How to Calculate a Marketing Budget

When it comes to marketing, the sky’s the limit… Which makes figuring out a budget pretty challenging. How are you supposed to figure out what to spend, and where? On today’s episode, we go over some key points.

Key Takeaways

What the difference is between B2B and B2C funnels,
How to scope hard and variable costs for your marketing budget, and
How paid advertising works and why anyone can afford it.

🕵🏽 B2B vs B2C

Business to business vs Business to consumer, what’s the difference? Obviously, you probably already know the fundamental differences, but there are also variations between the two specifically when it comes to funnels and advertising.

🔭 Scoping Costs

When determining what kind of costs you will encounter, all costs will fall into one of two categories: fixed or variable. You have probably heard of these types of costs before as they are also critical to the operation of your business, so we’ll spare you the basic details.

Fixed costs are more frequently included in marketing budgets than not. Since so many modern day services are SaaS based, it makes sense why. To the benefit of making your budget more predictable, you may be paying software subscriptions, studio rent, equipment insurance, and more.

Commonly, variable costs can be all over the board for marketing. You may decide to spend budget on PPC ads, Talent acquisition/recruitment, Equipment rentals, freelance compensation and more.

💵 How Paid Ads Work

Because there are many different forms of paid advertising, we’ll give an overview rather than going over everything here in depth. There are a couple main ways paid advertisements are deployed in the real world, including Pay-Per-Click (PPC) placement, Sponsored posts, banner ads, and more.

At a fundamental level, forms of advertising like Sponsored posts or banner ads, are paid for as sort of “rented” space. You are paying the platform to display or prioritize your content of choice to a certain audience size and type. If you are looking to spend a consistent or small amount of money, these are great options as pricing starts very low.

PPC can also be a good idea, but can be expensive depending on the competitiveness of your industry. PPC works similarly to an auction, placements are bid on instead of “rented” like sponsoring.

📄 In Conclusion

Paid advertising can be a great solution from businesses seeking awareness in the public’s eye, to a retailer getting a consumer to purchase a product. Depending on your specific needs and budget, there are options available for everyone.