A marketing budget is a set of bets, so manage it like a real portfolio

Spreading money evenly across channels feels fair and balanced, but fairness rarely produces the best possible return on the spend.

Think in tiers of certainty instead of equal slices:
• proven channels that reliably return more than they cost
• promising tests funded with limited, clearly capped spend
• small speculative bets you can genuinely afford to lose
• channels you keep only out of habit, ready to cut

Fund what works, cap what you are still learning, and quietly kill what only drains attention and budget.

A simple rule: never let an unproven channel grow into your single largest line item before it has actually earned that place with results you can trust.