What percent to allocate to marketing?

[markm]

I have noticed lately that a lot of folks hereabouts seem to think marketing / publicity is extremely important;

I have also noticed that many pie-charts of token-distribution allocate some slice to marketing / publicity.

Thus I am interested in how much percent the typical investor who thinks marketing deserves a budget typically allocates to marketing.

Presumably a person who thinks "marketing is everything" will be putting the vast majority of their investments into marketing-engines, advertising, publicity-systems and the like, figuring that the more powerful their publicity ability the more profit they can earn on maybe in many cases basically anything at all that they choose to promote.

Either by "affiliate advertising" or simply allocating some tiny portion of their budget toward purchasing things to advertise, ultimately the majority of their earnings will come not really so much from the things they promote as from having the ability to promote them.

In fact it seems to my naive thinking that at an extreme this kind of thinking might lead them to not even bother "investing" in any "inventory" such as coins or tokens or shares or whatever to advertise, leaning instead toward the affiliate approach or just directly being or investing into advertising agencies and such, either way basically promoting things they do not even own.

Probably because I hail from a free open source and community-based background, it has always seemed to me that each player or participant or investor or whatever one chooses to call them ought to be able to make their own decision as to how much of their capital to spend on "inventory" aka "investments" versus how much of it to spend on promoting such things; thus that individuals or Corps or groups or demographics or whatever who believe marketing is important would allocate more toward promoting the things they invest in than would folk who are of an opinion that if the thing is worthwhile it won't need such expenses: the "build a better mousetrap" idea versus the "if you aren't going to pay them to come they won't be coming" idea...


-MarkM-

[okox991]

I believe that, in practice, the marketing budget allocation depends a lot on the nature of the product and the target market. Many investors with a pragmatic approach prefer to balance investments in the product with well-targeted promotion.

For example, I’ve used the services of FatJoe, which offers solid digital marketing options, especially for link building and increasing visibility. Their services really helped me support my investments through consistent promotional efforts, particularly when working with a limited budget but still aiming to make an impact.

On the other hand, those who believe in the strength of the product itself may allocate less to marketing, but the current market demands an active online presence, so a decent percentage dedicated to marketing seems inevitable.

[Accardo]

Marketing is kind of something with a big stomach that never gets filled up like the human desires. Investors who wish to garner income through affiliate marketing could go further with whatever they feel like to lose in the process, since most of the time the income doesn't come immediately. And no amount of money allocated to marketing would ensure the flow of prospects or leads. Advertisers do their best but still no sales. The losses are there to bear, yet with the right boards or target, marketing pays off real good, especially affiliate, and this ensures making money while boating.

[BattleDog]

If you're looking for a magic percentage of "budget goes to marketing" number, there isn't one. The good news is that the projects that survive don't pick a number first, they work backwards from reality: margin, customer lifetime value, and how hard it is to get anyone to even notice they exist.

Coming from the same FOSS / "build a better mousetrap" world, I used to think like you: put almost everything into the thing itself, and if it's good people will show up. In practice, especially in crypto, attention is the scarce resource, not code. I've watched technically brilliant projects die with 0 marketing, and absolutely mid ones do just fine because they were in everyone's face 24/7.

Rough ballpark from stuff I've been involved with: early stage / launch phase tends to be very marketing-heavy - 20-40% of spend (not token supply charts, actual cash/OPEX) can go into community, content, listings, partnerships, etc.

Once you have a base of users and some organic pull, that can drop closer to 10-15% and you let word of mouth and product quality do more of the lifting. If you're in a super niche B2B type space, you can get away with even less because five good relationships beat ten thousand banner impressions.

[tygeade]

Marketing is kind of something with a big stomach that never gets filled up like the human desires. Investors who wish to garner income through affiliate marketing could go further with whatever they feel like to lose in the process, since most of the time the income doesn't come immediately. And no amount of money allocated to marketing would ensure the flow of prospects or leads. Advertisers do their best but still no sales. The losses are there to bear, yet with the right boards or target, marketing pays off real good, especially affiliate, and this ensures making money while boating.

No results even after spending a decent budget on marketing will mean that there was no solid research and investor has just poured his money into marketing thinking clients will anyhow be attracted just because he has spent a decent amount. We do need to spend a decent amount of time in studying the target audience and also categorizing the audience so we can start spending on marketing. Also marketing is not a piece of pie anymore because of the cut-throat competition.

Hiring some good marketing agency might do the thing but it will be expensive and we will have to be prepared to spend a fortune on the marketing team even before we get the results. No results coming out will mean there is something wrong with the product or the marketing team is not working efficiently.

[Accardo]

We do need to spend a decent amount of time in studying the target audience and also categorizing the audience so we can start spending on marketing. Also marketing is not a piece of pie anymore because of the cut-throat competition.

Hiring some good marketing agency might do the thing but it will be expensive and we will have to be prepared to spend a fortune on the marketing team even before we get the results. No results coming out will mean there is something wrong with the product or the marketing team is not working efficiently.

Quality products builds marketing and yield reward. Great products suffer little at the initial stage of marketing before making lots of sales. However, not everyone could set up a product, they prefer to do it with already existing ones. Which still turn out great, and in such a means, the producers would be spending more on ads while the individual investors get to add minor efforts in marketing since the product is already accepted by many consumers, example, breweries.

As for inventors, a quality marketing agency would have to suck them so deeply financially to reach high sales, considering the high competition in the speedy return of most industries to market more on the slightest drop of revenue.

[Webetcoins]

I would say the budget for marketing will totally depend on the product or services. Usually more budget will be required for the products as the audience will be scattered whereas for services, the budget can be thin because there will be targeted customers.

As you said, marketing budget will depend on individual and it can decide the faith of the project. I would personally dedicate around 30% for marketing because I believe the more I spend the more clients I can acquire but CAC should not cross 30% so I would try to stay under my budget.

I think marketing budget might vary from between 10% and might go as high as 70% if the main focus is marketing and there is not much of a expense in managing the inventory.

[Dunamisx]

Thus I am interested in how much percent the typical investor who thinks marketing deserves a budget typically allocates to marketing.

We can't afford to undermine the role of marketing in promoting for a product or services, that is why some may not even mind on the cost of running this to them, because they know that it's only when people got to discover what they offer before coming for them, and that is why it is also very important to ensure the use of multiple approaches, so as to get closed to the most effective one and to also cover a number or target for the exposure needed, however, wr must plan for a budget on this as according to our liquidity affordability after establishing the total cost.

[bloomagency65]

The percentage you should allocate to marketing depends on your industry, growth stage, and goals, but here are practical benchmarks you can actually use:

🔹 Standard Marketing Budget Guidelines
5%–10% of revenue → Established businesses (steady growth)
10%–20% of revenue → Growing businesses (scaling phase)
20%–30%+ of revenue → Startups or aggressive growth mode
🔹 Based on Business Type
B2B Services (like agencies, consulting): 7%–12%
Ecommerce / D2C brands: 10%–25%
Local businesses: 5%–10%
Highly competitive industries (education, healthcare, SaaS): 15%–25%
🔹 If You Want Faster Growth

If your goal is lead generation + aggressive scaling, you should lean higher:

Start with 15%–20%, then optimize based on ROI
🔹 Smart Allocation Within Marketing Budget

Once you set the budget, split it like this:

SEO (long-term growth): 25%–35%
Paid Ads (Google/Facebook): 30%–40%
Content Marketing: 10%–20%
Social Media: 10%–15%
Tools & Automation: 5%–10%
🔹 Example

If your business makes ₹10 lakh/month:

Safe budget: ₹50K–₹1L
Growth budget: ₹1.5L–₹2.5L
🔹 Important Reality Check

Spending less than 5% usually means:

Slow growth
Poor visibility
Competitors overtaking you

Spending more than 25% without tracking ROI = wasted money.

If you want, tell me:

Your business type
Monthly revenue
Target market

I can give you a precise marketing budget + channel strategy tailored for you.

[Cointxz]

In crypto I would separate "marketing" from "making the product easier to trust and use".

If a project spends 20% on ads but wallets are confusing, liquidity is thin, docs are weak, and the community disappears when price is flat, that budget is mostly burned.

For token projects I would rather see:
- enough budget for community/support/content so a new user can actually get through first use
- enough for liquidity / market-making / infra visibility if the product depends on it
- much less for pure hype campaigns until retention is proven

So I would not use one fixed percentage across the board. Early stage can justify a higher share, but only if you measure repeat usage instead of impressions. If users do not come back after incentives stop, that was rented attention, not effective marketing.

There’s a lot of startups use this method of focusing most of the token allocation on marketing expenses to create short term hype that results to saturated circulating tokens because the team keep dumping the token allocated for marketing to pay influencers that only effective short term.

Investors suffer in the end because the total supply was already flooded while there’s only thin liquidity available and worst is the price is at the bottom.

I think marketing expenses should be on the average while the team needs to develop first to have a working product before they start the heavy marketing.

-

RIP to the OP of this thread. You’re a remarkable forum member.