Many of our manufacturing clients ask us how much they should spend on marketing. Marketing budget benchmarks for manufacturers provide a data-informed starting place.
Benchmarks will get you started, but the best answer to how much your company should budget for marketing depends on your business goals and resources.
From there, consider the likely ROI on your marketing spending. Higher ROI will build greater resources for future budgets.
Starving your marketing budget, on the other hand, could lead to a dangerous decline in sales revenue over time. Likewise, spending that lacks a strategic framework will not get you the ROI you need.
Marketing budgeting requires careful consideration. That’s why I want to cover some strategic marketing tips before we get into the 2022 marketing budget benchmarks for manufacturers.
If you answered “Yes,” to any of these questions, then you need to be at the higher end of the marketing budget spectrum.
Once you have defined your business goals, you will need a strategic marketing plan designed to achieve those goals. See this case study of Ability Engineering as an example of what goal setting and planning looks like.
The Ability Engineering representative expressed the “goals first” approach well in this testimonial quote:
“StratMg did more than provide a solution based on just our needs, they implemented a strategy based on the results we were looking to achieve. With this results-focused approach, it was easy to see the impact their efforts made throughout the life of the project.”
Using a marketing automation platform, you will gain access to abilities that otherwise elude the marketing and sales teams:
The results of the most recent CMO Survey, published in February 2022 show that, like other industries, manufacturing companies increased how much they spent on marketing.
Again, how you allocate your budget will depend on your goals. Here I summarize spending trends that the CMO research found.
In summary, the key to marketing budgeting isn’t about what everyone else does, it is about understanding your business goals. Often, this relates to the characteristics of your sales funnel.
A performance analysis of your current initiatives will help you answer these questions. Combined with your marketing goals, this information should give you what you need to determine not only how much, but also where to allocate your marketing dollars.
What are you hearing about marketing budgets and spending priorities? We’d love to hear from you! Connect with us on LinkedIn or Tweet us. Or, if you prefer, let’s talk!
Also Read: Digital Marketing Spending Dominates Post-Pandemic
With over two decades of experience, Parin leads an expert demand-generation agency, StratMg, that helps industrial manufacturing clients achieve unambiguous and quantified organic sales growth across the US, EMEA & APAC.
Parin has built & positioned StratMg to be a value-added marketing services provider that strives to create a culture of quantified sales-driven marketing initiatives leading to sustained business growth through channel management, diversification, new customer acquisition and retention strategies and tactical execution.
