If you’re still building your digital marketing budget based on last year’s spend or a competitor’s guess—you’re flying blind. A predictive marketing budget uses your goals, real data, and conversion metrics to estimate what you should invest—and what you can expect in return.
Here’s a 6-part method to budget smarter.
- Start with Estimated Impressions
Every digital strategy begins with visibility. How many people can you realistically expect to see your campaign?
Example: A $2,000 Google Ads campaign might reach 80,000 impressions if targeted correctly.
- Estimate Click-Through Rates (CTR)
Your CTR will vary by channel and industry – these are some published averages but it really varies so you want to be able to ensure that you clearly understand the average for your location, industry and product/solution.
- Google Search Ads: 3%–6% (higher if branded)
- Display Ads: 0.5%–1%
- Email: 2%–5%
- LinkedIn: 0.4%–1.2%
Use industry benchmarks and historical data if available. From 80,000 impressions at 2.5% CTR = 2,000 clicks.
- Calculate Landing Page Conversion Rate
Next step: How many of those clicks become leads? This is where you website is critical because landing page performance can vary wildly. Below compares an average site to one that has strong UX and conversion path mapping.
- Average: 2%–3%
- Strong: 5%–10% (with good UX and CTA)
Let’s say 2,000 clicks × 5% = 100 leads.
- Apply Your Sales Team’s Close Rate
This is your internal performance metric:
- B2B sales often range from 10%–25%
- Inbound leads may perform better than cold outreach
If you close 20% of those 100 leads, that’s 20 customers.
- Average Revenue per Customer
This figure comes from your own data. If each customer is worth $2,500 in lifetime value, then: 20 customers × $2,500 = $50,000 in projected revenue.
You can now tie that back to your original budget/spend.
- Model Multiple Scenarios and Adjust
Good predictive budgets include ranges. What happens if your CTR is lower? What if your conversion rate improves?
Build:
- Conservative (baseline)
- Optimistic (high performance)
- Break-even (minimum needed to ROI)
Then tie these to quarterly or annual budget scenarios.
What This Changes for Your Team
- Sales has realistic expectations
- Marketing has clear performance targets
- Finance sees projections grounded in math
- Leadership knows what success looks like before launch
No more “we’ll see how it goes.”
Ready to Build Your Predictive Model?
At Pulsion, we build these budgets with clients who are ready to scale—without waste.
Whether you spend $3K or $30K per month, predictability is the only way to justify the spend. Let us show you how we reverse-engineer ROI before a dollar is spent. Visit www.gopulsion.io to get started.