How Much Should I Spend on Marketing? (It's Not Just Money)
The Real Question Nobody Asks
It's June. School's ending. Summer camp is starting. And suddenly, the question every mom entrepreneur is asking isn't "How much should I spend on marketing?" It's "How am I going to do anything with my kid home all day?"
The thing is, the first question is incomplete. Because when we talk about marketing for mom entrepreneurs, we're not just talking about money. We're talking about time, money, and energy—and none of us has unlimited amounts of any of those things.
This summer, you need a better framework for thinking about your marketing capacity, or you'll end up doing one of four things: white-knuckling it until you burn out, sacrificing sleep, stopping everything (and then wondering why your pipeline is dry in September), or pushing yourself so hard that something breaks. None of those are actually sustainable.
So let's talk about what summer actually costs you—and how to make decisions when none of the answers feel easy.
How Mom Entrepreneurs Actually Spend (or Don't Spend) on Marketing
When you ask "how much should I spend on marketing?" you're really asking three questions at once:
- How much time? Are we talking about your time or someone else's time (which you technically pay for)?
- How much money? Contractors, agencies, ads, software, tools.
- How much energy? This is the piece nobody talks about.
Let me paint a picture from my own summer. My son goes to summer camp, which sounds great until you realize: camp is only four days a week. That means Fridays he's home. Plus, there's drop-off. There's pickup. There's the golf camp that's almost an hour away because it was the only one we could get into. Suddenly, I'm looking at anywhere from one to four extra hours in my car every single day.
The first summer I was an entrepreneur, I didn't account for that. I thought I could keep my May schedule and just... add camp driving on top of it. Spoiler: I couldn't.
Here's what I see happen when entrepreneurs realize they have less capacity in the summer: they do one of four things.
Option 1: White-Knuckle It — Work evenings, half-work during calls, double-book yourself. You're cramming to keep things from slipping.
Option 2: Sacrifice Sleep — Stay up late to catch up. Your health and nervous system suffer.
Option 3: Stop Doing Things — Cut things off your plate. This is discernment, but if you don't plan for the aftermath, September launches fall flat because you didn't manage the runway in July and August.
Option 4: Ignore the Reality — Just keep pushing and pretend summer doesn't exist.
The real problem? They all feel like your only options. And they're not.
The Energy Piece Nobody Talks About
You might technically have time to do marketing work—camp is running, you've got eight hours at your laptop. But if you're spending those hours worried about your kid, feeling guilty about screen time, or anxious about being a good enough mom, you don't actually have the energy to do the work.
Work from home moms especially hit this wall. I expect myself to have the same capacity when my son is home versus when he's not. But that's not realistic. When he's home, even if I can physically get work done, the emotional load and guilt pull my creative capacity away from my actual work.
So when we talk about "spending" on marketing, we're really talking about three currencies:
Time (the time to do the thing + the time for the thing to work), Money (contractors, agencies, ads, software), and Energy (the emotional and mental load). DMing people on Instagram, sending cold pitches—that eats energy big time. I might have the time, but the energy cost is so high it's not worth it.
Every marketing choice you make is a trade-off between these three currencies.
How to Think About Your Marketing Channels Like Team Members
This one changed how I approach seasonal capacity. What if you thought about your marketing channels like they were people on your team?
Your Instagram is a team member. Email is a team member. Your podcast is a team member. Ads, SEO, networking, your blog—they all have jobs.
So ask yourself: What is [channel]'s job in my business?
If Instagram's job is "be visible on social every single day," then Instagram needs a certain amount of content volume to do that job well. If your podcast's job is "nurture and deepen trust with warm leads," then your podcast needs to keep running because it's not just about volume—it's about consistency.
Here's what happens when someone on your team goes on vacation: either someone else absorbs the workload, or as the boss, you decide that work doesn't get done while they're out. Maybe there's catch-up when they come back, or maybe you just accept that some things pause.
The same is true for your marketing channels in the summer.
Maybe Instagram goes on vacation. Maybe it's stories only. Maybe a nine-grid or a three-grid is running in the background, but there's not constant posting. You're okay with that because you know your strategy going in.
Maybe you step away from organic social entirely and run ads instead. Ads takes up the job of visibility while you don't have the capacity for daily posting.
Maybe you keep the newsletter or the blog going because it's the channel doing the heavy nurture work. The other platforms take a break, and you're okay with that because you know then you can catch up or get caught up in the fall.
The key here: you have to know what job you're asking each channel to do, and how much content that channel needs to produce to actually do its job.
If you're asking a channel to do top-of-funnel work AND middle-of-funnel work AND bottom-of-funnel work? It's gonna need more volume than you think. And if you can't create that volume, you have to decide: which funnel stage are we prioritizing? Or are we swapping to a different channel that can do that job?
This is where discernment comes in. And discernment is heavy because there's no one right answer. It depends on your unique situation, your business goals, your marketing data, and your actual capacity.
The Long Game Still Matters (Even When You're in Survival Mode)
The things that make it possible for you to be visible without being physically present are SEO, guest speaking, networking, and automated funnels. These take time to build—but they work in the background while you're not actively creating.
When's the best time to plant a tree? Ten years ago. When's the next best time? Right now. Your visibility work is the same way. If you don't have capacity for daily Instagram posting in July, maybe you pitch yourself as a guest on three podcasts, create one SEO-rich blog post, or set up one automated email sequence. These are investments that take time upfront but pay dividends later—and they're more sustainable than white-knuckling it for eight months a year.
What Happens When You Don't Make Decisions
Here's the hard truth: not deciding is deciding. Not deciding what to cut or prioritize—that's a decision to either burn yourself out, let things fall through the cracks, or half-ass everything and wonder why it doesn't work.
The mental load is real. Business coaches will tell you to do everything. But you can't do everything because you're one person.
Maybe you hire help—a VA, a social media manager—but execution without strategy actually creates more work. You still have to make decisions, think about strategy, and approve things. If that person doesn't understand your vision, you end up micromanaging.
What actually solves the capacity problem is having someone in your corner who thinks about this with you. Someone who helps you make discernment decisions: what matters right now? What are we cutting? That's what a strategic partner does.
The Mom Founder Reality Nobody Talks About
As moms, we're expected by society to mother like we don't have work to do. And as business owners, we're expected to work like we don't have children. Childcare is expensive. Summer camp is expensive. And there's no perfect answer—do I work less and make less, or invest in support so I can keep building?
What's true: summer DOES impact your capacity. And the examples we have of founders in our culture are so often men with wives at home supporting them. As moms—even if we're the breadwinner—statistics show we almost always take on more of the caregiving. That impacts your capacity as a business owner.
I was talking to my husband about my son's screen time and called myself the "primary parent." He was offended. I said, "It's not an insult. It's reality. I'm home, so I'm the primary parent." The point: acknowledge your reality. Don't expect yourself to have the same capacity as someone without it.
The Discernment Work Is the Real Work
Here's what it comes down to: deciding is heavy, but not deciding is heavier.
The decision-making piece is literally the mental load of marketing. When you make the decision—"Okay, in July and August, Instagram is stories-only, email is two weeks between sends, and I'm focusing on that SEO project"—the mental load lifts. You no longer hold all the possibilities in your head.
This is especially important for mom founders who are already carrying a lot of mental load. The discernment decisions you make about your marketing give you your brain back.
What the Corner Office Actually Is (And Why Some Founders Choose It)
The Corner Office exists for one reason: you need a co-pilot.
You likely already know what good marketing looks like. You've taken courses, invested in coaching. What you need is someone who thinks about your marketing when you're not thinking about it. Someone who helps you make discernment decisions about what to keep running, what to pause, and how to manage the runway for your September launch.
Someone who owns the thinking alongside you—and then executes on what you've decided together.
If this is hitting hard, let's talk about it. DM me on Instagram and we can discuss what you can realistically do, what you can cut, and what actually moves the needle for your business.
And if you're thinking, "Yeah, I need someone in my corner helping me make these decisions and executing them," book a consultation for the Corner Office. That's exactly what we do.
