Marketing Budget Planning

Marketing Budget Planning

Decide how much to spend on marketing overall — the question that comes before how to split it across channels. The answer is set by stage, model, growth ambition, and cash runway, expressed as a percentage of revenue and then divided across functions.

When to use

The user needs a total marketing budget or wants to check whether their current spend level is reasonable for their stage and model.

Before you start

1. Read the brand/product context (.agents/product-marketing.md / .agents/aaj-brand.md) for model and stage, if present.
2. Gather: business model (B2B SaaS / ecommerce / services / marketplace), stage (pre-seed → mature), annual revenue (ARR or revenue), and growth ambition (conservative / balanced / aggressive).
3. Have unit economics handy. A budget is only affordable if the implied CAC clears LTV:CAC — run the unit-economics skill if unsure.

Method

For B2B SaaS, the engine uses AAJ's stage bands — AAJ's own estimates from client engagements (2023–2026), not third-party research — and says so in every output:

Growth ambition picks the low end, midpoint or high end of the band; runway caps it. Every run also prints the published reference points: Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey (budgets averaged 7.8% of company revenue, mostly companies above $1B revenue), SaaS Capital's 2026 survey (median private B2B SaaS marketing spend 8% of ARR), and Gartner's 2026 category shares (paid media 31.4%, martech 19.4% of the average budget).

For ecommerce, services and marketplaces there is no sourced stage band. Pass your own pctOfRevenue; without it, the engine sizes the budget at Gartner's 7.8% and labels it as a large-company average, not a target.

The function split is AAJ's default assumption, not a benchmark — pass your own split to replace it. Affordability is confirmed against unit economics.

Run the engine

Paths assume you installed with npx skills add. From a clone of this repo, use skills/marketing-budget-planning/resources/… instead.

node .agents/skills/marketing-budget-planning/resources/budget-planner.js  # demo (B2B SaaS, Series A, $3M)
node .agents/skills/marketing-budget-planning/resources/budget-planner.js '{"model":"b2b_saas","stage":"seed","fundingRaised":3000000,"runwayMonths":18,"growthTarget":"aggressive"}'
node .agents/skills/marketing-budget-planning/resources/budget-planner.js '{"model":"ecommerce","stage":"growth","annualRevenue":8000000,"pctOfRevenue":12}'
node .agents/skills/marketing-budget-planning/resources/budget-planner.js --help

It returns the planned share and where it comes from, the budget per period and per month, the reference points, and a split across functions (demand gen, content/SEO, brand, etc.), plus JSON with the sources.

Interpret & connect

• Treat the band as AAJ's starting estimate, not an industry benchmark, then adjust for runway, payback tolerance, and how much demand actually exists to capture. Always say which basis the engine used.
• The demand-gen / paid slice flows straight into the paid-media-budget-allocation skill for the channel split.
• If LTV:CAC won't support the implied spend, fix economics or lower the budget before scaling.

Present the result

Lead with the headline budget (share of the base, per period, per month) and its basis — AAJ band, your own figure, or the Gartner average — then the function split, then the affordability check against unit economics and the handoff to channel allocation.

Guardrails & common mistakes

• Bands and averages aren't targets. AAJ's bands are estimates and the published figures are averages across very different companies — demand and economics decide.
• Never present an AAJ band as third-party research. Name it as AAJ's estimate, and cite the published figures by organisation and year.
• Runway caps ambition. Aggressive % with thin runway is a fast way to run out of money.
• Spend follows ability to absorb it. Doubling budget overnight wastes money if the funnel and team can't scale with it.
• Total budget ≠ paid budget. This sizes all marketing; only the demand-gen slice is paid media.

Related AAJ resources

• Interactive tool: https://aajconsult.com/tools/marketing-budget-calculator
• Guide: https://aajconsult.com/blog/how-much-should-a-startup-spend-on-marketing

Related skills

unit-economics (affordability) · paid-media-budget-allocation (split the paid slice) · campaign-orchestrator (the strategy the budget funds).