Turning the question every client kept asking into a free marketing tool

Shikha Pakhide runs ShikhaShikz Marketing, a demand generation company. After years of watching founders and marketers struggle with the same question — "how much should I actually spend on marketing?" — they built a tool to answer it. The Marketing Budget Calculator was born out of client work, not a startup dream, which is exactly what makes it practical.

Product: Marketing Budget Calculator Category: Marketing / Business Tools Website: shikhashikz.com/tools/budget-calculator SaaS Hive page: https://www.saashive.com/products/marketing-budget-calculator

What were you doing before Marketing Budget Calculator, and how did the idea come to you?

I run a demand generation company, and before that I worked in the corporate sector as a B2B marketer. While creating annual marketing plans, founders and marketers would constantly ask us how much their budget should be and how they should allocate it across different tactics.

While doing this exercise in depth for one of our clients, we realized that although it was important, it was also very time-consuming. A lot of back and forth around what was and wasn't affordable. That's when the idea came to us: why not build a tool that founders, business owners, and marketers could use on their own?

In one or two sentences, what does Marketing Budget Calculator do and who is it for?

You enter your target annual revenue and industry, and the tool gives you a recommended marketing budget based on industry benchmarks from sources like the CMO Survey and Gartner. It's for founders, business owners, and marketers who want a data-backed starting point instead of guessing.

How did you get your first users, or if you're still early, how are you planning to?

We're currently in the awareness stage, spreading the word through social media, emails, and PR. It's a free tool, so the goal right now is getting it in front of the right people: startups and SMBs that need a practical way to estimate marketing spend, and enterprise teams that want a first-cut budget before detailed planning begins.

What's one decision you've made so far that had the biggest positive impact on your product or business?

Finding the right balance between creativity and technology. When we started ShikhaShikz Marketing, we were not initially planning to build tools. But moving in that direction worked really well because we had the in-house capability. It also helped us establish our expertise across both creative marketing and technology-driven solutions.

What's the best feedback or reaction you've gotten from someone who's seen or tried your product?

One of the best pieces of feedback came through my professional network from people working closely with SMB founders. One person specifically said, "Founders keep asking me how much they should actually spend on marketing, and this finally gives them a practical starting point."

That stuck with me because it captured the exact problem. Many founders still make marketing budget decisions based on gut feeling, without a structured framework or any benchmark to work from.

What's been the lowest moment so far? What kept you going?

The report generation was the most critical part of the tool because that's the core deliverable users get. Getting that right took much longer than we expected. There were moments when we genuinely questioned whether we would be able to launch on time.

Instead of rushing it out, we chose to hold and focus on getting the experience right, even if it meant delaying the launch. That phase tested our patience, but it reinforced something we believe strongly: rework costs far more than taking the extra time upfront to build something properly.

How do you decide what to work on next? What gets priority and what gets ignored?

Initially, we were trying to be active across every platform because that's what most brands feel they're expected to do. But very quickly we realized that being everywhere meant spreading our time and resources too thin, especially in the building phase.

So we made a conscious decision to limit our presence. We chose to focus on the few platforms that were actually contributing value and redirected our efforts toward higher-quality content and a stronger website experience, instead of just being visible everywhere for the sake of it.

What's the one reason someone would pick your product over the alternatives?

The recommendations aren't based on generic formulas. They're built on CMO Survey data, Gartner benchmarks, and our team's hands-on experience running marketing for businesses across different stages and industries.

Where can people find or try Marketing Budget Calculator?

Try it at shikhashikz.com/tools/budget-calculator Follow ShikhaShikz on LinkedIn: ShikhaShikz Marketing

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow. All answers are Shikha's own words.