Marketing budget calculator.

How much should a small business spend on marketing?

A common guideline, long used by the US Small Business Administration, is to spend around 7% to 8% of revenue on marketing if you turn over less than $5 million a year and your profit margin is around 10% to 12%. Businesses holding steady can spend less; businesses that want to grow fast, or that are new and unknown, often spend 10% to 20% for a period.

Treat the percentage as a starting point, not a rule. What matters is what you get back: a budget is right if each channel brings in more than it costs.

Working backwards from customers

The second method is more precise once you know your numbers. If you want 20 new customers a month and each one costs about $100 to win across your marketing (your customer acquisition cost), you need about $2,000 a month. If you don't know your acquisition cost yet, the revenue method is the safer place to start, and tracking will tell you the real figure within a few months.

Splitting the budget

• SEO and local SEO: slower to start, but the cheapest customers over time, and results keep coming after you stop paying.
• Paid search (Google Ads): fast and measurable, reaching people already looking. Costs rise with competition.
• Paid social (Meta, TikTok): good for awareness, offers and visual products.
• Email and retention: the cheapest sales usually come from people who already know you.
• Content and creative: the photos, videos and pages every other channel needs.

Getting more from the same budget

Before adding budget, check the basics: is tracking working, does the website convert, are you answering enquiries quickly? Fixing those often does more than spending more. Our SEO, local SEO and digital marketing services are priced monthly so they fit a budget like this; see our pricing.