Marketing budget allocation: the 70/20/10 rule for founders

<p>You have a small pile of cash. You need to turn that cash into users, fast. This is the moment where most founders freeze. You are facing an existential question: Where, precisely, do you put the money?</p> <p>The conventional advice says you must chase ROI. It tells you to follow the funnels, invest where the numbers are cleanest. This is mathematically sound and strategically bankrupt. It leads you to spend 90% of your budget on Google Ads trying to buy customers who don't know your name yet. You spend yourself into a shallow, expensive pit.</p> <p>The truth is, an early-stage marketing budget is not about maximizing returns. It is about minimizing risk and accelerating learning. It is an exploration budget, not a scaling budget. You are not a growth-stage company yet. Stop spending like one.</p> <p>We are going to use the <strong>70/20/10 Budget Rule</strong>. This framework is not complex. It forces you to balance the need for short-term revenue with the necessary investment in long-term stability.</p> <p><em>If you are short on time, scroll straight to the Budget Allocation Builder section for an actionable prompt.</em></p> <h2>Marketing budget allocation: use the 70/20/10 rule to structure spending</h2> <p>The 70/20/10 rule is simple math for chaotic times. It prescribes how you divide your spend across three essential categories of activity: Core, Experiments, and Leverage.</p> <p>When you are pre-revenue or early-traction, your goal is to find Product-Channel Fit. You need stability first, then scale. This system ensures your spending reflects that priority.</p> <h3>70% Core: Stable, Proven, and Measurable</h3> <p>This is your safety net. Seventy percent of your budget goes to the channels that have a clear, proven path to acquisition, even if the scale is small. For a builder, this often means channels where you control the platform and the messaging. Think <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/email-marketing-strategy">email marketing</a>, high-intent SEO content, or a small, hyper-targeted ad campaign that is already converting at a known CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).</p> <p>These channels generate the small, consistent wins that keep the lights on and keep you sane.</p> <p><strong>Actionable Step:</strong> Audit your last three successful acquisitions. Whatever channel they came from, allocate 70% of your next month’s budget to amplifying that specific path, even if it’s just paying a contractor to write more content for that keyword cluster.</p> <h3>20% Experiments: Calculated Risk, High Learning Rate</h3> <p>This 20% is for the things that could fail, but if they work, they change the game. This is where you test a new channel entirely—not just a new ad copy. For instance, if you are an API startup focusing heavily on documentation, the 70% is optimizing existing dev forums. The 20% is building a dedicated Discord community and hiring someone part-time to seed conversations.</p> <p>Conventional advice says to diversify. This is permission to focus your exploration. You are allowed to ignore the noise. Stop feeling guilty about not being on TikTok if your customer isn't there.</p> <p>The only metric that matters here is the learning rate. Did you prove or disprove a hypothesis? You must have a clear "Kill Date" for every 20% experiment. If it doesn't show a leading indicator of success in one month, you stop, document the failure, and reallocate the cash.</p> <p><strong>Reframing:</strong> This 20% is not gambling. It is paying tuition. The cost of a failed experiment is less than the cost of prolonged strategic confusion.</p> <h3>10% Leverage: The Force Multipliers</h3> <p>The final 10% goes to the things that make everything else cheaper and easier, but are not directly transactional. This is brand, documentation, and system clarity. It's the cost of a good brand identity, clear <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/marketing-plan-vs-strategy">strategy</a> documentation, or investing in the tools that help you <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-measure-marketing-performance">measure marketing performance</a> more accurately.</p> <p>This is often the first category founders cut. It feels soft. But brand clarity—knowing exactly what you stand for—reduces the cost of every ad, every piece of content, and every sales conversation. You are investing in leverage that pays dividends across the 70% and 20% buckets.</p> <p>Imagine your product description is confusing. If you spend $1,000 on fixing the description (10% Leverage), the subsequent $7,000 in ads (70% Core) will convert better. You have gained efficiency.</p> <p><strong>Small Win:</strong> Dedicate the next hour to writing a single, crisp sentence that explains what your product does and who it is for. This is a 10% investment that has zero cash cost but immense leverage on your messaging.</p> <h2>The most common mistake: conflating Core with Experiments</h2> <p>When budgets fail, it is usually because the founder treats their 70% Core spend like a 20% Experiment. They jump from Google Ads to Facebook Ads, then try some affiliate marketing, then drop everything for LinkedIn content, all within the main bucket.</p> <p>That's chaos. <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-build-a-marketing-strategy">A good marketing strategy</a> is deterministic. Your Core budget must be defended. It should be boring, stable, and focused on maintaining existing momentum.</p> <p>If you don’t have a Core channel yet—if you have zero proven acquisition loops—then your budget allocation shifts temporarily to 50% Experiments, 40% Core (focused only on finding the very first channel), and 10% Leverage. But the goal is to stabilize the 70% as quickly as possible. Until you have a stable Core, you are pre-marketing.</p> <h3>Prioritizing channels: volume is a trap</h3> <p>Don't allocate budget based on the size of the audience. Allocate it based on the fidelity of the acquisition loop. A channel with 100 users converting at 5% is better than a channel with 10,000 users converting at 0.1%.</p> <p>The early-stage founder needs high-signal channels. You need direct feedback to improve the product and the messaging. This is why many successful B2B startups start in specialized communities or via direct outreach (a form of high-fidelity Core). They get the right users, not just the most users.</p> <p><strong>Action:</strong> Review your 70% Core spend. If you cannot explain the three steps a dollar takes to become a user in that channel, cut the spend and put it into the 20% Experiment bucket until you can measure it correctly.</p> <h2>The Budget Allocation Builder</h2> <p>Use this prompt to generate a 70/20/10 structure based on your current constraints and goals.</p> <h3>Budget Prioritization Generator</h3> <p> Copy and paste this prompt:<br><br> <code>I am an early-stage founder with [TOTAL MONTHLY MARKETING BUDGET] and a focus keyword of [YOUR FOCUS KEYWORD]. My product is [YOUR PRODUCT DESCRIPTION]. My target customer is [YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER]. Using the 70/20/10 Rule (Core/Experiments/Leverage), allocate the budget across specific channels and explain the primary metric for each.</code> </p> <p><strong>Example Output Deliverables:</strong></p> <ol> <li>A dollar allocation breakdown for Core, Experiment, and Leverage.</li> <li>Specific channel recommendations for each bucket.</li> <li>The primary, founder-aligned metric for success for each channel.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Example Output:</strong> <p><strong>Core (70% / $700):</strong> High-intent SEO content focused on "serverless Python monitoring." Primary Metric: 30-day organic conversions.</p> <p><strong>Experiment (20% / $200):</strong> Testing sponsored posts in one relevant developer newsletter. Primary Metric: Clicks-to-signup rate.</p> <p><strong>Leverage (10% / $100):</strong> Refining the product onboarding flow copy to reduce friction.</p> <p>This is one of countless interconnected prompts in the LiftKit system designed to make strategy actionable.</p> <h2>FAQ</h2> <h3>Q: Should I always stick to exactly 70/20/10?</h3> <p>A: The numbers are guidelines, not dogma. They are designed to enforce strategic discipline. If you have zero Core momentum, you might start at 50/40/10 temporarily. But the moment you find one working channel, you must shift resources immediately to lock in the 70% stability. Think of it as a thermostat for your strategic focus.</p> <h3>Q: How does this model fit with measuring ROI?</h3> <p>A: The 70% must have a clear, measurable ROI (or Cost Per Acquisition). The 20% has an ROI measured in learning—did you find a viable channel or prove one is a dead end? The 10% is long-term leverage, which you monitor via efficiency metrics, like a reduction in CPA in your Core channels over time. You need to <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-measure-marketing-performance">measure performance</a> differently for each bucket.</p> <h3>Q: How do I choose which channels go into the 20% Experiments bucket?</h3> <p>A: Use the high-signal approach: pick channels that allow you to interact directly with the customer or provide rich, qualitative feedback, not just vanity metrics. For early-stage companies, this often means specific forums, newsletters, or small-scale content tests, rather than broad, expensive platforms. You need to know <a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/how-to-choose-marketing-channels">how to choose the right channels</a> for your stage.</p> <h3>Q: If I'm pre-revenue, is 70% on Core too much if I have no proven channel?</h3> <p>A: If you have zero revenue, your "Core" is the pursuit of the first acquisition method. You must focus your main resources on the highest probability path to that first user—often manual outreach, co-selling, or highly focused content creation. The 70% ensures you are not attacking ten problems at once, which is the definition of marketing chaos. Focus is momentum.</p> <hr> <h2>Start running operator-grade marketing in under an hour.</h2> <p>LiftKit is the only strategy-first AI marketing system built for founders. It distills the same Fortune-500 frameworks used at Apple, Stripe, and McKinsey into a simple, actionable playbook you can run in under an hour.</p> <p>Stop tinkering with tactics. Start operating with strategy.</p> <p><strong><a href="https://getliftkit.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Get LiftKit</a></strong></p> <h2>Keep learning</h2> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/frameworks" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Frameworks</strong></a>: Learn proven mental models to diagnose, prioritise, and scale marketing outcomes.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/channels" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Channels</strong></a>: Understand which acquisition paths actually work and how to deploy them strategically.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/messaging" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Messaging</strong></a>: Build positioning, angle, and copy that converts without guesswork.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/strategy" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Strategy</strong></a>: Make smarter decisions using operator-grade prompts and structured thinking.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/tools" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Tools</strong></a>: Use AI, automation, and practical templates to move faster.</p> <p><a href="https://learn.getliftkit.com/research" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Research</strong></a>: Tap into market insights, psychology, and patterns that drive effective marketing.</p> <script type='application/ld+json'> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Marketing budget allocation: the 70/20/10 rule for founders", "description": "Marketing budget allocation: use the 70/20/10 rule to structure spending", "articleSection": "learn", "keywords": "marketing budget allocation, budget, roi, startups", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "LiftKit" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "LiftKit" }, "url": "https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/marketing-budget-allocation", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://learn.getliftkit.com/learn/marketing-budget-allocation" } </script>