Your B2B Marketing Budget

When you're ready to plan your B2B marketing budget for the upcoming fiscal year, consider these tips and ideas for creating your budget and getting it approved. There are three primary styles of creating a business-to-business marketing budget, including:

** Use the budget from the previous year, meanwhile adding or subtracting elements in order to arrive at budget for the upcoming year.

** Use a percentage of sales as basis for the upcoming year's budget. This approach helps you examine what you expect to earn in sales, then multiplies this number by a certain percentage; normally 4% less personnel costs. The result is the marketing budget for the year.

** Blank-page budgeting is a strategy that lets you create a complete budget from your marketing plan along with your communications strategies.

You will better comprehend the amount of capital needed to make your sales goals in the upcoming year. Starting with a 'blank page,' make a list of the costs to realize the business-to-business marketing strategies listed in the plan. Add all the items up to arrive at a 'total needs' budget. It can be smart to provide the managers with three options, including minimum, target, and stretch-level budgets.

These three budget levels will help to exemplify the amounts of capital needed to meet the different sales revenue levels. Usually, when managers are presented with a budget that is related to the company's goals, they'll select the budget most closely connected to the goals they find most important. This is completely different than the case of managers slicing off a bit from the single number you propose to them.

You should be quite ready to verbally present the case for your budget allocations to managers. Your proposal must also have a plan that is geared toward the strategies of the three levels illustrated. It's unwise to spend an inordinate amount of time on making your proposal look fancy; that is, unless you're applying to a group of investors or a bank. In most cases, a simple presentation in PowerPoint, along with an Excel spreadsheet, will do the job just fine.

If you encounter some resistance from managerial staff, perhaps you could stress the relationship between company sales goals and the marketing budget. If talk of cutting from the current budget is floating around, ask managers what sales they would like to leave on the table, as cuts to marketing will consequently mean lower sales revenue. Sometimes, an illustrative example of market competition can be compelling; try posting your competitors' marketing materials all over the board room when making your budget presentation. This type of approach can create a powerful response from your audience, possibly resulting in a larger B2B marketing budget for next year.