What should I spend on marketing?
Answer a few questions about your business and get a data-backed recommendation for your monthly marketing budget, channel allocation, and growth stage — built for founders, not agencies.
Let's start with your revenue
This helps us benchmark your marketing investment against industry standards.
Tell us about your business
Different business models need different marketing approaches.
What are you trying to achieve?
Your growth ambitions shape how aggressively you should invest.
What do you have in place today?
This helps us understand your marketing maturity and where the gaps are.
Your Marketing Budget Recommendation
Based on your inputs, here's what a strategic marketing investment looks like for your business.
Recommended Channel Allocation
Your 90-Day Action Plan
See what this budget would look like with Trusted Marketing
We don't just recommend budgets — we build the marketing systems that make every dollar compound. Strategy, execution, measurement, and optimization — all in one place.
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What this planner helps you avoid
Most small businesses don't have a marketing budget problem — they have a marketing clarity problem. This tool is designed to cut through the noise.
Random acts of marketing
Spending on disconnected tactics without a unifying strategy leads to waste. A clear budget framework forces prioritization.
Underinvesting at critical stages
Many businesses cut marketing spend right when they should be doubling down, especially during growth windows.
Overpaying without ROI tracking
Without knowing what to spend, you can't know if it's working. A benchmarked budget gives you a baseline to measure against.
Vendor dependency without strategy
Agencies and freelancers will happily spend your money. This planner puts you in control of the allocation before anyone else touches it.
Common budget mistakes SMBs make
Treating marketing as an expense instead of an investment
Marketing is a revenue engine. Companies that treat it as a line item to cut first during tight months create a death spiral — less spend means fewer leads means less revenue means even less budget.
Copying competitors without understanding their model
Your competitor's marketing spend reflects their margins, stage, and goals — not yours. Benchmark against yourself first, then look outward.
Going all-in on one channel
Paid ads alone won't build a brand. SEO alone takes too long to sustain early-stage growth. A balanced allocation compounds faster than any single bet.
Not budgeting for creative and conversion
You can have perfect targeting and still fail if your landing pages, emails, and creative assets aren't converting. Most budgets ignore the last mile.
Setting and forgetting
A marketing budget isn't a one-time exercise. It should be revisited quarterly as your revenue, channels, and goals evolve.
We build marketing systems, not random tactics
Trusted Marketing doesn't sell deliverables — we build compounding growth engines that get smarter every month. Here's the difference.
Strategy-first planning
Every engagement starts with a growth audit. We map your revenue goals to specific channels, timelines, and KPIs before a single ad runs or a blog post gets written.
Integrated execution
SEO, paid media, email, content, and web development work together under one roof. No siloed freelancers. No handoff gaps. One team, one plan.
Measurement and iteration
We report on what matters — pipeline impact, revenue influenced, cost per acquisition — and use those insights to continuously reallocate budget toward what's working.
Transparent partnership
You always know exactly where your money goes. No black boxes, no inflated reports. We operate as an extension of your team, not a vendor billing hours.
Frequently asked questions
This tool provides a directional recommendation based on industry benchmarks and the inputs you provide. It's designed to give you a strong starting point — not a final plan. For a fully customized strategy, we recommend speaking with our team.
The SBA recommends 7–8% for established businesses and up to 12–20% for businesses in growth mode. It varies significantly by industry, margin, and goals. Our planner accounts for these factors to give you a tailored range.
This tool focuses on external marketing spend — ad budgets, agency fees, tools, content production, and technology. Internal salaries are typically tracked separately in most businesses.
Your ideal channel mix depends on your business model, sales cycle, and current maturity. Our tool gives a starting allocation, but a proper channel strategy requires understanding your customer journey, competitive landscape, and historical data.
That's very common and exactly what this tool is for. We'll give you a recommended starting budget and suggest where to allocate it first based on the biggest gaps in your current setup.
Yes — you'll receive your full plan via email, along with a brief follow-up from our team to see if we can help. No hard sell. If it's not a fit, no worries at all.