As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly set a marketing budget for your business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a new Excel or Google Sheets workbook and create columns for period, channel, fixed cost, test spend, expected spend, actual spend, leads, sales and notes.
   2. Gather recent bank and card statements, invoices, sales records, gross margins, existing marketing subscriptions, available cash and the minimum cash reserve you must keep.
   3. Separate confirmed historical figures from estimates, then paste the figures and your business constraints into the matching sections of the prompt.
   4. Paste the prompt into a chatbot and ask it to return the recommended budget, scenarios, calculations and spreadsheet-ready table.
   5. Compare every figure in the response with your statements, invoices and sales records, and recalculate the totals and break-even point in your workbook.
   6. Remove any channel recommendation based on an invented benchmark, replace unknown assumptions with a test budget or a blank, and ask your accountant to review affordability where the spend could affect tax, wages, suppliers or cash reserves.

   Prompt

   Help me set a marketing budget for my UK business using only the information I provide. Do not invent figures, benchmarks, conversion rates or expected returns. If information is missing, identify it and show the effect of the gap instead of guessing.
   
   Business details:
   - Business type and offer: [describe]
   - Trading model and sales channels: [describe]
   - Planning period: [month, quarter or year]
   - Revenue target for the period: [amount or state that it is unknown]
   - Recent revenue by month: [paste figures]
   - Gross margin by product or service: [paste figures or state that it is unknown]
   - Current cash available for marketing: [amount]
   - Minimum cash reserve that must not be used: [amount]
   - Existing fixed marketing costs: [paste costs]
   - Previous marketing spend and results by channel: [paste figures, or state that results are unavailable]
   - Channels being considered: [list]
   - Business constraints, such as seasonality, staffing or capacity: [describe]
   - VAT treatment for the budget: [VAT-inclusive, VAT-exclusive, or unknown]
   
   Produce:
   1. A recommended budget for the stated period, separating fixed costs, test spend and committed spend.
   2. A monthly or weekly allocation where the data supports one.
   3. A conservative, base and higher-spend scenario, with every changed assumption shown.
   4. A break-even calculation that uses only my supplied margin and cost figures.
   5. A list of missing inputs and the decisions that cannot be made reliably without them.
   6. A simple table I can paste into Excel or Google Sheets.
   7. Monthly checks for spend, leads, sales, cost per acquisition and cash remaining, without claiming that any target will be achieved.
   
   Label facts, calculations, assumptions and recommendations separately. Check all arithmetic twice. State clearly that this is not professional advice and flag any issue that should be discussed with my accountant or a qualified marketing adviser.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.