How to maximise your media budget in 2026

Maximise your investment in digital advertising to attract the right talent

Time to decide this year’s marketing budget for your employer branding? Get our experts’ tips on how to maximise your investment in digital advertising to attract the right skills, and how to use data to make smarter decisions.

What is a media budget?

A media budget is a plan for how much money you will spend on digital marketing, advertising and media buying, and where you will spend it. It is part of your wider marketing budget and helps you prioritise the right channels based on your goals. But how do you know what a good, reasonable budget is? And how much should you spend on digital advertising to achieve a measurable, desired effect? Let’s take a closer look.

What is a good budget for digital marketing?

How big your budget should be depends on several factors, and there are different ways to calculate it. You can, for example, look at the size of the target group, how many times you want to reach them and the standard CPM (cost per mille), the average cost per thousand impressions. A rule of thumb our digital specialists follow is to spend as much on distribution as on producing the content.

Another way to set your media budget is to look at what reach you can expect for the money. In general, advertising on Meta costs around SEK 50 to reach 1,000 people, and CPC (cost per click) should be under SEK 5. Thinking along these lines makes it easier to adjust your budget to the number of impressions or clicks you want to achieve.

So it is not just about big numbers. The key is how you allocate and optimise your budget to get maximum impact from every krona spent.

To maximise value, your media budget should be:

• Flexible, so you can scale up (or down) quickly
• Data-driven, so you make decisions based on insights, not gut feeling
• Goal-driven, so every krona works towards a concrete goal

How do I create a media budget for digital marketing?

As mentioned, there are no simple answers to how big the total marketing budget should be, or how much of it should go to digital marketing. Every company and industry has different goals and conditions. But there are of course some tricks to get more clarity. Here is a step-by-step guide to creating a well-targeted digital strategy for your media budget:

• Map your traffic

How does your target group find you today? Through social media, organic Google searches or newsletters? Once you know where your digital traffic comes from, you can identify gaps and more easily see what to prioritise in the budget.

• Set clear goals

Do you want to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Sell a new product? Your goals determine how much to spend and where. Set clear, measurable goals and KPIs that you can easily follow up.

• Identify your target groups

An effective social media ad budget requires knowing who you want to reach and, above all, where they are. LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok? Choose the right channel for the right person to prioritise correctly.

• Allocate along the decision journey

A common structure in your media plan is to allocate the ad budget according to where the target group is in the decision journey. The AIDA model (Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action) can help. Think about which activities, campaigns and content formats fit best at each step, and adjust the budget accordingly.

• Check relevant benchmarks

It is also useful to look at common benchmarks to set your budget and know what results to expect. For example, check the CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per mille) for the channels you want to advertise in. Compare these figures with previous results, or find current benchmarks online if you have no data of your own.

• Measure and optimise continuously

Set aside time every month to evaluate, adjust and reinvest in what works best. Build in monthly check-ins, and dare to move money between channels when the data shows what works.

Want to strengthen your employer brand? Read more about how Oddwork works with employer branding, from analysis and EVP to campaigns and measurement.