Whether you’re calculating a first marketing budget for your business or looking to improve on last year’s outcomes, nailing the numbers up front is a vital part of your 2025 marketing strategy. Here we’ll take you through the whys and hows of planning for performance.
WHY DO I NEED A SET MARKETING BUDGET?
Having an agreed budget in place will help control costs, avoid overspending, and allocate funds to areas of priority such as lead generation and nurturing, technology tools and market research.
A robust budget plan ensures that money is available for unforeseen opportunities or challenges, and will also strengthen stakeholder confidence, demonstrating that marketing efforts are strategic and aligned with business objectives.
Here’s what you’ll need to consider.
STEP 1: REVIEW THE PAST YEAR
At its simplest, this just means reviewing your 2024 marketing spend against your revenue. Ask yourself:
- Did you reach your set financial goals?
- Which marketing functions worked best?
- Which marketing functions didn’t work so well?
Calculating your return on marketing investment (ROMI) will help you identify what worked and what didn’t. To do this, simply divide your sales revenue by your marketing spend and multiply by 100%.
It’s useful to do this for each individual campaign as well as for the year’s activity as a whole. Use the data you gather to inform your decisions for 2025.
STEP 2: DETERMINE YOUR BUSINESS AND MARKETING GOALS FOR 2025
A well-thought-out budget ensures that marketing initiatives are aligned with strategic business goals.
- Expanding market share? Allocate budget to lead-gen activity.
- Entering new markets, or launching a new product? Invest in an awareness campaign.
This alignment will enable you to prioritize high-impact strategies and focus on areas that will drive measurable business growth.
It’s also a good idea to look at wider industry trends and any pending political budgets before settling on your final spending plan.
STEP 3: ESTABLISH YOUR 2025 MARKETING STRATEGY
Your goals set out what you want to achieve. Your strategy clarifies how you’re going to get there. Common priorities for B2B include:
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
This is the practice of optimising your website with relevant keywords and phrases to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. It’s an invaluable part of the B2B marketing mix because it helps drive organic traffic from potential clients searching for solutions or products.
Appearing higher in search results helps you increase brand awareness, generate high-quality leads, and establish credibility in your field. Given the often long sales cycles in B2B, SEO supports inbound marketing strategies by ensuring consistent visibility at every stage of the buyer’s journey, making it a highly cost-effective way to attract and nurture prospects.
Learn more about enhancing your brand visibility with SEO here.
This is the strategic creation and distribution of helpful, relevant, branded content to attract and engage a specific target audience, with the ultimate aim of driving profitable customer actions. Done well, it positions your brand as a trusted authority in your industry, helping to build credibility and nurture relationships with potential clients.
High-quality content such as blogs, whitepapers, case studies and webinars aligns with the complex decision-making process typical in B2B, where buyers seek detailed, educational resources before making purchases. By addressing pain points and providing solutions, content marketing not only generates qualified leads but also supports long-term customer retention and loyalty.
Find out how to put together a solid B2B content marketing strategy here.
This is where digital advertisers pay a fee each time a prospective customer clicks on their ad. It allows businesses to buy traffic rather than having to earn it organically, and provides immediate visibility in search engine results.
Platforms such as Google Ads and Meta enable precise targeting based on keywords, industries, job titles, and more, guaranteeing efficient use of your budget. PPC also complements long-term strategies such as SEO by generating quick, measurable results and offering scalability to capture leads at critical stages of the buyer’s journey.
When optimised it drives high-quality traffic and ROI, making it a cornerstone of any well-rounded B2B marketing budget.
Providing useful information, nurturing relationships, and driving specific actions, targeted email campaigns are your key to direct, personalised communication with current and prospective customers, decision-makers and stakeholders, fostering engagement at every stage of the buying journey.
Using automation tools, you can tailor content and delivery based on recipient behaviour, preferences, and sales cycle stage, which is highly effective for lead nurturing and customer retention. In addition, email marketing is cost-efficient, measurable, and scalable, enabling you to complement your other marketing activity to maintain top-of-mind awareness, educate audiences, and drive conversions.
Find out how to use it to grow your business here.
STEP 4:LEAVE ROOM FOR UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITIES
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing it makes sense to incorporate some wiggle-room into your budget to allow for capitalising on opportunities and trying experimental strategies or new platforms and tech tools that emerge during 2025.
Trends such as AI, automation, sustainability and CRS marketing all offer interesting possibilities for the year ahead. Factor in that this may involve hiring internal or external expertise to maximise the potential on offer. Partnering with an external agency like ours allows you flexibility to access specialist expertise and a fresh perspective on a project-by-project basis.
See how we helped Xiaomi attract a new Gen Z audience and secure 12.1M TikTok views, and how we helped Kier craft a new digital strategy that sold 100% of its marketed apartments within the target timeframe.
STEP 5:LEAVE ROOM FOR UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITIES
When there’s only a finite budget, it pays to make it stretch as far as you can. Here are some ideas to think about:
- Could you make use of cross-functional partnerships or collective strategies – with either internal or external partners?
- Think customer-obsessed rather than revenue-obsessed. Focusing on customer value creation drives revenue, so look for opportunities to build those bonds.
- Look for investments that punch above their weight on growth. Consider trialling AI assistance for media buying, for example.
Need some support to decide where best to invest your budget, or to define your goals? We can help.
