Marketing Budget: How Much Should Your Team Spend in 2025? [By Industry]
As a marketer, I’ve learned firsthand that developing a marketing budget is a critical component of any marketing strategy. Unfortunately, figuring out exactly how much your team should spend can be no small challenge.
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As a marketer, I’ve learned firsthand that developing a marketing budget is a critical component of any marketing strategy. Unfortunately, figuring out exactly how much your team should spend can be no small challenge. In this blog post, I’ll share some helpful marketing budget templates. I’ll also share what a marketing budget is, why you need one, and everything else you need to create a marketing budget with confidence. So, let’s get started! Table of Contents As content strategist Rana Bano explains, “A marketing budget outlines the specific amount of money a company allocates to its marketing activities.” She continues, “It influences your marketing strategy by helping you understand how much you spend promoting your business.” But what exactly does this look like in practice? As with anything, the specifics of an effective marketing budget will vary depending on your unique industry, organization, and resources. I’ve found that for companies that prioritize digital ads, for instance, breaking down target spending by different types of online ads can be helpful. For example, the marketing budget below outlines target spending for Google Ads and Instagram Ads: In contrast, other organizations may be less focused on digital advertising platforms. For these companies, specifying spending on marketing traditional platforms such as billboards, TV and radio ads, or in-person events may be more useful. The sample budget below details spending for an in-person event, accounting for everything from venue and food costs to name tags, programs, and swag items: So, you know you need a marketing budget. But what’s the best way to decide how much to spend on different marketing initiatives? In my experience, I’ve found that it’s important first to determine how much funding is available for all of your marketing efforts. There are different approaches to answering this question, but if you’re not sure where to start, I’ve learned that benchmarking against industry averages can be helpful. A recent survey of chief marketing officers found that an average 7.7% of company revenue was allocated to marketing in 2024 — so, making sure your marketing budget falls around that range is likely a good idea. Then, once you’ve determined how much funding you have access to, you can start to figure out how much to spend on different parts of your marketing strategy. This can start with a fairly high-level view. For example, the sample B2C and B2B budgets below outline how much of a total marketing budget should go toward several broad categories. Of course, once you’ve laid out a rough, high-level budget, it’s time to get specific. Here’s one of my favorite examples of a detailed marketing budget, which illustrates just how granular you can get with allocating marketing spend: Take it from me: Today’s marketing landscape is complicated. Budget cuts are more frequent than ever, and underperforming marketers quickly fall under the axe. Beyond that, more than half of marketers in HubSpot’s recent survey reported that how they spend their budget and the ROI it produces is being scrutinized more now than it was in the past. That’s why a comprehensive marketing budget is so important. A well-thought-out budget will help you avoid these negative outcomes and ensure you have the cash you need to execute your marketing strategy. In addition, I’ve learned that developing a marketing budget can help you: At the end of the day, sustained investment is critical for marketing success. As Vistatec CMO Simon Hodgkins points out, “To avoid the pitfalls of reduced marketing budgets, companies must reframe their view of marketing from a cost to an investment. This investment should be aimed at achieving long-term objectives, such as brand building, customer acquisition, and market expansion.” It may be tempting to cut costs by thoughtlessly trimming your marketing budget — but that’s unlikely to pay off in the long term. According to a recent survey from HubSpot, today’s marketers are seeing the biggest ROI from social media marketing tools. As such, it’s no surprise that these platforms are receiving the lion’s share of many organizations’ marketing budgets. Specifically, when asked which formats deliver the highest ROI, survey respondents highlighted the following areas: In addition, when asked where they plan to increase marketing investment in 2025, respondents mentioned the following areas: Of course, social media has been a core component of marketing for years. However, in 2024, another growing marketing trend emerged: Nearly one in four survey respondents reported that influencer marketing played a substantial role in their 2024 strategy. Moreover, respondents shared that in many cases, working with small-scale influencers (that is, influencers with audiences under 100k) is particularly effective. These trends suggest that, when allocating their marketing budgets, more marketers are prioritizing social media marketing and small-scale influencer marketing. Decisions related to marketing budget allocation remain largely industry-specific. But, as a general rule of thumb, experts suggest that B2B companies should spend 2-5% of their revenue on marketing, while B2C companies should spend closer to 5-10%. Diving a little deeper, it’s helpful to understand just how widely marketing budgets vary by industry. Below, I’ve shared the average percentage of revenue CMOs in different industries reported spending on marketing in 2024. INDUSTRY MARKETING BUDGET (% OF COMPANY REVENUE) Consumer packaged goods 18.09% Education 14.59% Communications/media 13.82% Transportation 11.67% Consumer services 11.25% Banking/finance/insurance 11.18% Professional services 11.06% Mining/construction 10.20% Real estate 9.82% Healthcare 9.31% Tech software/platform 9.16% Pharma/biotech 8.21% Manufacturing 6.67% Retail wholesale 5.46% Energy 3.21% On the low end of the spectrum, this data shows that energy companies spend just 3.21% of their revenue on marketing. In contrast, consumer packaged goods companies spend a whopping 18.09%. As such, it’s important for marketers to benchmark their own budgets against these industry averages. Indeed, I’ve found that benchmarking is a great way to convince the higher-ups to sign off on your proposed budget. Then, once you’ve got buy-in on what you need to execute your strategies, you’ll be set up to outshine others in your industry and make your company a model for how other teams in your space should approach marketing. According to data from HubSpot, fewer than one out of five marketers today feel very confident when deciding where to invest budget to maximize ROI. What does it take to craft a marketing budget like a pro? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution — but here are some of my favorite best practices to make sure you’re set up for success. Most customer journeys are not as straightforward as Googling a term, jumping on an email list, and then converting. On the contrary, the vast majority of journeys are full of twists and turns. Figuring out how your customers go from product awareness to purchase varies from industry to industry. What works for B2B brands may not work for B2C, and what works for a large organization may not work for small businesses. That’s why David Hoos, former B2B performance marketing manager at The Outloud Group, says you should take the time to understand your customer journey before spending a dime of your marketing budget. If you invest in this research first, you’ll uncover: Understanding your customer journey is key to unlocking the highest ROI efforts. Moreover, reporting tools like HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics can help you paint a clearer picture of these journeys, maximizing your chances of optimizing your marketing budget. In my personal experience, it can be really hard to oversee multiple marketing projects without help — even when you have a strong in-house marketing team. Besides the time required to hire, train, and onboard a team, you’ll have to pay your in-house employees competitive salaries and offer benefits … all of which might be a stretch if your budget doesn’t allow for a huge team or if you don’t have the time to supervise them. This is where marketing agencies come in. While agencies aren’t cheap, they eliminate some of these challenges, and they can function as an extended arm of your team. Indeed, I’ve found that partnering with a marketing agency can give you access to a team of specialists who may help you hit your goals faster, while using up a lot less of your marketing budget. At the same time, relying on an agency to run all of your projects isn’t the wisest use of your marketing budget. As former Managing Director and Global Head of Brand at Accenture Mark Prince explains, “An in-house agency is an investment that will lead to cost savings.” He goes on, “Our in-house agency (Accenture Canvas) is revered above all external partners due to getting the above right. We’ve also reduced agency spend by >50%.” In other words, there are times when an external marketing agency can be a great partner — but it’s also important to invest in building a solid in-house marketing team. Charlie Southwell, marketing director at Technically Write IT, notes that creating unique and valuable content is expensive. For this reason, Charlie’s team tries to repurpose everything they create. Their first step is to produce evergreen content that will remain valuable for at least two years. After creating these high-quality assets, the team repurposes and promotes them in multiple content formats. Adopting this strategy in your own organization may be easier than you realize. If you published some evergreen assets a while back, consider updating and repurposing them. Beyond just providing current info for your audience, a content update may help your content move up the SERPs. One of the biggest benefits of repurposing and updating content in this way is that it can give you leeway to re-promote your assets multiple times per year. In Southwell’s words, “Not doing this is a missed opportunity that prevents content from getting enough mileage and maximizing value from your marketing budget.” Time and time again, I’ve learned that understanding which channels drive the most revenue for your business — and which are falling short — is critical to marketing budget optimization. As Sidharth Kumar, head of marketing at DRTConfidence, explains, businesses should constantly assess their campaigns to uncover those that may be underperforming. Doing so will help optimize spending in the right direction, and it will empower teams to phase out campaigns that don’t generate sufficient ROI. To gain visibility into how your budget spent on marketing campaigns is (or isn’t) translating into revenue, consider using a tool such as HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics software. With a tool like this, you can also generate reports based on CRM data to identify key insights that can help you with marketing campaigns. If your data suggests that some underperforming channels might still work some of the time, use those channels for experimentation and apply the 70-20-10 rule when budgeting for them: According to this rule, 70% of your marketing budget goes to proven strategies, 20% goes to new strategies, and 10% goes to experimental strategies which are unproven but which could illuminate opportunities for future growth. Another important best practice to keep in mind when developing your budget is the SMART framework: An effective marketing strategy will have objectives and key results (OKRs) that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Ensuring your marketing goals are SMART is vital for budget optimization, as SMART goals and metrics help you track progress and evaluate (and re-evaluate) which channels and campaigns work best. Indeed, “Constantly reviewing and re-evaluating your marketing strategy helps you know when to stay the course or pivot,” says Thomas Simon, marketing manager at Monitask. “It also lets you use effective tactics and not blindly follow a particular plan without the data or results to back your decision.” And how often should you review your marketing goals and re-evaluate performance? Corey Haines, co-founder of SwipeWell, recommends marketers do a biweekly or monthly review of budget allocation. After all, “Regular reviews help you cut unnecessary spending, reallocate to high-performing campaigns, and decide when to increase or decrease variable costs like ad spend,” he explains. Finally, no collection of marketing best practices would be complete without acknowledging the growing importance of AI and automation. In HubSpot’s latest survey of marketers, one in five respondents reported currently leveraging AI agents to automate marketing, and the top three AI use cases they identified were: Chang Chen, former head of go-to-market at Bardeen.ai, has seen significant efficiency boosts from integrating AI and automation. Chen says, “AI now aids with SEO, user research, and even the crafting of highly personalized emails,” she explained. “This allows our team to focus on strategic and creative aspects of their work, freeing them from routine tasks and enabling them to apply their creativity towards business expansion.” Chen continues, “[AI] also shortens the time to market and quickens the feedback cycle, fostering growth. An experiment that used to take 1-2 months to launch can now be ready in a few weeks.” Chen then ties this investment back to budget planning, sharing: “We have incorporated this improved efficiency directly into our marketing budget. This not only optimizes the use of our current resources but also allows room for innovation.” She concludes, “We have allocated a portion of our budget specifically for experimentation, allowing us to continue exploring the capabilities of new technologies and automation possibilities.” In other words, automation is here to stay. Top-performing marketers will embrace these new technologies, proactively identify opportunities to experiment with them, and incorporate them into their marketing budgets. Ultimately, I’ve learned that being a successful marketer isn’t just about thinking strategically. It’s also about adhering to a strict budget, achieving new levels of growth, and choosing the most cost-effective options for your company. Armed with the knowledge and best practices I’ve outlined above, you’ll be set up to manage your marketing budget right — and you’ll be on your way to building a successful, optimized marketing budget strategy for your organization. Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
What is a marketing budget?
How Much to Spend on Marketing
Why You Need a Marketing Budget
Inside a Typical Marketing Budget
Marketing Budget as a Percentage of Revenue
Marketing Budgets by Industry
Marketing Budget Best Practices
1. Understand your customer journey.
2. Hire a marketing agency where needed.
3. Get an in-house marketing team.
4. Invest in content repurposing and updating.
5. De-prioritize underperforming channels.
6. Constantly re-evaluate your marketing strategy.
7. Don’t underestimate the power of automation.
Manage Your Marketing Budget the Right Way
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