Snapshot 1 — The Big Picture
Marketing Budgets: The Historical View
Marketing as a percentage of total company revenue has declined since the pandemic peak and flatlined at 7.7% for two consecutive years — well below the pre-pandemic norm of 11%.
7.7%2025 Average Budget
Flat vs 2024 — two consecutive years
11%Pre-Pandemic Norm
2016–2020 average — 30% higher
59%CMOs Under-Resourced
Insufficient budget for 2025 strategy
61%Marketing = Profit Center
Up from 53% in 2024
Marketing Budget as % of Total Revenue — Historical (2016–2025)
BoostRev Insight: The average is 7.7% — but growth-phase companies in financial services, mortgage, real estate, and home services should target 9–12% to outpace competitors who are cutting. The businesses gaining market share right now are investing into the gap their competitors are creating.
Snapshot 2 — Your Industry
Industry-Specific Budget Benchmarks
Financial services — which includes mortgage and lending — sits at 7.1% in 2025. Understanding your industry benchmark is the baseline for knowing whether you're under- or over-investing relative to your competitive set.
Marketing Budget as % of Revenue by Industry — 2024 vs 2025
Financial Services (Mortgage & Lending): At 7.1%, the industry invests at the overall average — but this includes massive enterprise banks with decades of brand equity already built. Growth-stage mortgage companies competing for builder JV relationships should target 9–11% to close the Brand Deficit against better-resourced competitors.
Snapshot 3 — Where the Money Goes
How Marketing Budgets Are Allocated
Within the total marketing budget, spend falls across paid media, labor, agencies, and technology. The trend since 2018 reveals a critical pattern: paid media is consuming a growing share of a shrinking total.
Budget Allocation Across Major Resources (2018–2025)
The Warning Signal: Paid media has grown from 23% to 30.6% of budgets while agencies, labor, and martech have all been cut. More money going to performance channels while brand-building resources erode is precisely the dynamic that creates Brand Deficit — at an industry-wide scale.
Snapshot 4 — Digital & Offline Channels
Channel Investment Breakdown
Digital spend makes up 61% of the total marketing budget in 2025. Within digital, search leads — but Connected TV, Reddit, and SEO remain underpriced relative to the attention they deliver in mortgage and home services markets.
Digital Channel Allocations — 2025
Offline Channel Allocations — 2025
Underpriced Channels Right Now: Connected TV and digital video (10.7% of digital budgets) remain significantly underutilized in mortgage and home services. Reddit advertising receives minimal dedicated budget industry-wide despite strong community-based research behavior among home buyers. BoostRev's Engine 5 includes both.
Snapshot 5 — The Optimal Split
Brand vs. Performance: The Research-Backed Ratio
The Binet & Field IPA study — the largest longitudinal study of marketing effectiveness ever conducted — identified the optimal brand-to-performance split. Most businesses get this ratio backwards.
Optimal Allocation: Brand vs. Performance
Startup / Early Stage: 70–80% performance, 20–30% brand. Creates compounding dependency long-term.
Growth Stage (most BoostRev clients): Moving from 50/50 toward 60/40. Compounding advantage begins here.
Market Leaders: 70/30 brand-heavy. Performance converts efficiently because brand equity does pre-sales work.
For every $1 in performance, invest at least $0.60–$0.70 in brand — or performance becomes progressively less efficient as the foundation erodes.
BoostRev Framework — Brand Intelligence
Brand Attention vs. Brand Deficit
The Gartner data tells you what CMOs are spending. The Brand Deficit framework tells you what happens when they stop — or never started. This is the hidden liability most businesses are accumulating right now.
Building Brand Attention
WHAT CONSISTENT
PRESENCE BUILDS
Perceived existence — buyers know you're active and worth considering before they ever reach out
Shortlist position — your name is on the consideration set before any sales conversation begins
Sales cycle compression — pre-existing trust shortens time from first contact to close
Performance efficiency — paid ads to warm audiences cost 30–50% less per acquisition
Compounding authority — each month builds on the last, creating an asset competitors can't quickly replicate
Carrying Brand Deficit
WHAT ABSENCE
ACCUMULATES
Silent erosion — every absent month transfers brand attention to competitors who stayed active
Invisible shortlist omission — prospects form consideration sets without your name
Zero-based selling — every sales conversation rebuilds credibility brand attention would have established automatically
Performance cost inflation — cold-audience campaigns cost 3–5× more per acquisition
Compounding liability — the deeper the deficit grows, the more expensive it becomes to close
Brand Attention vs. Brand Deficit — The Compounding Divergence
Illustrative trajectory of perceived market existence over 24 months
Consistent Brand Attention
Brand Deficit (Absent Investment)
The Brand Deficit Formula
Brand Deficit = Months of Absence × Competitor Presence Investment × Market Saturation Rate
Every month without consistent brand attention compounds against you as competitors continue investing. Recovery requires meaningfully more investment than maintaining consistency would have cost.
BoostRev Framework — Deficit Stages
The Three Stages of Brand Deficit
Brand Deficit accumulates in predictable stages. Most businesses don't recognize they're carrying it until Stage 2 — by which point the cost of recovery has already increased significantly.
Perceived Existence Over Time — Consistent vs. Absent Investment
Illustrative model showing brand presence decay and rising recovery cost
Stage 1 — Months 1–3
Early Erosion
Nothing obvious yet. The deficit accumulates silently. Brand attention begins eroding as competitors who are publishing appear more frequently in prospects' passive awareness.
Stage 2 — Months 4–9
Growing Gap
Sales conversations require more credibility rebuilding. Referrals slow. Prospects form shortlists without your name — not consciously, but because other names are more recent in their awareness.
Stage 3 — Month 9+
Established Deficit
Competitors appear to be everywhere. Perceived existence is significantly diminished. Rebuilding requires substantially more investment than maintaining consistency would have cost.
Snapshot 6 — CMO Response
How CMOs Are Responding to Budget Pressure
With budgets flat and growth expectations rising, CMOs are cutting agencies, labor, and tech. Understanding where they're cutting — and what gap it creates — reveals the opportunity for growth-stage businesses willing to invest into it.
CMOs Planning Budget Reductions by Area
What This Gap Creates
39% of CMOs are cutting agency budgets. While competitors reduce external marketing support, businesses that maintain or increase investment — particularly in Brand Attention through Engines 1 and 2 — accumulate a compounding advantage that will take competitors years to close.
The BoostRev Position: Most agencies are among the 39% being cut. BoostRev's Growth Stack — with MovuAI delivering AI-powered efficiency across five revenue engines — is the agency relationship that survives budget scrutiny because the ROI is measurable, the system compounds, and the work cannot be easily replicated in-house.
BoostRev — The Growth Stack
Aligning Budget to the Five Revenue Engines
How the Gartner benchmark data maps to the BoostRev Growth Stack — and the recommended allocation across five engines for a growth-stage business targeting 10% of revenue in marketing investment.
Recommended Budget Allocation — Five Revenue Engines
BoostRev framework | Illustrative allocation for growth-stage business at 10% revenue marketing spend
Engine 1 — Brand Attention
Engine 2 — Search & Answer Authority
Engine 3 — Nurture & Retention
60%
Brand Investment
Engines 1+2+3 — the foundation that makes all performance spend more efficient
15%
Outbound SDR
Engine 4 — MovuAI automated prospecting through to confirmed appointments
25%
Paid Acceleration
Engine 5 — paid media amplifying the warm audience built by the other four engines
