Marketing Budget Sanity Check
Checks whether a proposed marketing budget actually holds together - against your own goals and history, never a fabricated "typical" industry benchmark.
Get This Skill
Run this command in your terminal, or paste it into Claude—or your favorite AI assistant—and ask it to install the skill for you.
What This Skill Does
Tests the budget against your own goals
Flags whether the allocation actually points at what you said you're trying to achieve.
Checks for a measurement line
Notes whether there's any plan to track if the spend worked, not just spend it.
Matches spend to how you actually buy
Compares the channel mix to your own described sales cycle, not a generic playbook.
Never invents a benchmark
If asked whether a figure is "typical," it says so plainly and shows you what you actually can check.
Built from your own numbers
Uses your own historical spend and results for consistency checks, never an outside comparison.
Flags gaps, not a grade
Surfaces what's worth discussing rather than handing you a pass/fail score.
Best Used For
- Reviewing a proposed budget from an agency or internal team before approving it
- Checking whether a budget allocation actually matches the goals it's meant to achieve
- Getting a second opinion on a spend plan without chasing an invented "normal" percentage
- Spotting a conspicuous gap in a proposed budget, like a missing measurement line
How It Works
Handed a proposed marketing budget, most owners want to know one thing: is this normal? The honest answer is that no verifiable, general figure exists for what a marketing budget "should" cost as a percent of revenue or per lead - it varies too much by industry, margin, and sales model for any single number to be trustworthy.
What can actually be checked is whether the budget holds together on its own terms. This skill takes your proposed budget, its allocation, your stated goals, and whatever historical numbers you have, then runs a set of internal-consistency checks: does the allocation match the goal, is there a measurement line at all, does the channel mix match how you actually buy, and does the implied cost per outcome track with your own past numbers.
You walk away with each check flagged as consistent, worth checking, or missing information - built entirely from your own numbers, with a plain, direct answer any time a question reaches for a benchmark that doesn't actually exist.
Get This Skill
Run this command in your terminal, or paste it into Claude—or your favorite AI assistant—and ask it to install the skill for you.
Want Marketing Budget Sanity Check Custom-Built for Your Team?
Marketri can adapt this skill to your brand, data, and workflows — or build a new one from scratch.
Common questions
No - there's no verifiable general figure for that, and this skill says so directly rather than guessing. It checks your budget against your own goals and history instead.
That's fine - the checks that need history are marked 'missing information' rather than skipped or guessed at, and the rest of the checks still run normally.
No - it flags what's worth discussing with your team or agency. It doesn't rewrite the budget for you.
No - that's a separate, rated scorecard for an existing vendor. This only checks whether one proposed budget is internally coherent.
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