How much should we spend on marketing?

I've noticed that a lot of people around here really value marketing and publicity. Also, I keep seeing pie-charts showing a portion of token distribution set aside for marketing and publicity. So, I'm curious about how much of their budget investors who believe in the importance of marketing usually allocate to it. I guess someone who thinks "marketing is everything" will probably put a big chunk of their investments into marketing strategies, advertising, and publicity systems, thinking that the better they are at getting the word out, the more profit they can make from whatever they choose to promote. Whether it's through affiliate marketing or just a small part of their budget spent on ads, it seems like most of their earnings would come not from the products they're promoting but from their ability to market them. Honestly, it seems to me that if someone takes this to the extreme, they might not even invest in any actual products like coins, tokens, or shares to promote. Instead, they might focus on the affiliate model or invest in advertising agencies, basically promoting stuff they don’t even own. I come from a free, open-source, and community-driven background, so I’ve always thought that each player or investor should have the freedom to make their own choices.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.