How to Distribute Your Marketing Budget as Your Business Scales
Scale-Up Sessions by Cynergy Bank, Haly Berni
As a business grows, marketing becomes a crucial part of building visibility, attracting customers and sustaining momentum. But for many scaling businesses, budgets remain under pressure, making smart marketing budget allocation essential.
In this episode of Scale-Up Sessions by Cynergy Bank, Haly Berni, Head of Marketing at Here East, shares practical advice on how to plan your marketing strategy for growth, prioritise the right channels, prove marketing return on investment (ROI) and keep building your brand when resources are limited.
Key takeaways:
Start with audience insight before deciding where to spend your marketing budget.
Use testing, tracking and data to understand which channels are delivering value.
Balance short-term performance with long-term brand building as the business scales.
Use organic marketing strategies, customer stories and partnerships to stay visible when budgets are tight.
Start with where your audience spends time
One of the biggest mistakes growing businesses can make is spreading budget across channels before understanding where their customers actually are. Haly explains that the starting point should be customer analysis: who you are trying to reach, what content they consume and which platforms they use regularly.
It’s not worth putting spend behind certain channels that your consumers are not focused on.
Haly Berni
This is particularly important when marketing budgets are tight. A channel may be popular, but that does not mean it is right for your audience. The most effective marketing strategy for growth is deliberate, focused and grounded in evidence rather than trends.
For Here East, that meant prioritising LinkedIn because its audience of tech professionals was already active there. For other businesses, the right answer may be different. The principle is the same: understand the audience first, then invest where your activity is most likely to make an impact.
Use data to prove marketing ROI
Marketing budget allocation is rarely perfect from the outset. The most effective teams test, learn and course correct as they go. That means tracking performance closely, understanding what is working and being willing to move spend away from activity that is not delivering value.
Haly highlights the importance of being specific about campaigns, events and channel spend. This helps marketing teams explain their decisions clearly and gives leaders confidence that budget is being used with purpose.
You’re not going to get it right the first time, but it’s understanding, okay, where’s our target audience and are they really engaging with our content?
Haly Berni
This matters because marketing ROI is not always immediate. Brand building, events and network-led activity can create long-term value even when they do not translate into instant leads. Strong measurement helps businesses show the link between marketing activity, relationships and future commercial opportunities.
Adapt your marketing strategy when budgets are cut
When budgets tighten, the first step is to audit what you are already using. Tools, channels and activity should all be assessed against your current marketing objectives. If something is nice to have rather than essential, it may be time to redirect that spend elsewhere.
Haly explains that reduced budgets can push teams to think more creatively. For example, if video production spend is reduced, a business might explore customer-generated content, influencer partnerships or lower-cost social formats that still support visibility and engagement.
Marketers are creative and you have to think outside the box of how we can still achieve the same results with less spend. That’s when real marketing starts to happen because then you are able to be innovative and creative.
Haly Berni
Organic marketing strategies can be especially valuable at this stage. Customer stories, testimonials, thought leadership and partnerships can all help a scaling business maintain momentum without relying entirely on paid media.
For businesses under pressure, the aim is not to disappear from the market. It is to be sharper about where time, energy and spend are focused.
Build brand visibility through your network
The mystery customer scenario in the episode explores a common challenge for growing businesses: how to keep attracting new customers when marketing spend has been reduced.
Haly’s advice is to lean into existing networks, partnerships and success stories. For service-based businesses in particular, client relationships can become a powerful source of future growth. Referrals, reviews and testimonials help build trust because they show the value of your work through the voice of your customers.
This is also where personal brand can support business growth. Sharing insight on the right platforms, commenting on industry issues and staying visible with your network can help keep your business front of mind, even when budgets are limited.
A final thought for scaling leaders
Managing a marketing budget for a scaling business is not simply about spending more. It is about understanding your audience, making focused choices and using data to keep improving.
With a clear strategy, consistent measurement and a willingness to adapt, growing businesses can keep building brand visibility and generating opportunities even when resources are limited.
Bio
