As a B2B (Business to Business) company, we understand that you may face specific marketing challenges, which will naturally influence how much of your budget you dedicate to marketing activities as well as how this money is spent.
From establishing and maintaining good relationships with businesses to navigating long sales cycles, ensuring you dedicate enough of your company budget or revenue to marketing can make navigating these common B2B marketing challenges much easier.
Here’s where we can help. Our expert digital marketing team has years of experience working with B2B businesses, which includes delivering our services for a price that remains within their budget.
Regardless of whether you’re starting to get serious about your marketing efforts or are concerned that the digital marketing channels you currently utilise aren’t delivering real results, understanding how much other B2B companies are spending in this area can be incredibly helpful.
How much does the average company spend on marketing?
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all marketing budget for every business.
This is because a wide range of factors can impact the amount that a company can (or should!) be investing in their marketing efforts, such as the size of the company, the industry they’re operating in, and their performance.
However, based on information included in the March 2023 CMO Survey Highlights and Insights report, an enterprise’s typical marketing budget as a percentage of their company budget is 12.3%, while marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenues was 10.9%.
It’s important to bear in mind however, that these are just average figures from one report. Instead of automatically setting a marketing budget of between 10-12%, it’s therefore crucial that you consider all relevant factors to help you determine the most suitable marketing budget for your business.
This includes your:
Company size
It’s no secret that larger companies tend to have more significant marketing budgets. This is because they desire and can handle greater demand, whereas smaller companies typically won’t have the resources to deal with the same amount of business.
As a result, smaller companies tend to have smaller marketing budgets simply because they don’t need to generate the same kind of revenue and customer numbers as larger businesses.
Industry
Marketing budgets also vary depending on which industry you operate within. This is because different industries come with different audience behaviours, sales cycles, and competition.
B2B companies with a particularly niche customer base or operating within only a small area, for example, won’t need to dedicate as much time and resources to their marketing
Business goals
The growth stage of your business and your goals also play a crucial role in determining how much you should be dedicating to your marketing budget. For example, if you’re just starting out, you may need to significantly increase your marketing budget to ensure you achieve the growth rates required to keep you in business.
How much should B2B spend on marketing?
As mentioned above, there’s no set marketing budget for every business, but how much do B2B companies spend on marketing on average in the UK?
Well, according to the March 2023 CMO Survey Highlights and Insights report, the typical marketing budget for the B2B product sector accounts for 10.9% of overall budgets and 8.5% of company revenues.
The average marketing budget for the B2B service sector, on the other hand, varies slightly, accounting for 7.9% of overall budgets and 10.3% of company revenues. This doesn’t mean you have to spend the same amount, but could give you a rough idea of how other B2B companies are determining their marketing budgets.
Which areas of marketing are important to B2B companies?
As digital marketing professionals specialising in online search and paid media, we’ve seen first-hand the difference that effective digital marketing strategies can make to the success of B2B companies.
That’s because online search services like SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has many benefits for B2B websites, such as improving their online visibility, increasing organic traffic, and even boosting sales.
This is supported by the fact that the CMO Survey Highlights and Insights report also found that companies were spending an average 53.8% of their marketing budget on digital marketing.
While digital marketing covers more areas than just SEO (such as content, email, and pay-per-click marketing), it highlights the importance of getting your B2B business online and ranking for relevant keywords and search terms.
Receive expert digital marketing advice
Eager to discuss your digital marketing strategy and budget with our experienced team? As online search and paid media specialists, please feel free to get in touch with Aqueous Digital today to find out how we can help.
We’ve worked with both B2C and B2B companies of all shapes and operating within a wide range of industries. With a little SEO know-how and years of invaluable experience, we’ve played a crucial role in helping to boost their organic traffic, online visibility, and even their sales metrics.
To get the ball rolling, why not call give us call today on 0121 673 2285 to arrange your free, no-obligation consultation and learn more about our digital marketing services?
If now isn’t a good time to talk, you can also contact our team by sending your enquiry via email to hello@aqueous-digital.co.uk or by filling in and submitting our handy online contact form.
