Company
Allocate against the constraint that is currently binding rather than spreading across channels. A budget divided evenly guarantees that every channel is under-funded relative to what would make it work.
If nobody finds you, spending on conversion optimisation is premature. If the site converts poorly, more traffic amplifies a leak. If enquiries are answered in three days, more of them makes the customer experience worse. Only one of these limits growth at a time.
Channels have thresholds below which they produce nothing: a content programme of one page a month, or a paid budget too small to gather significant data, spends money without buying information.
Hosting, licences, maintenance and support are the price of continuing to exist and should not compete with growth work in the same line; otherwise maintenance gets deferred until it becomes an incident.
Set a review point rather than an annual commitment.
Digital constraints move: the thing limiting growth this quarter is often fixed by next, and a budget locked to last year's diagnosis funds work that has stopped being the priority.
Benchmarks vary so widely by sector and stage that they offer little guidance. A more useful question is what the binding constraint is and what it would cost to remove it.
No. Even splits guarantee every channel sits below the threshold where it produces useful information. Concentration on the constraint beats coverage.
Allocate against the constraint that is currently binding rather than spreading across channels. A budget divided evenly guarantees that every channel is under-funded relative to what would make it work.
You have read what we think. If you want to know what it means for your case specifically, describe it and we will tell you which parts of how to set a digital budget actually apply — and which do not.
