"How much should we spend on marketing?" is the question we get most — and the honest answer is that there's no single number. But there is a sensible range, and a way to land on the right figure for where your business is right now.
Start with the percentage rule
A common benchmark is to spend somewhere between 5% and 15% of revenue on marketing. Established businesses defending their position sit at the lower end. Businesses actively trying to grow sit higher — and brands in a real land-grab phase sometimes go well beyond it. The rule isn't a law; it's a sanity check. If you're spending 1% and wondering why nothing's happening, that's your answer. If you're spending 40% and not tracking returns, that's a different problem.
Match the budget to your stage
Just starting? Don't spread a small budget across five channels. Pick the one place your buyers already are, fund it properly, and learn. A focused budget on one channel beats a thin budget on all of them every time.
Growing? Now you reinvest. Once you know a channel returns more than it costs, the question flips from "can we afford it?" to "how fast can we scale it without breaking the economics?"
Established? You're balancing two jobs — defending the demand you already capture (brand, SEO, retention) and finding the next channel before the current one plateaus.
How to split it
A rough starting split for a growing brand: a little over half into the channels that drive demand now (paid ads, where results are fast and measurable), a meaningful chunk into the assets that compound (SEO, content and creative), and a slice held back to test something new. The exact mix depends on your margins and how quickly you need results — fast-payback businesses lean paid; patient, high-margin ones lean compounding.
The mistake almost everyone makes
Pouring money into traffic before the thing the traffic lands on is ready. If your offer is unclear or your website doesn't convert, more spend just buys you more expensive disappointment. Fix the conversion path first — then turn up the budget. It's the difference between filling a bucket and filling a bucket with holes in it.
The short version
Spend enough to actually move, concentrate it where it works, and never scale a channel you can't measure. If you want a specific number for your business — based on your margins, goals and what your competitors are doing — that's exactly what we'll give you, free, in a teardown.
Not sure what your number should be?
Start with a free teardown — tell us about your business and we'll send back specific, useful thoughts. No call required.