Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Bessemer Venture Partners has a big interest in helping companies grow. Here is a useful link to a paper that outlines their perspectives.

https://www.bvp.com/Downloads/SaaS/whitePapers/Public_SaaS_Company_Benchmar...

Best of Luck, JohnnyB

What you need to do is be very clear about your goals. How much revenue do you need? Then work backward to see how many leads you'll need to close enough sales to make your numbers. Then develop a rough marketing plan that will generate those leads and determine how much that marketing plan will cost to implement.

THAT is the amount you'll want to budget for marketing. (I usually suggest that clients inflate the number by 20% just to cover unanticipated costs.) When you have the number, you can divide it by the revenue target number(s) to get the percentage of sales you'll want to budget.

If you start with the percentage, you'll almost certainly come up with a nonsense number that won't be right. It's a backwards way to work. Better if you can think of your marketing budget as the amount you'll need to spend to generate the revenue you need, not as an unrelated expense.

I am with the others - the question you are asking can't really be answered. And even if it is answered, it is a WAG, so the answer won't be that useful.

On the whole, the percentage will be huge for year 1, as you need to market it before you even get any income. And it should drop as a percentage of income as you progress through following years.

Better to follow Mgoodman's advice and try to figure out what it will cost you to get the business you need. And then make sure your pricing allows for these costs over time so that you have a viable business.