Create A Marketing Budget - Top 5 Resources
It’s that time of year again - you need to create a marketing budget. I don’t know about you but actually delivering a marketing budget always tweaks the old imposter syndrome.
Particularly knowing that you need to present it and that there will likely be questions about your numbers!
I got you and more importantly, you got this.
What I find most helpful is to go back to basics and these five resources will help you do that, from a strategic and tactical standpoint, so that you can put your marketing budget together and be confident in your numbers.
And to really put pay to your imposter syndrome, these resources are from 5 big hitters so you can say things like “According to an article I stumbled across from McKinsey…”
THE Vital Ingredient In Your Marketing Budget
Before we dig in to the resources - When you’re creating the actual spreadsheet and any other documents related to the marketing budget, please, please, please remember to include what you expect the return on any spend line to be and how you will measure it.
For instance, if you have a line in your budget for PPC, in addition to a line which shows spend, also show the KPI for that spend, be that new customers, revenue, new contacts in the CRM, new MQLs, SQLs or any other TLA which takes your fancy, ROI wise.
I can’t tell you how many marketing budgets I’ve seen where this is missed off and it means that at a senior level, they don’t know which spend is going to drive which KPIs that relates to the goals of the business. Which makes them ask you questions and as you know, once those people get into the detail it can be hard to bring them back out.
OK, now we can get stuck in… Stick around for the last one if you want to develop a superpower that will get your marketing budget all signed off in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
1. HubSpot
8 Budget Templates To Manage Your Spend in 2025
Why it is useful: It gives you (nearly) all the templates you need in Excel or Sheets to practically build the marketing budget. You’ll need to add KPIs and once you’ve downloaded it, and put up with the standard spam from HubSpot trying to upsell, cross-sell or just sell at you. It’s a super low price to pay for such a useful set of templates and it’s the only one of these that needs an email address. You can probably use a fake one.
2. McKinsey
Beyond belt-tightening: How marketing can drive resiliency during uncertain times
Why it is useful: According to a 2023 research paper (cited in the article), “Eighty percent of consumers say that they’re changing their shopping behaviour by changing the quantity or pack size of what they buy or switching brands or retailers to find lower costs.” If we’re seeing that in consumer behaviour, you know it’s also happening in the B2B sector. It’s essential to consider this when you’re thinking about marketing generally, in addition to creating budgets.
3. Garter
Marketing Budgets: Benchmarks for CMOs in the Era of Less
Why it is useful: Once again, this is far from being all unicorns and roses! “According to the 2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, only 24% of CMOs say they have sufficient budget to execute their 2024 strategy. Marketing budgets have dropped from an average of 9.1% of company revenue in 2023 to 7.7% in 2024, a fall of 15% year over year.” And the good news? You can challenge yourself and your brand with the ideas behind catalytic marketing. How can you learn from this new approach?
4. Forbes
4 Marketing Budget Frameworks for Small Businesses
Why it is useful: Back to practicality - it’s a 5 minute read and gives you more suggestions of marketing spend as a percentage of revenue and, well, it does what it says on the tin.
5. HBR
Why it is useful: I LOVE THIS ARTICLE. It has just the right amount of psychology to get me excited but not so much that I get confused (I’m a bear of very little brain). Once you’ve read and cogitated on resources 1 to 4, use the understanding of the 5 types of decision maker in this article to craft your pitch for success.
Any questions? Hit a guy on the LinkedIns
By Jon Payne
Marketing Director, Building Brands
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