Stop 02 · Marketing Strategy & PositioningTopics · 8/9

Marketing Budgeting Basics

In short

Money is the one thing every channel wants more of. A simple budget tells you where to spend, how much to keep for tests, and when to cut.

Allocating limited spend across channels based on expected return, testing budget, and brand-building versus performance spend — a skill that becomes essential the moment you own real ad dollars.

The blob sorts rupee notes into a few plain glass jars on a hostel desk.

Think of it like this

Your monthly hostel allowance

You get ₹8,000 a month. Mess fees come first, then travel, then a bit for movies, and a small amount saved for surprises. If one week costs too much, you cut the movies, not the mess. Marketing budgets work the same way.

Watch it happen

Splitting ₹1,00,000 for a quarter

Search ads 35%

Social ads 30%

Content 15%

Tools 10%

Tests 10%

1/5One example split for a small online brand. Every business's split is different.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Start from the goal

Work backwards: how many customers do you need, and what does one cost to win?

Know your CAC

Customer acquisition cost is total spend divided by new customers. It shows if growth is affordable.

Keep a test budget

Set aside a small share for experiments so you keep finding new channels.

Move money monthly

Budgets aren't fixed. Shift spend toward whatever gives cheaper results.

See it in code

Walk through the code

excel

1=B2/C22=D2/B23=E2/B24=IF(B2/C2>F2,"Cut","Keep")

1/3CAC: what each new customer cost from this channel.

One row per channel. B is spend, C is new customers, D is revenue, E is profit, F is the most you can afford to pay per customer.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Splitting the budget equally across every channel.

Do this instead

Put more money where results are proven, and keep a small, separate test budget.

Oops

Spending the full month's budget in the first week.

Do this instead

Pace spending through the month so you can react to what the data shows.

Your mission

Plan a ₹50,000 launch budget

~30 min

Quick check

Channel A: ₹20,000 spent, 40 customers. Channel B: ₹20,000 spent, 100 customers. Same order value. What's the sensible move?

Go deeper

1Draft a hypothetical monthly budget split across 3-4 channels with reasoning for each split.
2Learn the difference between 'always-on' spend and campaign-specific spend.
3Practice justifying a budget reallocation based on channel performance data.