Picture this: you’re a B2B marketer tasked with creating a budget that not only impresses your boss but also delivers mind-blowing ROI. You’re feeling the pressure, and the last thing you need is another generic article telling you to “just make it go viral.”
Don’t worry—we’ve got your back! In this ultimate guide, we’ll dive deep into the world of B2B marketing budget planning. By the end, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to maximize your ROI, ensuring every penny contributes directly to your business goals.
The first lesson is that marketing budgets can be as detailed as necessary for your business or campaign goals. A small startup may plan out its budget quarterly, highlighting one or two major expenses a year, while larger corporations may separate their finances according to campaign, channel, or department.
So, you don’t need to spend a lot to see results, but you do need to set clear goals to help determine your budget.
What’s the secret to stretching your marketing dollars and making an impact regardless of your budget? Read on as we share our top tips in this ultimate guide to B2B marketing budget planning.
The Importance of Budget Planning in B2B Marketing
Budget planning for B2Bs is critical to accurately allocating time and resources in marketing. For example, you’ll need to know how much to invest in a social media campaign vs. traditional marketing. To do this well, you must understand the scope and duration of your campaign, the target audience, and overall business goals. Without a solid budget, your company risks overspending on ineffective strategies, missing valuable opportunities to reach your target audience, and measuring your ROI.
While projecting and measuring the ROI of a marketing campaign isn’t always clear, there are some metrics you can use to guide your budget planning process (more on this later).
To maximize your digital marketing spend:
- Start with your company and department goals.
- Make analytics a regular part of your evaluation process.
- Organize the budget by objectives instead of marketing activity, coordinate with other departments as needed, and project results, ROI, and revenue where possible.
- Observe, react, and adjust your budget as necessary.
Say you’re looking to increase brand awareness or grow your social media presence—do you know what you need to do to get there? You can’t just consider the price of promoting social posts or creating an eye-catching logo. You need to work with an in-house team of experts who can get the job done or loop in an agency to support your efforts. Whether you’re just starting your marketing journey or launching a full-scale, dedicated campaign, you need readily available experts who are prepared to help you reach your goals.
Related read: The True Cost of PR and Marketing: Agency VS In-House Financial Breakdown With Infographics
If you need help convincing your C-suite to open their wallets, you’re not alone. The key is to speak their language. Yes, this means sharing numerical data, analyses, and reports, but it also means using your social listening skills to show what customers and competitors are saying and doing across your industry while showing how valuable content can inform and attract customers to your brand.
Don’t stop there. Anticipate every possible question that might be thrown your way, and always present solutions alongside options. Most importantly, remind them you’re the expert! You don’t have to agree with everything they say. Respectfully hold your ground and support your recommendations with data.
The truth is, it takes a lot of work to move the needle in your direction, but practice and planning will eventually get you there.
Related read: Making the Case for Your Marketing Budget: 31 Ways to Win Over the C-Suite
Understanding Your B2B Marketing Goals
We all want to hit that viral marketing moment, but it’s much easier said than done. Avoid wasting your valuable resources by setting realistic and measurable marketing goals. This involves considering your target audience, analyzing the competition, setting short- and long-term goals, and anticipating additional costs.
Understand your target audience. Are you targeting small startups or established enterprises? Are you looking to attract new customers, retain existing ones, or re-engage lapsed clients? Driving sales and generating leads depends on a variety of factors. Know where your buyers shop, how they interact with brands, and understand their pain points to deliver tailored content and solutions to them.
Analyze the competitive landscape. Have your competitors suddenly started emphasizing their AI-powered products? Have any undergone a recent branding change? Are they incorporating more short-form videos across their platforms? Look at their messaging and marketing tactics to spot industry trends. Conduct a competitive analysis to find gaps in the market and identify opportunities to present your brand as the solution.
Know your timeline. Are you trying to reach 100,000 followers by the end of the quarter, or do you want to focus on engagement and customer loyalty? Knowing which metrics matter to you will help you prioritize where to allocate your marketing budget for maximum impact.
Factor in additional costs. Do you need a professional camera and filming setup to elevate your video content? Will you benefit from advanced analytics and generative AI tools? Investing in technology, staffing, and analytics tools are just a few of the costs you’ll have to consider alongside standard advertising and marketing costs.
Aligning your team’s budget planning with your company’s overall business objectives will help put your products and services in front of the right audiences. B2B marketing supports your company by establishing trust and credibility, building long-term relationships, improving efficiency, and generating leads.
Analyzing Previous Marketing Efforts
One way to streamline the budgeting process and avoid additional costs is to review past budgets and their outcomes. Consider how long it took to reach your ROI, what that actually looked like, and whether or not it was worth the investment.
Learn from past marketing successes and failures to better understand how to improve and move forward in the future. Leave room for contingency spending on additional platforms, technology, or personnel. Spend time researching and comparing costs to avoid spending more than you have to, as it’s crucial to figure out where to invest to get the best results.
Segmentation of the Marketing Budget
Understanding the categories in your B2B marketing budget will help you adequately plan and allocate funding. Categories include digital marketing, social media, events, content creation, goals, brand size, and audience, but ultimately vary between brands.
Who do you want to reach? How much of an impact do you want to leave? Is this a big campaign or a small event? How much content can you create and repurpose? Which channels will help you achieve your goals? Ask these questions to determine your direction and begin the planning process. Once established, start implementing the right strategies, including:
- B2B PR: This includes researching and pitching media outlets, drafting thought leadership articles, applying for awards or speaking opportunities, conducting interactive engagements like AMAs (ask me anything), and interviews in podcasts or other outlets.
- B2B influencer marketing: Working with influencers has soared in popularity across the B2B landscape. The key? Knowing where and when to use influencer marketing. Focus on finding experts with a following who align with your brand values and who can seamlessly integrate your product, brand, or service into their existing content.
- Content marketing: Let this be your bread and butter. Create a consistent cadence of blog posts, webinars, videos, infographics, white papers, podcasts, image galleries, and more. Increase the value of your content by repurposing it across different platforms.
- Social media marketing: LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Find the right social channels for your brand and spend time creating the right content for your audience. Amplify and press hits you receive, engage with influencers, communicate with your followers, and push content tailored specifically for each channel.
- Paid advertising: Look into optimizing Google ads, social ads, and display ads based on your goals.
- Email marketing: What’s your current email marketing strategy? Does it make sense to send a regular newsletter? Are you following up with customers? Deliver consistent, high-quality emails to maintain awareness with existing customers and help convert new ones.
Using a combination of these strategies will yield the best results, but know when to scale up or down as necessary. Extend the life of your marketing spend by finding ways to repurpose and refresh content. Pay special attention to where you’re allocating funds, making decisions based on the right marketing channels and strategies for your brand goals.
Prioritizing Marketing Channels for B2B
It’s important to leverage different channels—and platforms—appropriately. For instance, having a presence on LinkedIn will help you network with thought leaders in your industry. Knowing your way around Instagram can attract a wider audience, and sending reminder emails can be that extra personalized push that turns a prospect into a customer.
Marketing channels consist of four main categories, and we call this the ROPE model. Understanding how each marketing channel works will help you evaluate the effectiveness of each channel for your brand, prioritize channels for certain goals or campaigns, and maximize your ROI.
The four types of marketing channels are:
Rented: Platforms or channels where you share space with others but do not own or control. Social media is a great example of rented media. Even though you manage your account, another company owns the platform. Use rented media to engage with your audience and encourage them to interact with your brand!
Owned: Company-specific channels where you control the content and platform. Websites and blogs allow you to publish and house all the content your brand could ever need. The best part? You’re 100% in control.
Paid: Advertising you pay for to promote content through various channels. Social media ads or sponsored content can increase your exposure and expand the reach of your digital marketing efforts beyond your usual target audience.
Earned: Publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising. This one’s all about PR and the media hits you earn through strategic outreach. Think magazines, podcasts, TV, and more. Securing these third-party outlets can add a new level of credibility and recognition to your brand.
To find the right channel for any of your marketing efforts, start by identifying your target audience, keeping up with industry trends, understanding channel capabilities, and evaluating performance. By diversifying your budget across different channels, you can maximize your reach and increase the likelihood of achieving your marketing goals.
Incorporating Technology and Tools in Your Budget
Whether you’re looking for tools to create graphics, edit images, design websites, or manage social media, investing in automation and analytics tools can level up your team’s performance.
Budgeting for a customer relationship management (CRM) system can help keep you organized internally and externally. Use CRMs to enhance customer insights and data analysis, improve sales efficiency and productivity, personalize the marketing and customer experience, increase customer retention and loyalty, automate and scale, and enhance communication and collaboration between teams. CRMs are also a great way to introduce AI and machine learning to your team.
You can also find tools to supplement your marketing efforts. Whether you’re looking to conduct keyword research, host and create videos, build landing pages, or manage email campaigns, there are several options across a wide range of pricing models. These tools make experimenting with new services or upgrading your current offerings easier. Be sure to build in time to onboard and learn these systems to get the most out of your investments.
Planning for Content Marketing
Content marketing spans a wide range of deliverables you can scale up or down as necessary. Blogs, videos, case studies, infographics, eBooks, webinars, whitepapers, and images are common pieces of content that can generate interest and engage your audience by directly delivering valuable information.
While the initial cost of a piece of content or content campaign may be low, consistency is key to seeing meaningful results and may require additional investment. Maximize your budget by creating a content calendar to help you plan content in advance. For example, you may need to hire third-party video creators or influencers to help with your latest social media campaign. Try to film as much content as possible in each session and ensure your team can repurpose it across several channels. Strategically repurposing content is crucial for making the most of your budget. And don’t forget to factor in distribution and promotion costs, as well as influencer or special agency fees.
Plan your content marketing strategy by determining your audience, understanding their pain points, and providing solutions to their questions. At the same time, conduct research so you can ensure you’ve chosen the right formats and channels to support your goals. Maintain a consistent posting schedule, use SEO best practices, create shareable social media content, and generate post-purchase content to maintain relationships after the sale. Finally, monitor trends continuously to maintain relevance.
Social listening, data analytics, and customer feedback can help you find exactly what your customers are searching for. Use that insight to build a robust content library that addresses their needs while also increasing your website traffic, growing your brand awareness, generating new leads, and creating customer loyalty.
Digital Advertising in B2B Marketing Budget
Content and organic social media are great ways to reach your audiences, but digital advertising and pays-per-click (PPC) can extend your reach and amplify your hard work. Be sure to allocate budgets to include PPC, social media ads, and display campaigns. Think of PPC and digital ads as the vehicles transporting audiences to your website and other channels. Without them, your customers wouldn’t know where to look or how to compare you against the competition.
The reality of changing algorithms and trends is that you have to make investments to keep up with the times. Use digital advertising to target your outreach, create an efficient budget powered by PPC advertising, integrate with other marketing channels, and flexibly scale your efforts according to your budget and results.
While it’s true that conversion rates, engagement rates, and costs per lead are important metrics to measure ROI, more and more people are discovering new brands, products, and services by scrolling social media—and its inherent word-of-mouth referrals—than by browsing websites or consumer review sites. So, adding paid efforts to your B2B marketing budget will help you refine your strategies, get your brand in front of your customers, and take on a layered approach to marketing.
Learn how to boost your posts, promote your page, and increase conversions with our beginner’s guide to paid search and PPC.
Event Marketing and Trade Shows
Showcasing your brand, products, services, and thought leadership may require you to attend industry trade shows or organize events. When budgeting for travel, plan for typical expenses such as transportation, food, and lodging, plus the cost of attendance for the event itself. You may also send an extra person from the marketing department to help capture content for future use.
Generating Buzz at Events
Chances are you’re familiar with your industry’s biggest events. Attending relevant trade shows to network or learn new information is great, but taking advantage of potential PR opportunities makes them worthwhile. What can you leverage to your advantage? Experiential activities, influencers, and trends are all great options.
During the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we helped our client, New Cosmos USA, launch their groundbreaking new product: DeNova Detect. The odds were stacked against us. Our client was battling a politically charged atmosphere surrounding natural gas appliances, and statistics at the time cited natural gas explosions as the cause behind 4,200 home fires annually. Even so, New Cosmos wanted consumers to know safety was at the forefront of their minds while simultaneously championing the merits of natural gas. New Cosmos wanted to stand out as the “voice of reason” across every channel.
The Zen Media PR team got to work, executing a dynamic two-fold approach to craft and share the brand’s message. We distributed a press release to national outfits and targeted trade outlets. We also took on newsjacking and thought leadership opportunities to increase the visibility and credibility of the New Cosmos business leadership team, emphasizing clear and consistent messaging.
As our efforts secured coverage across print, digital, podcast, and television channels, our team also amplified each press hit across social media. This push resulted in an impressive 689% surge in New Cosmos’s share of voice and helped them secure deals with multiple major big-box retailers. The Las Vegas City Mayor’s Office even declared January 6 as the official Natural Gas Safety Awareness Day.
As a result, New Cosmos didn’t just launch a new product at a trade show—they engaged the right audiences and pulled off a strategic, robust PR campaign that extended the value of their event attendance. The next time you or your brand attend an event, research invited media and influencers so you can prepare a PR strategy that not only shares your message but boosts its reach.
Event Planning 101
If you decide to host an event, be prepared to pull out all the stops. Major changes across the event landscape mean attendees increasingly seek interactive, engaging, and incredible experiences. Bringing in exciting speakers, influencers, or brand partners will also help to draw more interest. And while these investments will account for a large part of your budget, additional resources and adequate technology should also be factored into the costs of your overall budget to ensure smooth sailing for everyone.
Whatever the size of your event, consider whether or not it makes sense to host it virtually or in person. Virtual events are a great investment because they can extend the lifespan of your in-person events, opening them up to new audiences and boosting ROI weeks or months after an event.
Costs for any event will vary, and virtual events require B2Bs to implement the best technology to maintain connection and provide a good experience. Still, enhancing the digital attendee experience is important, and investing in virtual events or adding virtual options increases accessibility and reach.
Optimize online marketing tactics before, during, and after the event to extend your ROI. By repurposing good content across different platforms, you create shareable content for speakers and attendees while also drawing more interest to your brand and future events.
Related read: Best Practices for Hosting a Virtual Event
Measuring and Adjusting Your Marketing Budget
Understanding key performance indicators (KPIs) is necessary to maximize your B2B marketing ROI, but know where to focus your attention. Brand reach, engagement, and share of voice matter more than click-through rates (CTR) or the number of followers you have on social media.
Don’t overlook the power of calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) in projecting profitability. This ensures you’re not spending more on marketing than you’re earning from customers over the course of your business relationship. Monitor conversion rates to know what content is resonating with your audience, and prioritize that high-performing content over the rest. Also, measure website engagement and check your keyword rankings to ensure you’re constantly ahead of your competitors.
Regularly measure and analyze KPIs to make informed decisions about where to allocate resources for optimal results and identify areas for improvement to make data-driven decisions about your budget. Figure out where to spend more and where to spend less based on your performance and market changes or trends that may shape the future of your marketing efforts.
Will you face new competitors? Is it worth creating content for an emerging platform? Is SEO highlighting a particular keyword that you can lean into? Be flexible. Anticipate changes and adjust your marketing budget based on performance to maximize your ROI and drive better results.
Legal and Administrative Considerations in Budget Planning
Marketing isn’t just boosting digital ads and covering event costs. You should also account for legal fees, licenses, and other administrative expenses. These costs may arise if you’re hosting an event and need to obtain a permit beforehand or if you want to implement a new digital tool to reduce admin work.
Be sure to factor in costs associated with compliance and ethical marketing practices as well. Regulations like GDPR and the CCPA mean that organizations must put extra effort into ensuring the privacy and protection of consumer data. These efforts can increase your budgetary costs around data security efforts and legal work. Ethical marketing practices can include paying more for recycled or eco-friendly materials, looking into new technologies to reduce waste, or employing local artisans to work in smaller batches rather than investing in mass production.
Future Trends in B2B Marketing and Budgeting
As you can tell from this guide, digital and social media marketing will take up the bulk of your marketing budget because they are the main drivers of marketing success. AI has played a major role in shaping the industry, so look for ways to incorporate AI into your marketing strategy and brand offerings.
Gartner predicts generative AI will significantly shape the way we create and consume digital content and interact with each other. Learn how to supplement your work with ChatGPT and other emerging generative AI tools. You can leverage this emerging technology to create blog outlines, first drafts for your video content, and plan out email newsletter templates.
Related read: The Ultimate List of ChatGPT Marketing Prompts
Algorithms are also rapidly evolving, forcing marketers to adjust their marketing tactics to remain relevant and show up in front of the right audiences—but this doesn’t mean you should film funny dances or use a bunch of hashtags that have nothing to do with your brand. Instead, create content that represents your brand. Once you’re sure that you’re aligned with your target audience, you can add some fun and engaging content that extends your reach.
Augmented reality and interactive experiences are essential to shaping the digital customer experience as well. Research how brands in your space have embraced this technology and see how you can apply it to your marketing strategy. This might involve creating a digital community, a virtual storefront, or engaging with customer support in an augmented space.
Marketing moves quickly. Prepare for future shifts in B2B marketing strategies by remaining flexible and embracing changes early on. Be sure you always maintain your brand voice, messaging, and mission to be consistent in the face of so many changes.
Maximizing ROI with Strategic Budget Planning
A well-planned marketing budget is marked by understanding how various departments, technologies, tools, and channels fit your overall marketing strategy. Refer to previous budgets as guides to help inform your current and future planning, but be sure to consider additional elements that could factor into your overall costs.
Ongoing budget review will keep your costs in line with your overall marketing goals and help you optimize future budgets for better outcomes.
Want to know how to make the most of your marketing budget? Let’s talk.
