This is the second post in a multi-part series about The 6 Steps to Building a B2B Marketing Function. You can access the last post here where we talked about the importance of establishing Business Objectives.

Today we’re going to talk about money and I’m going to divulge the biggest secret in B2B marketing…ever. Ready? Ok, here it goes – there is NO magic recipe for marketing spend. So I’ll leave you with this parting gift…a very interesting infographic from Vital about What Publicly Traded Companies Spend on Marketing and Sales.

In all seriousness, managing a highly performing marketing budget is one the most important tasks a marketing executive must do. My rule of thumb is to treat each dollar as if it were my own…whether that be 10k/month or 10M/month. It’s important that B2B marketers understand where every single dollar is being spent and be able to attribute lead generation, opportunity creation and closed won new business at a moment’s notice.

So how do you determine and attribute the appropriate marketing spend for your your business?

Determine Budget

Depending on how your company operates, marketing executives will either be asked to provide their marketing budget OR they will be given a marketing budget. The right recipe likely falls somewhere in between. It’s appealing to be able to fill in a blank check, at the same time…if that comes at the expensive of other functions within the organization, that approach does more harm than good.

I’ve always asked my CEO/CFO/President (whoever is holding the purse strings) to give me number that they feel comfortable operating within for the year. I then go back and run forecasting to see how much demand generation that will yield to meet our sales targets. Assuming I have enough $$ to meet sales goals + other initiatives that are deemed objectives then it’s safe to say the marketing function is well funded.

If it’s not enough budget to meet the objectives that are expected of the marketing function, then I ask for more. And, the majority of time…marketing doesn’t get more. But, what does happen is that objectives are tweaked to meet what’s realistically expected given the spend levels.

Attribute Budget

Once you’ve arrived at a budget, one of the most important things you can do as a marketer is ensure you have the software and processes in place to attribute every single dollar that you are spending.

I’ve spent the majority of my career in Salesforce but there are plenty of other CRM’s (I’m super excited about the launch of Hubspot’s CRM!) that can provide the closed loop campaign-to- closed- business reporting that is crucial to tracking marketing’s performance. Regardless of CRM, the following attributes are important for tracking:

• Lead Source – at the highest level…where did the lead originate from. For example, Website
• Campaign – at the micro level…what event within the source did the lead act on. For example, Website – Homepage – Request a Demo

Most CRM’s will allow you to track all Campaigns that influence the lifecycle of the lead. Having this visibility directly linked to your Sales funnel will allow you to smartly attribute dollars to the Sources and Campaigns that are having the most impact on your business.

For more information about B2B marketing budgets and dollar attribution, contact info@threedotsmarketing.com.