Rethink your marketing budget: what would you really pay for a client?

Let me guess. I mention “marketing budget” and you’re either:

• Rolling your eyes so hard they’ve disappeared into the back of your skull
• Suddenly finding your shoes absolutely fascinating
• Confidently telling me you allocate 5% of turnover (because you literally just Googled it)

But what if we put those traditional numbers aside and told you there’s something you need to figure out first? Something that makes all those generic percentage formulas actually meaningless?

There’s another question that actually matters more….

What’s a client worth to you, really?

Not what you think you should pay. Not what some blog post told you the industry average is. What would you actually be prepared to pay, right now, for a new client walking through your door?

$500 sound like a lot? Not when they’re worth $10,000 a year, on a 3 year contract.

So, let’s do some marketing maths.

If you’d pay $500 for a client and you want 100 new clients, congratulations – you just figured out you need at least $50,000 in marketing budget. (ps. In the above formula that means that you’re bringing in $3mil of new clients).

Forget 5% of turnover – you’re not buying spreadsheets, you’re buying customers.

Flip the formula: start with value, not budget

Here’s where it gets interesting. What if you got braver with that first number? What if instead of thinking “I’d pay $500 for a client,” you thought “Actually, if I knew for certain I’d get a client, I’d pay $1,000”? Would that shorten your lead time, or would it bring you a higher value client?

If your budget has doubled, are you giving yourself the opportunity to be visible in a different, more creative, more memorable way than others? You’re playing in a different league entirely.

Your marketing budget isn’t:

• Revenue × Random Percentage
• Whatever’s left after expenses
• The same as last year (but with inflation)

It’s: What you’ll pay for a customer × How many customers you want = Your marketing budget

Then you work backwards from there. If that number makes you uncomfortable, you have two choices: get comfortable with it, or get comfortable with fewer customers.

Everything else – the channel mix, the creative strategy, the measurement framework – that’s important too. But first, you need to know what you’re actually trying to buy. And what you’re willing to pay for it.

Want to book in a budget session and get your numbers right for marketing in 25/26?

You bring the number.
We’ll bring the ideas, strategy and coffee.
Let’s chat – book your discovery session.