Marketing Budget Calculator
This calculator helps you build a marketing budget from your revenue target or total marketing investment, and distributes it across channel categories using allocation frameworks drawn from industry research. It is designed for marketing managers and business owners who need to construct a defensible budget quickly, whether for annual planning, a board presentation, or a new product launch. The tool shows multiple allocation frameworks — including the Binet and Field 60/40 brand-to-activation ratio — side by side so you can see how different strategies would distribute your budget.
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How this is calculated
Enter your total available marketing budget or your revenue target and a percentage to allocate to marketing, choose your allocation framework, and the calculator distributes the budget across brand, performance, content, and other channel categories with recommended ranges.
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Frequently asked questions
What percentage of revenue should I spend on marketing?
The commonly cited rule of thumb is 5 to 12% of revenue for established businesses, with B2B companies typically toward the lower end and B2C companies toward the higher end. High-growth startups often spend 20 to 50% of revenue on marketing during acquisition-intensive phases. The right percentage depends on your industry's competitive intensity, your stage of growth, your channel mix, and the expected payback period on customer acquisition investment.
What is the Binet and Field 60/40 rule?
The 60/40 rule from Les Binet and Peter Field's research suggests that, on average, brands should allocate approximately 60% of marketing budget to long-term brand building and 40% to short-term sales activation. Brand building investment sustains pricing power and mental availability, while activation investment harvests the demand that brand building creates. The optimal split varies by category, brand maturity, and competitive context, but the research shows that purely activation-focused budgets damage long-term brand equity.
How should I allocate marketing budget across digital channels?
Within the digital portion of a budget, allocation depends heavily on your funnel stage priorities and measurement capabilities. A common starting allocation for a direct-to-consumer brand might be 40 to 50% to paid social, 20 to 30% to paid search, 10 to 15% to display and video, and the remainder to email and other owned channels. These ranges shift significantly based on category, competition, and the maturity of your audience's awareness of your brand.