Marketing Budget Calculators

The marketing calculators on this page

Our marketing budget calculators can help you understand more about your own marketing spend. We’ve created them based on data from various sources about UK marketing spending.

Measure your marketing budget against the average UK business

Marketing channel budget calculator

More information about marketing in this article:

• The last 6 years averages
• Events which impacted marketing in the UK
• Differences in industry averages
• Forgotten and overlooked costs

 

UK marketing budgets: How do you compare with the average?

Our quick and easy calculator provides you with a simple answer to the question, “How much should my marketing budget be?”

NOTE: Nothing on this page is recorded and we aren’t looking to capture your email address. We simply want to support our customers with tools to help you understand all of the variables required to make the right decisions.

There’s more to calculating your marketing budget than seeing where you are against the average, your company, industry, economic challenges and more can impact your actual budgets, as you’ll see later in the page when we explore differences based on industry. Averages are just another indicator that alone doesn’t offer any value, but coupled with your own spending and sales data can help to create intelligent conversations.

Reviewing your marketing spend over the last 6 years and analysing its return value year by year will generate smart questions being asked of it, leading to a better understanding of what is good for your business and what isn’t. Make sure you can go through your marketing spend and marketing calendar and review what you did each year which may have impacted your overall numbers, it might be that you saw improvements one year later from something like networking or events as these often create relationships which take more time to nurture. But still, we’ve begun asking smarter questions of our own data at this point.

 

How to spend your marketing budget

Knowing which channels to invest in isn’t straightforward, but putting in too little budget will limit the potential return and pace of growth, or result in you investing too little and receiving a sub-par service as a result of choosing a cheap provider.

To use this calculator, enter your current marketing budget, or the number from the above calculator and press Calculate Allocation to find how you should split your budget across the different marketing channels. You can deselect channels if they’re not applicable, and these budgets will be allocated to other channels.

Enter your marketing spend to see how we recommend your budget should be allocated.

 

 

How marketing budgets have varied over 6 years

Now you’ve seen where you are against the average, you’re likely close to the number (that’s how averages work…) or miles away from it. If you’re considering making changes to your marketing budget, it’s useful to compare your budgets over the last few years and consider how various events may have impacted them.

As you can see below, there’s been a lot of fluctuation in how much companies have put towards their marketing spend.

Several factors have all had an impact on the UK market as a whole. We’ve had: Brexit; a pandemic; Apple’s killer iOS ad-targeting privacy update; a GDPR compliance push from Google with consent mode; a war between Russia and Ukraine; a lettuce outlasting our prime minister; plus a long list of economic issues.

Some issues helped some businesses grow, some issues destroyed entire industries and they’ve been struggling to recover since. Regardless as to whether you’ve been directly impacted, like working in events and exhibitions during COVID, or needing to buy your materials from eastern Europe or Russia so have experienced both cost and demand issues, you’ll have seen the UK’s market fluctuate, with most businesses seeing their costs go up and revenues go down.

Has your budget changed roughly in line with these events? Was this in a positive or negative way? Have some external events impacted your business more than others? Considering how susceptible your business has been to the impact of the UK’s economic ups and downs can help you see why you may or may not be close to the average UK marketing spend. It could also help you to make decisions about your future marketing budgets.

 

 

What other variables should I consider?

Industry-Specific Averages:

Your industry and customer type (B2B/B2C) will probably have a direct impact on your marketing budget, with average budgets varying hugely depending on your sector. How well known is your brand, and how loyal are customers within your industry? If you’re still a relatively new company or operate in an industry where certain brands command a lot of loyalty, you may need to allocate more marketing spend. Businesses in more competitive industries, like B2C retail, will usually have a greater marketing budget than less competitive ones, like B2B professional services. You may be an industry with high customer acquisition costs. Your industry may require high marketing investment but also have high return on investment (ROI).

Here’s a breakdown of what that looks like:

Chart Source: Hubspot

Data Source: (Paid & Gated Content) Statistics.com

Internal Factors

Significant Changes

What’s been happening within your individual business? Have there been any changes that have impacted your marketing budget? Big changes such as a merger or acquisition will have a huge impact on budgeting decisions, as will the overall financial position of the business. When companies are experiencing particularly challenging periods, due to external or internal factors, marketing budgets are often the first to bear the brunt of it (it is actually a really bad idea to cut your marketing budget in these circumstances, but it does still happen). If you’ve had a hiring freeze, your staffing costs might have dropped, but you may have struggled to get work done and will need to anticipate those costs rising again in future. On the other hand, a hiring freeze may have led you to working with more freelancers and agencies, so your costs could have remained consistent.

Business Strategy

Some businesses are product or production-led rather than customer or market-led. They focus on trying to create the highest quality product or service, sometimes believing customers will then seek them out. In contrast, market-led businesses prioritise their customers’ needs and behaviours in driving their decisions. Production-led businesses often choose to allocate their budget differently, such as allocating more towards product research rather than market research, so might have a lower-than-average marketing budget overall.

Company Culture

Attitudes within your company can affect how marketing is perceived, and thus impact your marketing budget. Some companies have a culture (or perhaps just certain employees) where they struggle to see the value of effective marketing. They may be over-reliant on short term results, believe sales departments don’t need marketing support, think the product quality alone can sell itself, or simply be resistant to change – “But we’ve always done it this way.” Sometimes, these companies have employees who are unfamiliar with modern marketing techniques, which can make them wary and reluctant to invest properly in marketing. If your marketing department in one of these companies is relatively new or just starting to mature, your marketing budget may be below average and could take time to grow. You will probably have to work hard to persuade people of its value and will have to think carefully about how your budget is allocated.

 

Overlooked or forgotten costs

Assets

It’s a common problem that a business will employ an in-house SEO specialist or even an SEO agency and expect they’ll handle most content requirements themselves. However, if part of their strategy relies on a new video library of “How to Use” content, you’ll want these videos to be recorded and edited professionally to align with your brand.  Assets like professional videos, custom graphics, and high-quality photos are essential for consistency across all marketing materials, but producing them professionally comes at a cost.

Minimum levels of service

Before signing up with a marketing agency, it’s crucial to understand the level of service you’re purchasing. Many small businesses pay for “SEO” without realising that SEO is a broad field involving much more than creating blogs. They often opt for basic, cheaper SEO packages that exclude critical elements like technical SEO audits, advanced keyword research, or link-building strategies. This approach can result in poor long-term investment. We offer clients at this level a month-on-month-off service, alternating between content creation and basic SEO one month, and focusing on backlink acquisition the next. This strategy supports consistent SEO growth and maximises the customer’s lifetime value for us.

Set up costs

When considering new tools or platforms, don’t just look at the subscription cost and assume that’s the total expense. There are often hidden costs associated with implementation, training staff to use the new tools effectively, and integrating the tool with your existing systems. Additionally, automation set-ups can require initial time investments and potentially consulting fees to optimise processes correctly.

Website Maintenance and continued development

In an ideal world, your SEO team would handle all your website needs. However, many SEO specialists lack the design focus or technical expertise required for comprehensive website maintenance. This is why it’s crucial to choose a developer who can support your long-term growth.

A good developer should offer more than just a standard maintenance package. Ideally, they should provide a package that includes additional hours at a discounted rate, agreed upon in advance, rather than relying on reactive development. Reactive development often means each project is quoted individually, which can lead to unexpected costs and delays. By securing a development package that covers ongoing needs, you can better manage your budget and ensure timely updates and enhancements to your website.

Legal and Compliance Fees

Ensuring your content complies with regulations, such as GDPR in the UK or other data privacy laws, is crucial. This can involve additional legal consultations, reviews, policy updates, and software tools to manage compliance. Content that includes licensed music, images, or video clips also needs to account for potential licensing fees and legal clearances.

 

Tips for Business Leaders

Scenario Planning

Prepare for various scenarios (e.g., best case, worst case) to make your marketing budget more flexible and resilient to changes. Milestones can be valuable in helping you reach your final goal as they serve as indicators of success and allow you to quickly adjust your plans. For example, although average marketing investment in the UK dropped to 7.7% of annual turnover earlier this year, a study released by Statista in the summer of 2024 showed that a net balance of 15.9% of marketers reported an increase in their overall budgets, with notable increases in spending on Events, Direct Marketing, and Sales Promotions.

Cross-Department Collaboration

Ensure alignment between marketing, sales, product, and finance teams, it’s not the role of finance to simply manage budgets or set limits and targets, businesses should be collaborating to ensure the entire team is working towards the same goal and hopefully with the same level of enthusiasm and energy.

Consider the dynamics of the team you put together for this, seniority by title or length of service can sometimes unintentionally impact the creative process and lead to problems with communication. Remember to work, question, challenge and celebrate together but within an environment that not only fosters sharing ideas but puts them to the test too.

Ongoing Review and Adjustments

Regularly review budget performance against goals and adjust as needed to respond to new data and insights. Bring in third parties to review and audit your processes, strategies and campaigns. Rather than using free service providers that use these services as tools to get themselves work, look for specialist consultants.