Marketing budget

In practice it splits three ways: production, meaning video, photography and copy, then media buying, meaning advertising, and finally tools and people's time. The ratio depends on whether the company is building a brand or harvesting demand, but it is sensible not to put everything into production and to leave something for making sure the result is seen. A beautiful video with no distribution budget is an expensive file on a drive.

How the size is set: it is often calculated as a percentage of turnover, but for a small company it is more practical to start from the goal. How many extra jobs do you need, what share of enquiries converts, and what does one enquiry cost you. That produces a figure that makes sense. If you have no such calculation, start with an amount you are willing to lose over three months while learning what works.

How to divide it sensibly: put the larger share on the one thing you believe works and a smaller share on experiments. Splitting across five channels at twenty percent each means you will see no result anywhere. And set aside something for maintaining what you already have, updating the website and older articles, because that is usually a cheaper source of enquiries than a new campaign.

Where it fails: a budget planned once a year and never revisited. The market shifts during the year, and an unspent line gets blown in December on something pointless just to avoid losing it. The second mistake is forgetting labour. A campaign with nobody managing it, or content with nobody writing it, is a budget that gets spent and does nothing.

We advise clients to hold back a tenth for things that appear during the year, an unplanned trade fair or a video for a new product. Without that reserve an unexpected opportunity is paid for out of something already running. Try it today: check how much you spent last year on production and how much on making sure people saw it.