UpTrajectory Review
Michael Tasner's Entrepreneur piece argues that most small-business marketing budgets calcify: they keep funding last year's winners until the money stops working. His fix is a 70/20/10 split. Seventy percent of the budget goes to proven channels, twenty percent to scaling what shows promise, and ten percent to experiments. The framework comes from Google, which used it for innovation, and marketers have since borrowed it for spend allocation. Tasner's contribution is to push it down to the small-business level, where budgets run lean and a misallocated dollar hurts more.
For the operator running a shop, a service firm, or a local brand, this rule matters because budget inertia is the default. You found one channel that worked — maybe email, maybe paid search — and you poured everything into it. Then the channel got crowded, costs rose, and returns sagged. You kept spending because stopping felt like admitting the original bet was wrong. Tasner's split forces a discipline: you keep funding what works, but you also reserve real money for the next thing. That thirty percent is not a luxury. It is insurance against the day your main channel breaks.
What is genuinely useful here is the permission structure. Many small operators treat experimentation as a failure to commit. Tasner reframes it as a budget line. The ten percent slot says: you are supposed to try things that fail. That is a healthier stance than the common alternative, which is to either blow the whole budget on unproven tactics or never test anything new. We agree with the framework. We are skeptical of the precision. Seventy-twenty-ten is a starting point, not a law. A business in a volatile market may need forty percent in experiments. A stable one may need less.
The second-order effect is on hiring and agency relationships. If you adopt this split, you must also change how you evaluate your marketing help. An agency paid on a percentage of spend will resist the ten percent slot because experiments are harder to bill against. A freelancer who only runs one channel will resist the twenty percent slot because scaling a new channel may not be their skill. The rule also affects cash flow. Experiments often take two or three cycles to show results, so you must fund the ten percent consistently, not just in good months.
What to watch: whether Tasner's next piece or the comments section fills in the tactical details. Which experiments belong in the ten percent slot? How do you decide when a promising channel graduates to the seventy percent tier? For now, the action step is simple. Pull your last three months of marketing spend. Sort it into proven, scaling, and experimental. If the experimental column is empty or under five percent, you are running on borrowed time. Rebalance this quarter, before your main channel forces the issue.
“Most marketing budgets go stale because they fund last year's winners forever” — Entrepreneur
Takeaway: Audit last quarter's marketing spend: if under 5% went to experiments, rebalance now before your main channel breaks.
Excerpt from the original — Entrepreneur
Most marketing budgets go stale because they fund last year's winners forever — here's the 70/20/10 split that keeps yours sharp.