In the B2B market, after employee salaries, marketing is usually one of (if not the biggest) expense for a company. As a marketing manager, you are therefore in charge of ensuring that your dollars are spent in the most productive manner possible and commit yourself to ensure that your marketing activities generate a positive return on investment. This is even more important, because if you can prove that marketing is cost-effective, then you can justify any budget request and even additional budget! So, let's look at how to set up and justify a marketing budget in B2B.
For years, the average marketing budget for small B2B companies was encouraged to be between 6% and 7% of revenues.
This type of marketing budget was supposed to be appropriate if your revenues were less than $5 million and your margins were between 10% and 12% of gross revenues. I've heard 10% - 12% before, but you have to understand what that includes. Some people see sales-related expenses (CRM, sales incentives, etc.) as part of the marketing budget, while for others it is part of the sales budget. Certainly not everyone has the same definition of marketing. In addition, some business models, based exclusively on online sales for example, obviously require more marketing budget. Besides, an established company seeking to promote well-known products or services should spend less than a start-up launching a new product or service.
You should therefore make up your own mind about your budget based on your environment, your business model and the market. With the current pandemic, we have globally seen corporate expense budgets and revenues fall, but marketing budgets have been less affected due to the marketing priorities of building customer loyalty and maintaining brand awareness. According to the CMO Survey from the American Marketing Association issued on February 2020, the marketing budget for a B2B products company should be 9% of a company’s revenues, and 7.9%. for a B2B services company. All this, of course, is in an ideal world, for all sectors of activity and companies of all sizes combined.
The budgets I've seen in Quebec, for established companies with less than 500 employees in B2B, with a sales force on the field, are more around 7% - 8%. For start-up or companies starting with marketing, it is more around 2% - 3% of revenues. And for those that sell exclusively online, it is more like 12% - 15% of revenues.
Should you go for a monthly or an annual budget? I suggest a monthly budget plan. I recommend this type of approach because it allows you to more easily follow the evolution of your expenses in regard to your budget. You will also want to track your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a monthly approach makes it easier to link the indicators to the budget established.
Fixed costs are usually the easiest budget’s elements to evaluate. They are mainly salaries and benefits.
These are the gross salaries of the employees from the marketing team EXCLUDING payroll taxes. Don't forget to plan a salary increase starting from the month it will be granted by the company. This information is provided by Human Resources. You also need to consider the employees you plan to hire and add their salaries.
These are the benefits and payroll taxes the company pays to the various levels of government. It also includes the cost of group insurance plans offered to employees, cell phone plans, etc. It is usually between 12% to 15% of gross salaries. For big companies it is likely to be 20% to 25% because they usually offer more benefits. This information is provided by the accounting department.
Variable costs are generally the elements of the budget that are not associated with campaigns, or not related to the activities that DIRECTLY generate sales opportunities ("leads").
These are the costs of travel by land or air. Ground travel can be car rental costs as well as mileage allowance costs for the use of a private car. To this, you need to add meals, hotel expenses and any other expenses during a trip. Based on my experiences, I would usually dictates the following average costs for budgetary purposes:
The cost of training fees for team members. Please note here that some conferences require travel and accommodation expenses. In Quebec, some training costs are eligible for tax credits, but they are not reflected inside your budget.
If you work with consultants, this is usually where you should put your expenses. Consulting fees are often expenses where specific expertise is required, but not related to lead gen. For example, this could be the development costs of the integration of a marketing app into your CRM, etc.
These are fees related to the registration of trademarks, logos and branding in general.
Campaign costs are elements of the budget that are specifically associated with campaigns or with the generation of sales opportunities ("leads").
These costs are often costs where specific expertise is required and where there is no internal resources to do the job. The most common consulting expenses are:
These costs relate to the participation or organization of trade shows. Marketing travel and accommodation costs for trade shows must be budgeted in the travel and accommodation expense account. They usually include:
Unless you’re a big company, it is quite rare to see internal resources dedicated to communication and public relations activities. If you do public relations or media relations, this is where you should put these expenses. They are often associated with agency fees.
The website is the key element of a content strategy and therefore very important. There is often a person dedicated to website management. Development can be done in-house using internal programmers, but often requires the expertise of an external firm. This expense is often used for agency fees.
Whether it is SEO or SEA, this type of expense usually involves agency fees and the purchase of ad placement, keywords, etc. Agency fees normally represent 25% to 35% of the digital budget. The development of the global budget for this area is often difficult to establish due to a lack of meaningful historical data. However, it is easy to make conservative or aggressive assumptions. The following method is very mathematical and, in my opinion, the best way to justify it. Instead of starting with defining the digital marketing budget, start with your objectives and do reverse engineering from there.
EX: If the cost per opportunity is say $100 (weighted average SEO and SEA), then the required budget will be $625,000, meaning 6,250 opportunities at $100. Therefore, a budget of $625,000 will be required for digital marketing (SEO & SEA). Again, it is one approach, there are many others out there.