How to Create a Marketing Budget in 10 Minutes
For many, creating an advertising budget is based on a percentage of revenue. It’s a simple calculation: Your gross revenue is $3 million, so your marketing budget should be around $240,000 or 8%*.
There are as many ideas about the correct percentage as there are about how you should measure the marketing efforts. Yet, here is a new way. According to research conducted by Hubspot, we have an average cost per lead (CPL) by category. So you want 1,000 leads in the financial services category, then you need a budget of approximately $272,000 ($272 CPL X 1,000 leads).
Here are few highlights of the survey by category:
- Marketing Agencies $173
- Manufacturing & Industrial $235
- Healthcare & Medical $286
- IT Services $370
The average is $198 per lead.
According to HubSpot, by defining marketing-sales roles dramatically reduces customer acquisition costs by 50%. US companies with a formal sales-marketing agreement can cut the CPL in half.
*Recommended by SBA
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
