Most agency marketing budgets are set by guesswork in December. Here is the year-end review that turns next year's plan into a decision, with the 2026 shifts that should change it.
It is the third week of December. You are between AEP and the holidays, someone asks what the marketing budget looks like next year, and you say a number. The number is roughly what you spent last year, adjusted by how the year felt.
That is how most independent agencies plan, and it isn't laziness. It is what happens when the only quiet week of the year falls after the point where you can still remember what worked in March.
The fix is not a longer planning session. It is doing the review eight weeks earlier, while the year is still in front of you.
A year-end marketing review is a short, structured look back at what your agency spent, what it got, and what you would do differently, written down before you decide next year's budget. It is not a report for anyone else. Nobody grades it. Its only job is to make next year's decisions less arbitrary than last year's.
Two hours of honest review beats a day of planning built on impressions. The reason is simple: you cannot decide where to put next year's money until you know what this year's money did.
If you haven't built the Q4 side of this yet, our Q4 insurance agency marketing plan covers the near-term sequence; this post is about the year after.
Published benchmarks for insurance agency marketing spend range from roughly 3% to 12% of revenue, and the sources disagree with each other. WebFX puts insurance marketing at an average of 7–8% of revenue. Agents Alliance describes growing agencies allocating 5–10% of gross commission revenue. Other industry write-ups suggest 7–12% for a steady book and higher while actively growing.
That spread is wide enough that no single number should drive your decision. Use it the way you'd use a blood pressure reading: to notice whether you're far outside the normal range, not to set a goal.
What matters more than the percentage:
Agency posture | Typical published range | What it usually buys
Mature book, defending renewals | Lower end of the range | Website upkeep, listings, reviews, light content
Steady with modest growth goals | Middle | The above plus consistent content and some paid
Actively growing, adding producers | Upper end | The above plus sustained paid campaigns and faster testing
A plan that repeats last year's assumptions inherits last year's blind spots. Three shifts worth writing into the 2027 plan:
1. AI became a real discovery channel. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults found 45% had used generative AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. That puts AI third among discovery channels, behind only Google and Facebook. Over the same period Google's share as a review source fell from 83% to 71%. If your plan has a line for Google and no line for how you appear in an AI answer, it's a 2024 plan. Our guide to whether AI will recommend your agency explains what drives that in plain English.
2. Review recency got stricter. In the same survey, 74% of consumers said they only care about reviews written in the last three months, and 47% won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. Review generation stopped being a one-time project and became a monthly line item.
3. Trust in AI recommendations is real. 42% of consumers now trust AI platform recommendations as much as traditional reviews. Whether that's wise is beside the point for planning purposes. It's where the prospect is.
If the whole plan doesn't fit on one page, it won't survive February. Fill these in:
For a broader view of the channels that go on that page, the 2026 guide to digital marketing for insurance agencies is the fuller reference.
A marketing plan isn't a document, it's a set of decisions. Decisions get better when they follow a look at the numbers, and the numbers are easier to get at in October than in December. Spend two hours on the review, call five clients, pick one thing to stop, and write three sentences. That's a better 2027 plan than most agencies will have.
Want a second opinion on the plan before you commit the budget? Book a free consultation and we'll walk your numbers with you.
Lee Boyer has been a licensed insurance agent for over seven years and founded Kusanku Marketing Solutions to help agencies get found online, including by AI search. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-boyer/
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October or early November, before AEP consumes the calendar and while you can still remember and verify what happened earlier in the year.
Published benchmarks range from about 3% to 12% depending on the source and whether the agency is growing or holding steady. Use the range to check you aren't wildly outside it, then decide based on your own growth goals and what you can execute consistently.
That's the most useful finding in the review. Start by adding call tracking, a "how did you hear about us" field, and a monthly note of what you shipped. Next year's review will have an answer.
It deserves a line in the plan, given 45% of consumers reported using AI tools for local recommendations in BrightLocal's 2026 survey. It does not deserve the whole plan. The same fundamentals that drive it — reviews, listings, content, citations — are the ones you were already working on.
Two hours for the review, thirty minutes for the one-page plan. If it's taking a full day, you're building a document instead of making decisions.
Bought leads are the only asset in your agency that disappears the month you stop paying for it. Everything else in this guide, you keep.
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