“How much should we spend on marketing?”

By Rick Ramos – Fractional CMO

“How much should we spend on marketing?”

If that’s the question, the answer is usually wrong.

I’ve seen startups spend more and go nowhere.
I’ve seen others spend less and grow faster.

The difference is never the percentage.
It’s whether the business knows what marketing is supposed to do.

If growth is the goal, you need to know
how many customers that implies
where they’ll come from
and what has to break for it to work

Without that, any budget is just a guess with a spreadsheet.

This is why I don’t start with benchmarks.
I start with outcomes and work backward.

When founders do that, the spend usually lands somewhere reasonable.
When they don’t, even a “safe” number gets wasted.

A lot of my fractional CMO work lives right here
helping teams decide what marketing should deliver before deciding what it should cost

Budget follows clarity
not the other way around