A Strategy-First Approach to Your 2026 Marketing Budget

Why allocation—not spend—is where growth is won

For the first time in several years, marketing budgets are finally loosening. Research from Forrester shows 83% of B2B marketing decision-makers expect budgets to increase in 2026, many by 5% or more.

But more money doesn’t guarantee more momentum. The real advantage comes from how well you allocate capital, not how much you deploy.

While spending more on what worked last year may feel safe, it’s not strategic. Markets shift, buyer behavior evolves, and AI has already changed the cost-to-output equation. If you’re budgeting by channel instead of business priority, you’re guessing and guessing is expensive. The fact remains that regardless of how much your marketing budget has increased (or not), the real strategic decisions are made in allocation—where every dollar goes and why.

Start with Business Goals, Not Last Year’s Spreadsheet

Too often, executives approve a marketing budget—only for it to get divided into website, PR, content, advertising, and events. Familiar buckets. Comfortable math. But comfort rarely scales.

The real question that needs to be addressed is: what needs to be built, strengthened, or retired to get the business where it must go in 12—18 months? Marketing is about more than creativity and tactics. It shapes how you enter  new markets, navigate leadership transitions, respond to competitive pressure, and create leverage for growth.

If you’re working with an external partner to plan your marketing, then they should be deeply embedded in your business strategy in order to help you answer those questions—not just executing tasks. Treating an agency as an order-taker limits return. A true strategic partner helps you make better decisions, challenge assumptions, and allocate budget where it works hardest.

Our Framework: Core, Growth, and Experimentation

With our clients, Vitamin often recommends thinking about budget allocation in three buckets. The exact percentages matter far less than the thinking and strategy behind them.

• 70%—80%: Core infrastructure:  brand positioning, website, public relations, search. These proven systems keep your pipeline flowing. But core doesn’t mean static. Audit regularly. The tactics that worked 18 months ago may no longer return. Funding out of habit rather than evidence is a cost, not an investment.
• 20%: Growth initiatives:  areas with proven traction, where acceleration will pay off. This could mean doubling down on high-performing channels or expanding into a strong vertical where KPIs are highest. The percentage of investment in growth initiatives will flex. A major market entry through acquisition may require more than a 20% allocation. Steady-state growth may need less.
• 10%—15%: Experimentation:  test new approaches with clear success criteria and decision points. If something works, scale it. If it doesn’t, kill it and reallocate quickly.

The key takeaway: allocation shouldn’t mirror last year’s spend or benchmark reports. It should reflect where you are now, where you’re going, and the infrastructure required  to get there.

AI is an Amplifier, Not a Line Item

The most common 2026 budget question: how much should we allocate to AI?

Think of it this way: AI isn’t a distinct marketing channel with its own budget line—it’s an amplifier. It makes your existing marketing more efficient and effective. Instead of assigning a fixed dollar value to “AI”, look at each area of your marketing spend and evaluate where AI integration can reduce cost, improve quality, or increase speed within your current spend.

Maybe a new AI tool could help you produce more video content without increasing your existing budget, or automate CRM workflows to improve lead nurturing without adding new headcount or help with SEO by automating keyword research, content optimization, and technical audits so sites can rank higher with less manual effort. Assess these investments within your overall marketing system—not as standalone experiments.

For companies with complex buyer journeys, AI can scale personalization, improve content relevance, and speed response to market changes. And for small teams, AI can increase efficiency, speed, and output for routine tasks and give the team more bandwidth for strategic thinking. But only when it’s intentionally and thoughtfully integrated into your marketing engine.

The Internal-External Balance

Another critical budget decision: how much to handle internally versus outsource to agency partners. Hybrid models are growing fast—for example, 46% of B2B companies now use a mix of in-house and agency support, up from 36% a year ago, according to Sagefrog Marketing Group.

Finding the right balance starts with knowing what your internal team does best and where external partners can align and accelerate results.

At Vitamin, we often bring the most value through heavy foundational, high-impact work—rebranding, website architecture, comprehensive PR programs, strategic positioning, and search visibility. This infrastructure becomes the base your internal team builds upon.

Over time, day-to-day execution may transition in-house, but we remain involved where ongoing expertise matters most: maintaining and evolving the brand, managing website updates and performance, leading PR and media relations, optimizing search, and overseeing initiatives that require a cross-disciplinary team rather than a single role. In many cases, it’s more economical—and strategically sound—to continue partnering with Vitamin for these ongoing, business-critical efforts while we also support the next major initiative.

The companies getting this right ask, “where does external expertise deliver the fastest path to results, and where does internal ownership create sustainable advantage?” They revisit and adjust that balance yearly as capabilities mature and priorities shift.

What This Means for Your 2026 Planning

As you finalize your 2026 budget and allocations, resist the urge to simply copy or update last year’s spreadsheet with bigger numbers. Start with business strategy, not a to-do list. What must you accomplish? Where are the inflection points? What marketing infrastructure needs to be built or evolved?

Then evaluate performance honestly. Pull your performance data. Calculate real cost per acquisition by channel. Identify where you’re getting leverage and where you’re spending out of habit. Be willing to stop tactics that aren’t delivering a return.

Finally, ensure you have the right strategic partner—someone who thinks like an owner, not a vendor. Someone who challenges assumptions, brings informed perspective on market dynamics, and helps you navigate trade-offs between competing priorities.

If your budget has room to grow, you’re already ahead. But whether it drives business results depends entirely on how thoughtfully you deploy it.

At Vitamin, we partner with growth-minded companies and nonprofits at strategic inflection points–operating as a fractional CMO with the strategic rigor and full execution capabilities to move initiatives forward. If you’re rethinking your 2026 marketing investment, let’s talk about where your budget can work harder and smarter.

Contact us: 

Vitamin
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info@vitaminisgood.com

Call us: (410) 732-6542