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Key Takeaways Anchor your marketing budget at 10% of projected gross sales, not last year’s revenue, because you can’t market into the past.
Split that budget 70/20/10 — 70% to what already works, 20% to promising bets and 10% to true experiments — and rebalance every quarter so proven winners keep climbing into your biggest bucket.
Most marketing budgets are built once and then quietly forgotten. You set the number in January, spread it across the same channels you used last year and check back in December to see how it all went. By then, it’s too late to fix anything. The market moved, your best channel got more expensive and the experiment you were curious about never got funded.
I’ve watched a lot of business owners run their marketing this way, and it almost always produces the same result: a budget that slowly goes stale. The money keeps flowing to whatever worked two years ago, while the opportunities that could actually grow the business sit on the sidelines because nobody set anything aside to chase them.
There’s a better way to think about it, and it comes down to two decisions — how much to spend and how to divide it up.
Start with one number: 10% of projected gross sales
Before you split anything, you need a total. My favorite starting point is 10% of your projected gross sales for the coming year.
Notice the word projected. You’re not budgeting off last year’s revenue, because last year is over and you can’t market into the past. You’re budgeting based on where you intend to be 12 months from now. If you expect to do $2 million in sales, you’re working with a $200,000 marketing budget.
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