Budgeting a campaign across phases
Launch library · evergreen read
A campaign budget spent evenly across its full run rarely matches how attention and cost actually behave at each stage of the work. Early phases often need heavier investment in research, concept development and creative production, while later phases can lean more on distribution and amplification of work that has already been built and approved.
Splitting a budget by phase, rather than by channel alone, forces a team to think seriously about sequencing rather than simply totalling costs at the end of a planning cycle. It also makes it far easier to spot where a campaign is over or under resourced relative to what each phase is actually being asked to achieve for the business.
Reserving a portion of the budget as genuine contingency, rather than allocating every available dollar in advance, protects a campaign from being derailed by a single unplanned cost. Campaigns that spend every cent before launch often have no room left to respond to opportunities or problems that only become visible once the work is actually live in the market.