It's the question every owner asks and few guides answer honestly: how much should you actually spend on marketing? Too little and you're invisible; too much and you're burning cash you can't spare. Here's a straight, UK-focused answer.
The rough benchmark
A common rule of thumb: established small businesses spend around 5–10% of revenue on marketing, and businesses in a growth push often go higher — 10–15%. New businesses building from scratch sometimes invest more upfront to get traction.
But percentages only take you so far. What matters more is spending on the right things in the right order, and measuring what comes back.
Start with what you can measure
The golden rule of a small budget: spend where you can see the return. That means channels where a pound in produces a trackable pound out. This is why paid advertising and SEO usually come before brand-awareness spending for a small business — you can measure enquiries and sales directly.
Every campaign should answer one question: did this bring in more than it cost? If you can't measure it, you can't scale it — and you shouldn't grow it.
A sensible split for a limited budget
If money is tight, here's a pragmatic order:
- Fix the foundation first (often the cheapest win). A fast, clear, mobile-first website that converts. There's no point paying to send people to a site that loses them — 75% of people judge your credibility by your website. (See what a website should cost.)
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile (mostly free). Claim your listing, get reviews, target local keywords. Huge return for near-zero cost. (See how to get found on Google.)
- A small, measured paid-ads budget. Google or Meta ads to buying-intent audiences, tracked properly. Start small, scale only what's profitable.
- Content and email. Blogging and email marketing compound over time — and email returns around £36 for every £1 spent, the best ROI in marketing.
- Brand and social awareness. Important, but usually after the measurable channels are working.
What "enough" actually looks like for paid ads
For paid advertising specifically, we generally advise brands to start where there's enough budget to gather real data — typically £5,000+ per month in ad spend, or the readiness to build toward it. Below that, testing is too slow to find winners reliably. If you're not there yet, put the money into the free and low-cost channels above first.
The mistake that wastes the most money
Spending on traffic before the site converts. Ads and SEO drive people to your website; if that website doesn't turn visitors into enquiries, you're paying to lose customers faster. Fix conversion first, then buy traffic. (More on that in traffic but no leads.)
The honest bottom line
- Rough benchmark: 5–15% of revenue, weighted toward growth if you're scaling.
- Spend where you can measure the return first.
- Order matters: website → local SEO → measured paid ads → content/email → brand.
- Fix conversion before buying traffic.
Not sure where your next pound should go?
That's exactly what a free 20-minute audit answers. We'll look at your website, Google presence and ads, and tell you the single highest-return place to spend next — whether that's £100 or £10,000. We run performance marketing for UK businesses with our own brands' budgets on the line, so we treat every pound like it's ours.