Brand Budget Calculator
How much brand investment your category actually rewards. Three inputs, one honest range, anchored on a framework rather than a hunch.
Under the hood…
Each category sits on a spectrum from perception-led (brand earns most of the premium) to operations-led (it earns least). In practice, the same pound does very different work. A premium marque wins on perception, so brand earns most of the premium it charges. A commodity supplier wins on price and logistics, so the same budget buys far less.
The ranges below are what we've seen work for clients, rather than laws of physics.
- A · Premium / luxury: 1.0%–2.5% of revenue.
- B · B2B, low switching cost: 0.6%–1.4%.
- C · B2B, high switching cost: 0.3%–0.8%.
- D · Consumer / prosumer SaaS: 0.8%–2.0%.
- E · Commodity: 0.1%–0.5%.
"Brand" here means spend that compounds: identity, narrative, owned media, the writing under the writer's name, the events you host. Not demand-gen, not paid acquisition.
The lower bound of every range assumes a brand already established. Rebuilding from zero? Push to the upper bound for eighteen months and don't budge.