What should you budget for marketing after an acquisition

Your marketing budget after an acquisition is set by the company's unit economics, not by a percentage of revenue. Month 1 is mostly senior time on positioning, which is a fixed one-off cost. Ongoing delivery starts from EUR 2,500 per month per workstream. Media spend comes later, once the message is current.

The question usually arrives the same way. The value-creation plan says marketing, someone asks what the number should be, and nobody in the room knows yet. So a figure gets picked, often a percentage borrowed from a much larger business, and the company spends a year finding out it was the wrong shape.

Key takeaways

• A percentage of revenue is a weak starting point for a company of 40 to 200 people.
• Four numbers set the budget: gross margin, average contract value, sales cycle length, and current conversion.
• The first month costs senior time, not media. Positioning is a fixed one-off.
• Ongoing work runs from EUR 2,500 per month per workstream, month to month.
• Media spend belongs after the message is current, not before.

Why a percentage of revenue is the wrong starting point

Percentage rules come from businesses with an established marketing function, a known cost per customer, and years of data behind the number. A company you have just bought has none of those. It has strong word of mouth, a message written for the customer it is growing out of, and no reliable way to see where deals came from.

Applying a percentage there produces a number with no relationship to what the company needs. It can be far too large, funding activity nobody can direct, or far too small, paying a freelancer where the real gap is strategy.

The 4 numbers that set your budget

Before any figure makes sense, get these on one page. Most of them already exist in the deal model.

• Gross margin. A high-margin software business can justify a longer payback than a services business at the same revenue. This sets how patient the spending can be.
• Average contract value. A EUR 5,000 annual contract and a EUR 100,000 one need completely different amounts of effort per deal. This sets how much you can spend to win one.
• Sales cycle length. A 3-month cycle shows results inside the first year. A 12-month cycle means most of year 1 builds pipeline you will close in year 2, and the budget has to survive that wait.
• Current conversion. If the site converts poorly today, fixing that is cheaper than buying more traffic to pour into it.

With those four in front of you, the budget becomes a calculation rather than a guess: what a new customer is worth, how long you are prepared to wait, and therefore what you can afford to spend to win one.

What the first year actually costs

Spending should change shape as the year goes on. Here is the pattern that works at this size, with published prices so you can build a real line item.

Month 1: the foundation, as a one-off.

• Positioning work is a fixed-scope engagement. The Positioning Sprint is EUR 3,000, one-off, over 2 to 4 weeks.
• If the company is entering a new market or the repositioning needs testing first, deeper buyer research runs from EUR 5,500 as a one-off over 6 to 8 weeks.
• Almost no media spend this month. You are buying senior thinking, and the output is the thing every later euro depends on.

Month 2 onward: the work that compounds.

• Ongoing workstreams run from EUR 2,500 per month each. Content and search is usually the first, sales enablement often the second where deals are stalling on proof.
• Short-form video starts from EUR 700 per month if the product is easier to show than explain.
• Everything is month to month, so you can add a second workstream when the first is producing and stop one that is not.

When the message is current: media.

• Paid campaign management runs from EUR 1,500 per month per ad account, with the ad spend itself separate and on your card.
• This is the part most companies do first. Done after the positioning work, the same spend reaches the right buyer and costs less per result over time.

So a realistic first quarter is a one-off in the low thousands plus one or two monthly workstreams, rather than a large media commitment made before anyone knows the buyer.

What to fund first, and what can wait

If the budget is tight, the order matters more than the total.

• Fund first: the positioning work. It is the cheapest item on the list and every other line depends on it.
• Fund second: content and search, because it compounds. The work you publish in month 2 is still producing in month 12.
• Fund third: sales enablement, if deals are stalling because buyers have no case study or use-case page to share internally.
• Can wait: paid media at volume, new market entry, and brand work. All three get cheaper and more effective once the message is right.

How to sanity-check the number

Whatever figure you land on, these checks tell you quickly whether it is sensible.

• Compare it to a hire. Price a senior marketing leader in your market, fully loaded. If the annual programme costs less and starts in weeks rather than after a quarter-long search, the comparison is doing useful work.
• Check the payback against the sales cycle. A budget that needs results in 3 months will not survive a 9-month cycle. Match the horizon to the business.
• Look at cost per qualified opportunity, not cost per lead. Leads are easy to manufacture. Opportunities that sales accepts are the number that matters.
• Review every 30 days. The first budget is a hypothesis. Move money towards what is producing.

What this looked like in one company

Take a newly acquired Nordic software company we work with: around 60 people, 600+ customers, two marketers, no CMO. The product was genuinely good and most deals arrived by word of mouth. The instinct was to approve a growth budget straight away.

What the spending actually looked like:

• The first month went on 15 to 20 interviews with the upmarket buyers the company was now winning, and a rewritten message built on what they said.
• Content and search started from month 2, once there was a message worth publishing.
• The systems rebuild ran in parallel through a specialist partner, then the team was trained to run it.
• New market entry was held for later, which kept a significant cost out of year 1 entirely.

The total was smaller than the number originally discussed, and it went in a different order.

FAQ

Build the number from the business, not from a benchmark

Get the four numbers on a page, fund the positioning first, add the workstreams that compound, and hold media until the message is right. Then review every 30 days and move the money towards whatever is producing. No random acts of marketing.

Published module pricing and the sequence sit on the value-creation programme for portfolio companies, and the add-ons that stack onto an active module cover the smaller line items.

When you are ready to build the number for a specific company, book a strategy session. You will leave with a bird's-eye plan, whether or not we work together.

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