How to split a marketing budget that protects today and builds tomorrow
Most business owners in our sector still see marketing as a cost; a necessary evil to “keep the phone ringing.” That view breeds guesswork. One year you cling to what felt safe, the next you spray money at whatever looks new. A better way is to run your marketing budget as a portfolio: keep 70% on proven revenue drivers, put 20% into promising bets, and reserve 10% for genuine innovation. This comes from innovation portfolio management, where outperformers bias spend to the core while keeping room for adjacencies and transformational ideas. In practice it reduces risk, stops panic pivots, and creates a pipeline of the next thing while the current engine keeps paying the bills.
The 70% is your engine. In UK construction, most work is won through specification and trust. That means accurate product data that lives where specifiers work, credible CPD they actually attend, and dependable demand capture on search for the terms that trigger enquiries. If you keep NBS data current, run a serious CPD programme, and maintain SEO and paid search on high-intent queries, you protect margin and cash. This isn’t theory: NBS and RIBA continue to underline how high-quality product information and CPD influence specification and compliance, and NBS Source/Chorus is built to put manufacturer data in front of specifiers at the moment of choice. Safe does not mean static, though. Treat this 70% as a performance programme, not a museum piece. Tighten targeting, keep creative fresh, fix slow pages, and remove friction from forms. Small lifts at scale beat flashy experiments that never land.
The 20% is your “next” pipeline. Markets move. A rival upgrades their BIM objects; a sector marketplace starts to influence small works; QS teams shift conversations onto LinkedIn. You cannot wait for certainty, but you also cannot starve the core to chase hunches. Use this slice to run short, focused pilots where there is real signal. Define the audience, the message, the budget, the success test, and the decision date before you start. Staff these pilots with a small pod or outside help so your best operators stay on the 70%. When something clears its bar twice in a row, promote it into the core budget next quarter. When it misses twice, stop and bank the lesson. This “horizon-two” cadence is the discipline that turns curiosity into progress.
The 10% funds the frontier. This is where step-change lives: an independent, measured on-site trial that proves running costs and performance; a RIBA-accredited CPD series fronted by engineers rather than salespeople; a plain-English cost-to-run calculator that a sceptical QS will actually use. Most of these shots will not pay back in the quarter. One might reframe how buyers see you and reset willingness to specify. Ring-fence this money, work in short cycles, and judge success by what you learn and where it opens doors. Outperformers keep a small, protected slice for these transformational bets because one win here can outweigh a dozen incremental tweaks.
Budget split is where you spend. Inside each bucket sits how you spend. Construction has long sales cycles, many hands on the decision, and heavy information needs. If you only chase last-click leads, you pay more for less over time. The effectiveness evidence is consistent: firms that balance brand building (trust, preference, mental availability) with activation (direct response, immediate demand) grow more and do it more efficiently. As a rule of thumb, aim for a brand/activation balance close to 60:40 inside each bucket, then tune by context. You will feel pressure to skew towards short-term acquisition when targets loom. Resist it. Brand work lowers your future cost of sale; pure activation erodes it. Treat both as necessary muscles.
Governance makes this run-able. Get your agency and Marketing Team to put the whole plan on one page with three columns: 70, 20, 10… and add one named owner per column. In the 70, commit to the commercial measures you already live by: cost per opportunity, cost per acquisition, win rate by source, margin per job, and payback months. In the 20, add a test plan to each pilot and a date where you will promote or stop. In the 10, write short learning goals and red lines so “innovation theatre” or bullshit as it’s affectionately known, does not creep in. Review the 20 and 10 monthly and rebalance the entire mix quarterly. Promote on evidence, not enthusiasm. Kill kindly and publicly so lessons stick and you never re-run the same failed test in six months’ time. This is portfolio management for marketing, not “try and hope.”
Take a mid-sized installer with a £240,000 marketing budget. Allocate £168,000 (70%) to the engine: NBS product data upkeep, two RIBA-accredited CPD sessions each month, SEO content targeting “HVAC installer [region]” and “running costs,” tightly managed Google Ads on retrofit and new-build terms, and proof assets, which is usually measured case studies and site photography that the sales team uses on live jobs. Set a simple rule against the money: if your current cost per acquisition (CPA) is £900 on an average £4,500 gross-profit job, keep anything that meets or beats that CPA and lifts win rate. Put £48,000 (20%) into three focused pilots: a partner webinar series with a controls vendor, a LinkedIn test aimed at quantity surveyors (QSs) on two frameworks, and a small-works marketplace trial in one region. Ring-fence the last £24,000 (10%) for frontier work: an independent on-site trial in a school, a short film with the measured results, and a public cost-to-run calculator that produces a one-page PDF a QS can drop into a pack. If the LinkedIn pilot hits its CPA target for two months running and closes two named accounts, it moves into the 70 next quarter. If the marketplace trial misses its cost and quality bars twice, stop it and move the budget.
You may ask what exactly belongs in each bucket. Keep it practical and sector-true:
- 70 (Core): NBS Source/Chorus data maintenance; RIBA-accredited CPD that gets real attendance; SEO on high-intent terms and regions; Google Ads with tight query control and landing pages that load fast; email to past quotes and framework partners; case studies with measured outcomes that sales and pre-con use every week.
- 20 (Promising): partner webinars with BMS/controls vendors; targeted LinkedIn to QSs and project managers on named frameworks; small-works marketplace tests in one region; direct outreach to estates managers with a call-back offer.
- 10 (Transformational): independent on-site measurement with publishable charts; a cost-to-run/payback tool; a third-party benchmarking study in a priority vertical.
Run this way, marketing stops looking like a cost and starts behaving like an asset. The core keeps the lights on and the pilots show you what to scale next. The frontier buys a shot at outsized gains without endangering payroll. And because the mix changes on a timetable, with evidence, you avoid both drift and drama. For most SMEs in the built environment, that is the difference between chasing work and compounding advantage.
