How to plan a B2B marketing budget in the AI era

The owner of an IT company asked me a few months ago: "How much budget should I move from SEO to AI Visibility?" The answer they expected - a specific percentage - does not exist. The answer they needed: it depends on where your buyers are searching now, and where they are not yet searching but will be in twelve months.

A B2B marketing budget has to address two things at once: the present (channels generating leads today) and the future (channels that will generate leads tomorrow). AI Visibility is still a future channel in many sectors - but in some it is already the present. The decision framework matters more than a specific percentage.

Diagnosis before allocation - three questions to ask

Before dividing the budget you need to know two things: where your best leads currently come from, and where your buyers search today versus where they will search in a year. Three diagnostic questions:

1. 1Ask the last ten clients how they found your company. A referral? Google? LinkedIn? AI? That is real data, not theory.
2. 2Check ChatGPT and Perplexity manually - does your company appear when you ask the questions a buyer might ask?
3. 3Check the demographic profile of your clients - are they aged 25 to 45 in technology or professional services? If so, AI search is already their tool.

Five categories of B2B marketing budget

Rather than thinking in terms of specific tools (SEO, paid search, social), it helps to think about the functions the budget has to serve:

Three allocation models by company stage

Model 1: a young company or one after a rebrand (0-2 years of active marketing)

Priority: fast leads and building initial visibility. Recommendation: 40% on direct lead generation (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads), 30% on content and organic visibility (blog, SEO fundamentals, first AI Visibility work), 20% on authority building (PR, the founder's LinkedIn activity), 10% on tooling. AI Visibility at this stage means adapting site content for citability, unblocking AI crawlers and publishing the first expert articles.

Model 2: an established company (2-5 years, steady lead flow)

Priority: optimising effectiveness and building an advantage on new channels. Recommendation: 25% on direct lead generation, 35% on content and organic visibility (intensive content, SEO, AI Visibility), 25% on authority building (original research, interviews, case studies), 15% on conversion and tooling. At this stage AI Visibility is a full strategy: diagnosis, content optimisation, a mention campaign and monitoring.

Model 3: a company dominant in its niche (5+ years, strong position)

Priority: defending the position and expanding into new segments. Recommendation: 20% on lead generation, 30% on content and organic visibility, 35% on authority building (sector research, thought leadership, Wikipedia, podcasts), 15% on tooling and measurement. AI Visibility is a strategic priority here - a market leader wanting to hold its position in AI has to build expert authority that smaller players cannot copy.

How much specifically to allocate to AI Visibility

It depends on two variables: how important the AI search channel is to your buyers today, and how fast it is growing. The heuristic we use:

• If fewer than 10% of your clients mention AI when describing how they found you, AI Visibility is a long-term investment - plan 10 to 15% of the content budget
• If 10 to 30% mention AI, AI Visibility is already a meaningful channel - plan 20 to 30% of the content budget
• If over 30% arrive through AI or actively ask about your AI visibility, it is a priority channel - plan 35 to 50% of the content budget

What to cut to find budget for AI Visibility

If you have no new budget but want to invest in AI Visibility, where do the funds come from? Three categories worth reviewing: advertising in trade media with no measurable return (events, magazine advertising), content produced on principle with no distribution strategy (articles nobody reads), and SEO and monitoring tools you do not actually use.

Moving 15 to 20% of the budget from ineffective activity to AI Visibility is usually possible without cutting strategically important areas. The key point: run an AI Visibility diagnosis first, so you know how much you actually need and which actions will have the greatest effect from your starting point.