As a startup, how much should we spend on marketing?
As a rule of thumb startups (1-5 years old) should spend 12-20% of gross or projected revenue on marketing. Bear in mind that the total marketing budget will need to be split across strategy, creative ideas, marketing subscriptions and media.
It is also the case that the quality of your marketing plan is directly linked to who has created it - so choose wisely and consider bringing in a fractional CMO to work on this part for you – I have created tonnes of marketing strategies, and the crucial stage is ensuring that there is a marketing activation plan for a junior (and less expensive team) to follow and optimise in real-time. Plus, you want to get the right mix of brand v performance led marketing in your campaigns (depending on what your 6-12-18 month business objectives are).
The other key point is ensuring that you have budgeted correctly across your media channels – make sure you don’t spread your budget so thinly that it’s difficult to measure what is working and what is not (because understanding what doesn’t work is useful insight data for future strategies and marketing campaigns).
Get your plan off to a flying start
Once you have a strong plan, the right marketing automation is key: every lead, every prospect interaction, every page view - all stored so you can easily analyse and assess performance. Tools like HubSpot are so useful that it seems impossible to have lived without them before. Your marketing team may also ask for:
• Social media management tools
• A video hosting tool (like Vidyard or Wistia)
• A Dropbox subscription
• An automation tool (like Zapier)
• SEO and website optimisation tools
• Design templates (like Canva), banner makers, or infographic tools
• An online form builder (like Typeform)
It can get a little tricky to differentiate cause and effect when running multiple strategies at once, but you can also use other metrics to analyse your success based on the specific goals you’re after, such as website traffic, click-through rates, A/B testing, trending hashtags, and other measurable data.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and try out different approaches, so long as you don’t wander off your plan too much and blow your budget. Depending on your brand, venture and experience in the field, it may take several attempts to figure out what combination of activities will get the most eyes on your company.
Adaptability is key
As you learn, experiment, and grow, continually revisit your marketing plan and adjust it to each new resource or piece of knowledge gained. Scale your budget and your strategy according to your growth, and always ask yourself how you can be more creative and innovative in your approach.
Want a high-level fractional CMO to sense-check your marketing strategy for 2024? Book an intro call with me.