performance to optimize your spending. Analyzing trends in customer behavior and market dynamics paves the way for predictive analytics to forecast potential outcomes. 

This allows for anticipating changes in customer preferences or market conditions.

For example, industry events and product launches have shown increased engagement with content marketing materials, such as whitepapers and past webinars. This indicates that allocating more budget to content creation and promotion for future launches or events could maximize ROI.

On the other hand, if data shows that paid social media campaigns yield lower engagement during these events, reallocate funds to enhance whitepapers and webinar production.

Optimize your B2B marketing budget with accurate forecasting.
Explore Revlitix Pipeline to predict the future and accelerate.

#6. Review Historical Data

A Forbes report suggests that data-driven businesses are 23 times more likely to attract consumers, six times more likely to retain customers, and 19 times more likely to be successful.

Monitor campaign cost by exploring marketing channels to gather past data like

  • Sales figures
  • Website traffic
  • Conversion rates 
  • Email campaign metrics (open rates, click-through, email ROI, etc.).

    Look for patterns that historically drove most leads, conversions, and customer retention.
    • Using past data for budgeting
      Past figures help compare your performance data against the marketing objectives you had set.
      Calculate the return on investment for each channel and campaign.
      How to do that? ROI Formula
      For example, a 15% increase in website traffic is good, but there's room for improvement if your industry average is 25%.
    • Identify trends and patterns
      Look for the following trends in your data.
      • Performance of specific content like videos, whitepapers, webinars, website articles, etc.
      • Check seasonal variations in your campaign performances throughout the year. For example, a finance-driven B2B SaaS company may witness increased engagement and inquiries around the accounting year-end. Such insight requires allocating a portion of the marketing budget to ad campaigns, specialized content, and outreach efforts during these months.
      • Track the promotion's effectiveness by comparing it with the sales data. If a 'free trial' ad led to a high rate of conversions to paid subscriptions, allocate a larger portion of your budget to similar promotions in the future for enhanced ROI.

Ideally, you’ll create a marketing ROI dashboard by leveraging customer behavior insights to analyze such patterns.

#7. Use the 70-20-10 Principle

The 70-20-10 principle is a strategic framework that can change how you allocate your marketing budget regarding safety, innovation, and experimentation. 

70-20-10 Principle

Let's explore.

    • Allocate 70% to tried-and-true strategies
      This major chunk goes towards proven strategies that consistently deliver results. This could be SEO, email marketing, etc.
      Salesforce, IBM, and Microsoft typically invest in robust content marketing and thought leadership efforts to drive engagement and leads.
      Similarly, if your B2B firm is driving results with the SEO strategy, optimize website content with industry-specific keywords for better SERP results.
    • Keep 20% for emerging tactics
      Next, use this 20% for tactics that show promise but are yet to be fully established.
      Now, if you are tracking the marketing efforts and witness the rise in engagement from webinars or podcasts in your industry, this is where you might increase investment.
      You can explore data-backed trends. Like, LinkedIn reported that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. So, that's where you'd put your money.
    • Invest 10% in high-risk, high-reward ventures
      The remaining 10% is for experimenting with cutting-edge tactics to take calculated risks.
      For example, you can invest this 10% to
      • Partner with well-known industry professionals
      • AI technologies
      • Explore new social media platforms like Threads, etc.

This 10% is also about learning because you can gain valuable insights even if a tactic doesn’t yield immediate returns.

#8. Adopting an Omnichannel Approach

An omnichannel approach requires integrating tools to get insights from different sources in one place. Like, with Revlitix, you get many integration modules for effective budget planning.

Revlitix Integrations

    • First, gather data from social media, CRM, email marketing platforms, and website analytics.
    • Next, configure how to merge data from different sources and transform it for a more uniform viewing. For example, combine customer interaction data from your CRM with website behavior data from Google Analytics.


Once you do that…

    • Allocate marketing budget across channels
      Distribute your budget across different channels based on where they fit into the customer journey. Check which channels bring in more quality traffic in terms of lead-to-conversion rate.
      Here's how to calculate this.

Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate

Allocate funds for channels where

  • Lead-to-conversion is high 
  • Customers are most active and engaged

#9. Track Campaign Performance

If your industry demands dynamism, agile marketing is the way to go. 

It requires constantly tracking your spending, goals, and revenue to ensure they are aligned with the business vision. This helps determine which strategies yield the best ROI to make informed decisions.

Here’s how you can start tracking.

  • Use advanced analytics tools
    Tools like Google Analytics for web traffic, CRM systems for lead tracking, and social media analytics to track engagement.
    For example, a CRM tool analyzes customer data to discover that leads from webinars, followed by email marketing, convert best. This insight may lead to allocating more budget towards webinars and targeted email campaigns.
  • Ensure regular monitoring
    Make it a habit of reviewing your campaign performance regularly. This doesn't just mean looking at the end of a campaign but monitoring it throughout its duration.
    Our tool's Alert feature helps customize notifications for campaign KPIs.  GIF showing how to access and use the Alerts feature.
    You get real-time feedback on what's working and what's not to allocate your marketing budget for the highest possible ROI.

Looking to stay on top of your competitors with timely data-backed decisions in 2024?
Try Revlitix Alerts to stay ahead of the curve.

How Revlitix Can Help Set Up Your B2B Marketing Budget

Our AI and ML-powered platform, Revlitix, has advanced features to help you set up your B2B marketing budget.

Here are the key features that can help.

    • Revlitix Reports
      A crucial asset to navigate the intricate process of creating and adjusting a B2B marketing budget.
      It provides the funnel breakdown to offer clarity, actionable insights, and a comprehensive view of marketing performance.
    •  GIF showing how to access and use the Alerts feature.
      How does this help in the budget?
      For example, if the reports show a drop in conversions at a certain funnel stage (like SQL, as shown in the image), you can allocate more budget to that stage to boost conversion.
    • Revlitix Pipeline
      Our Pipeline leverages AI and ML to analyze the historical data and, accordingly, forecast future performance. Now, you can compare actual/expected results and a predictive outlook to your marketing goals.   Goal tracking based on the projection
      You get real-time feedback on what's working and what's not to allocate your marketing budget for the highest possible ROI.
      It doesn't end here.
      We've also got perspective analytics that suggests what you can do if predicted results are short of expectations.

Revlitix Pipeline’s Prescriptive Analytics

Conclusion

Setting a budget that adapts and performs is a cornerstone of a robust marketing framework. 

As you embark on this strategic endeavor, remember that your chosen tools can make all the difference. 

While Revlitix can be a powerful ally in this process, your expertise and insight are the true heroes in crafting a budget that delivers results.

Ready to take the next step? Dive deeper and challenge the status quo with Revlitix.

Sign up for a free trial or connect with team Revlitix for more details.

Maximizing B2B Marketing Budgets

Leverage Revlitix for efficient budget planning and execution.

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