6 min read · 1,252 words

Most B2B companies land their brand budget somewhere between 5% and 10% of revenue, then defend that number with almost nothing — no benchmark, no logic, just what finance approved last year plus or minus a percent. The number that survives a board conversation isn’t a guess. It’s a range, backed by category context, and tied to a growth objective.

I’ve built brand budgets in freight, agricultural machinery, and automotive — three categories with completely different sales cycles and completely different tolerances for “why does marketing need this much money.” The honest answer to “how much should we spend” is never a single figure. It’s a formula with three or four real inputs, and most companies never write the formula down; they just inherit last year’s number.

What the published benchmarks actually say

Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey, covering 401 senior marketers at companies with over $1 billion in revenue, put average marketing budgets at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026 — and within that, brand-building spend (as opposed to demand generation and retention marketing) has historically run around a third of the total marketing budget in Gartner’s category breakdowns, though the exact split moves with the economic cycle. That puts B2B brand spend, for a company at the Gartner average, somewhere near 2.5–3% of revenue — lower than most marketers assume, and lower than most B2B founders fear.

The IPA’s long-running “Marketing in the Downturn” research, led by Peter Field and Les Binet, found something that should reframe this conversation entirely: brands that maintained or increased brand-building investment through a downturn came out of it with materially stronger market share than those that cut. Their broader 60:40 rule — roughly 60% brand building to 40% activation, for maximum long-run effectiveness — was built on B2C data but the B2B replication studies the IPA and LinkedIn’s B2B Institute have published since land in a similar range: 46:54 brand-to-activation is the commonly cited B2B adaptation, closer to parity than the consumer split.

Why the “right” number depends on category maturity, not revenue alone

A percentage-of-revenue rule treats every company the same, and no two B2B categories behave the same way. A company entering a new market or launching a new category needs to spend well above category average on brand — you’re building recognition and category entry points from zero, and demand generation has nothing to convert if nobody knows you exist. A company with 20+ years of category leadership can often spend below average and still hold position, because the compounding effect of a decade of consistent brand investment means each incremental rupee does less work than it did in year one.

The category’s consideration-set length also matters. Categories with short lists (three to five vendors, per TrustRadius’ 2024 buyer research) reward brand investment more than commoditised categories with ten-plus interchangeable vendors, where price and availability dominate the decision regardless of brand strength.

The mistake I’ve watched most often

Category maturity isn’t a one-time assessment either. A company can move from “new entrant” to “established mid-market player” over three or four years without anyone formally revisiting the brand budget logic that was set at launch — the percentage just gets carried forward, quarter after quarter, until someone finally asks why spend hasn’t moved even though the business, and the competitive set around it, clearly has.

The single most common budgeting mistake I’ve seen — including one I made early in my own career — is treating brand and demand generation as a zero-sum fight for the same pool of money, argued line-item by line-item every quarter. That structure guarantees brand loses, because demand-gen has a shorter, easier-to-prove attribution story even when its long-run effectiveness is weaker. Binet and Field’s research is explicit on this: over-indexing on short-term activation produces short-term results that decay, while under-indexing on brand produces a category where competitors with stronger mental availability win the deals that were never going to be won on price or speed alone.

How do you defend a specific number to a CFO?

Don’t lead with a percentage. Lead with the objective: are you defending share in a mature category, or building category entry points in a new one? Then attach the percentage as the mechanism, cite the category benchmark (Gartner, IPA/LinkedIn 46:54), and pair it with a leading indicator you’ll report against — category entry point coverage, share of search, or branded search volume — rather than promising a revenue number brand spend structurally can’t deliver on its own timeline. I’ve written more on the specific leading indicators that hold up in that conversation in why B2B brand awareness is the wrong metric to track.

What this means for you

If your brand budget is a percentage inherited from last year with no logic attached, that’s the actual risk — not the number itself. Work out where your category sits (new entrant, established, leader, commoditised), benchmark against the Gartner and IPA/LinkedIn figures above, and build a one-page rationale you can defend in a five-minute conversation. It’s the same discipline I’ve argued for in data-driven marketing and unlocking insights — a budget without a stated logic is the first thing cut, regardless of whether the number was actually right.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of revenue should a B2B company spend on marketing overall?

Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts the average at 7.8% of company revenue across large B2B and B2C companies. B2B-specific and smaller-company figures vary more widely, but this is the most current cross-industry benchmark available.

What’s the difference between brand spend and demand generation spend?

Brand spend builds long-term mental availability and category recognition; demand generation converts existing intent into pipeline. The IPA/LinkedIn B2B research suggests a roughly 46:54 brand-to-activation split performs best for long-run B2B growth.

Should a startup spend more or less on brand than an established company?

Generally more, as a share of its marketing budget — a new entrant has no existing brand recognition to draw on, so demand generation has less to convert without simultaneous brand investment building awareness and trust.

Is it ever right to cut brand spend during a downturn?

The IPA’s downturn research consistently finds companies that protect brand investment through a downturn emerge with stronger relative market share than those that cut it, because competitors who do cut create an opening for share gain at lower cost.

How do you know if your current brand budget is too low?

Track category entry point coverage and share of branded search over two to three quarters. If both are flat or declining while competitors are visibly investing, that’s a stronger signal than any single percentage-of-revenue benchmark.

What number does your brand budget currently sit at, and could you defend the logic behind it in one slide? I’d like to hear how other B2B marketers are framing this conversation right now.

Related reading: marketing in a manufacturing company.