In a previous blog post, we discussed the importance of working backward from your end goals to develop a marketing budget. That post focused on media spend—an essential part of your budget when you’re looking to attract and engage prospects. However, your marketing budget shouldn’t stop at paid media. Today, we’ll explore the other critical components of a well-rounded B2B marketing budget, including the costs of marketing technology (martech), personnel, and agency support.
If you’re a marketer struggling to understand where to allocate resources, this post will help you make better decisions to achieve your business goals. A comprehensive approach to budgeting can be the difference between a marketing strategy that works and one that falls flat.
Martech: The Hidden Workhorse of Modern Marketing
With so many tools available to marketers today—CRMs, marketing automation platforms, data analytics tools, and more—it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options. However, each tool should be evaluated based on its contribution to your end goals. In a B2B environment, where long sales cycles and complex buying processes are the norms, choosing the right martech stack is essential.
The Value of Automation
Marketing automation tools like HubSpot or Marketo are invaluable when it comes to streamlining communication and nurturing leads. Imagine a scenario where your team is manually emailing prospects, following up on inbound leads, and tracking engagement. The labor hours add up quickly, and those hours have a tangible cost. When evaluating the cost of marketing automation, don’t just think about the sticker price—consider the alternative: how much time and money would you spend doing the same tasks manually?
For example, if a marketing automation tool saves your team 50 hours of work per month, and the fully loaded cost of a marketing employee is $100 per hour (including salary, benefits, and overhead), that’s $5,000 worth of labor you’re not paying for. If the tool costs $1,000 per month, you’re looking at a 5:1 return on investment. These tools allow your team to focus on higher-value activities, like creating personalized content or fine-tuning your demand generation strategies.
Filling the Gap with Martech
As we mentioned in the previous post, non-paid channels like email marketing, organic search, and social media are critical to filling in the gaps when your paid efforts run their course. To generate enough leads from these channels, you need a combination of the right tools and strategies. Martech tools can help you optimize lead generation efforts in non-paid channels, complementing your paid strategies.
If you understand your cost per lead from paid media, you can quickly do the math to determine the value of specific martech tools. For instance, if your cost per lead through paid search is $100, and your marketing automation platform helps you generate 100 additional leads per month through email and organic efforts, that’s $10,000 in value you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Again, this showcases how martech is more than a line item—it’s an investment that pays off when used effectively.
Personnel: The Cost of Expertise
No marketing strategy can succeed without skilled people behind it. However, it’s important to realize that hiring a fully equipped marketing team can be costly, especially in a B2B environment where specialized knowledge is often required.
The Problem with Generalists
Many companies expect their marketing employees to be “jack-of-all-trades,” covering everything from social media to SEO, lead generation, content creation, and analytics. But as the saying goes, this often leads to being a “master of none.” When it comes to B2B marketing, where the stakes are higher and the sales cycle is longer, having access to specialized skills is crucial for moving the needle on revenue growth.
The fully loaded costs of marketing employees vary widely depending on the role. For instance, according to industry statistics, the average salary for a digital marketing specialist ranges from $50,000 to $80,000 per year. For more specialized roles, like a marketing operations manager or demand generation specialist, salaries can reach upwards of $120,000 or more annually. When you factor in benefits, taxes, and other employment costs (typically an additional 20-30%), the cost of building and maintaining an in-house team can quickly escalate.
A Strategic Approach to Hiring
Instead of hiring generalists, think strategically about where each role fits into your overall demand generation pipeline. For example, if your goal is to improve lead nurturing, it might make more sense to hire a content strategist or marketing automation expert than a generalist marketer. When you hire for specific skills that align with your revenue goals, you maximize the ROI of your personnel.
Agency Support: Filling the Gaps
If your budget doesn’t allow for a fully staffed in-house team, or you need access to specialized skills and tools, working with an agency can be an effective way to fill the gaps. A B2B marketing agency can provide the expertise, tools, and resources you need—often at a fraction of the cost of building an in-house team.
The Value of Agency Tools
One of the biggest benefits of working with an agency is the access to tools and resources that you might not otherwise have. From analytics platforms to list-building software and customer data platforms (CDPs), agencies often bring their own martech stack to the table, which means you don’t have to carry the cost of those tools. For example, if an agency offers advanced analytics capabilities as part of their service, that’s one less martech tool you need to budget for.
Agencies can also help optimize your current martech investments. If you’ve invested in HubSpot or Salesforce but aren’t seeing the results you expected, a specialized B2B marketing agency can help you get the most out of these tools by integrating them more effectively into your overall strategy.
Leveraging Agency Talent
In addition to martech, agencies can provide you with access to a diverse range of marketing talent. Whether you need help with content marketing, SEO, or paid media, agencies can provide specialists to handle those areas without the need to hire full-time employees. This allows you to scale your marketing efforts up or down as needed without the long-term costs and commitments of in-house staff.
Standard Marketing Budget Splits in B2B
According to industry benchmarks, here’s a typical allocation of a B2B marketing budget:
- Paid Media/Advertising Spend: 25-50% of the total marketing budget. This includes spending on channels like Google Ads, LinkedIn ads, paid social media, and display advertising.
- Personnel Costs: 40-50%. Personnel costs typically account for the largest portion of a marketing budget. This includes salaries, benefits, and overhead for in-house marketing teams or external personnel.
- Martech Costs: 5-15%. This includes the cost of tools like CRMs, marketing automation platforms, analytics tools, and other software that supports marketing efforts.
- Agency Support: ?. Companies that choose to work with agencies allocate this portion of their budget to outside marketing services, which can include strategy, creative development, and execution.
These percentages can fluctuate depending on a company’s priorities, maturity, and marketing objectives, but they offer a solid framework for thinking about how to allocate resources. For instance, a company with a larger in-house team might spend more on personnel, while a smaller team might rely more heavily on agencies and martech.
A Balanced Approach to Budgeting
When building a B2B marketing budget, it’s essential to look beyond media spend and consider the full spectrum of costs, from martech and personnel to agency support. Each of these areas plays a critical role in helping you achieve your revenue goals, and understanding how they work together will allow you to make smarter, more informed decisions about where to allocate your resources.
By evaluating the ROI of your tools, people, and partners, you can ensure that every dollar you spend is driving you closer to your marketing and business objectives. And in a B2B environment where every lead counts, that’s the kind of strategic thinking that will set you apart.
If you’d like some assistance with planning your budget, reach out to Grey Matter and we’d be happy to help you build your 2025 budget!
