Smart Ways to Plan Your B2B Marketing Budget

Getting the B2B marketing budget right is an aspect that all companies should look into, regardless of their size. Paying attention to how each marketing dollar is spent eventually makes the difference between a positive and a negative ROI. In the case of new campaigns, where there’s no historical data to rely on, companies should arm themselves with knowledge on both the size and the distribution of their B2B marketing budget.

How Much Should You Spend on B2B Marketing?

To calculate the B2B marketing budget as accurately as possible, it is essential to know the following aspects:

• Annual revenue
• Business type
• Percentage of annual revenue generated online
• Marketing team size

Depending on whether you sell a B2B product or a B2B service, the amount of revenue generated online might differ considerably. For example, if you are a B2B service provider, have an annual revenue of $2,500,000 and you generate more than 15% of it online using a marketing team of 4 people, you should allocate a total marketing budget of $120,000 and a digital marketing budget of $45,000, at most.

How to Split the B2B Marketing Budget

Since the content that you will publish and promote is the backbone of your B2B marketing plan, the greatest chunk of the budget should go into planning the campaign and creating the content. To be more precise, the recommended percentages are:

• Campaign planning and content creation 40-50%
• Paid advertising 20-30%
• Workforce marketing - 10%
• Marketing tools - 10%
• Events - 5-10%

First of all you should focus on aligning the campaigns with your current business objectives, to make sure that any conversions will push you in the right direction. That being said, everything from blog and social media posts to videos, eBooks and infographic should be created with those objectives in mind.

Entering a new market and establishing a market presence often take place faster when using paid advertising. Pay-per-Click ads either on Google or on social networks can help your business get attention right away exactly from the people who you wish to turn into customers.

Despite having less resources allocated for it, your workforce plays a very important role. In terms of B2B marketing budget, you should spend it on educating your team through meetings, events and marketing collaterals.

The trap that some companies fall into is spending too much on marketing tools in hope that their features will save a lot of time and money. Tools that still require a lot of human input to generate results are not even close to profitable. Not to mention that in certain cases, companies invest in expensive tools only to discover that they’re not even the ones they need to reach their goals.

For the best possible results, focus on getting marketing automation tools that increase the number of qualified leads, allow customers to self-serve and enable you to personalize content for each audience.

Events in the form of trade shows, conventions, conferences and roadshows can help your company establish itself as a reputable provider of solutions in any industry. By attending them, you get a unique opportunity to showcase your offer both to prospects and to customers. In terms of costs, you’ll have to consider registration fees, travel expenses and collateral, but the ROI might be worth it.

Obviously, there are ways to optimize your B2B marketing budget, and repurposing content to reach a wider audience is only one of them. If you’d like to learn more about how to plan your B2B marketing budget in a way that matches your unique scenario, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!