What percentage of revenue should a small business spend on marketing?

By Doug Dinwiddie, Founder, Maitland

Published 2026-07-22

The honest UK percentage bandings, what they mean in pounds at your revenue, what should be counted inside the number, and how to set a marketing budget you can defend.

Executive summary

For most UK businesses under £10m in revenue, competitive marketing investment sits at 7 to 10 per cent of revenue, covering people, ad spend and tools. Set your number by working backwards from the growth goal, not from habit. Underspending is often the most expensive line in the budget.

What percentage of revenue should your business actually put into marketing? And is the number you spend now a considered decision, or just whatever was left over after everything else?

You are in the right place. We are a marketing agency that publishes its prices, so you can trust us to give you the numbers straight rather than talk around them.

Here is what this guide covers: the honest UK percentage bandings and where they come from, what those percentages mean in pounds at your revenue, what should be counted inside the number, how to set a budget from your goal backwards rather than from habit, when spending less is genuinely the right call, and when holding back is the most expensive decision you can make.

The honest banding: what UK businesses should spend

For most UK businesses under £10m in revenue, the sensible investment in marketing sits between 7 and 10 per cent of revenue. That is the level at which a business can genuinely compete for attention in its market rather than just maintain a presence.

Plenty of businesses spend 1 to 3 per cent and then wonder why growth is flat. That is not a marketing problem. It is an arithmetic problem wearing a marketing costume.

Two commonly used adjustments to the banding are worth knowing. Business-to-business companies, with longer sales cycles and narrower audiences, often operate a little lower, around 2 to 5 per cent, with the emphasis on quality of pipeline rather than volume of noise. Consumer businesses tend to sit higher, around 5 to 10 per cent, because attention is the whole game. And businesses in a deliberate growth push, or in their early years building a presence from nothing, often run at 10 to 15 per cent for a period, because building momentum costs more than maintaining it.

Treat all of these as bandings rather than laws. The right number for you comes from your goal, which we will get to. But if you are miles below the banding for your situation, you already have a strong clue about why the results feel thin.

What the percentages mean in pounds

Percentages are easy to nod along to and easy to ignore. Pounds are harder to ignore, so here is the translation at three revenue levels, using the 7 to 10 per cent banding.

If those numbers made you wince, you are not alone. Most owners seeing the honest figure for the first time realise they have been running their marketing on a fraction of what their competitors in the same banding are spending. That gap compounds in the market every month, in whose name gets seen, whose content gets found, and whose pipeline stays full.

Larger businesses often run a lower percentage on a bigger base, which is one of the quiet advantages of scale. The way to earn that advantage is to grow through the banding, not to spend like a £20m business while you are a £2m one.

What counts inside the number

Here is where most budgets quietly lie to their owners. The percentage should cover everything marketing costs, not just the most visible invoice. Three buckets.

People and partners. Salaries of anyone doing marketing work, or the fee of the agency doing it for you. If you are weighing those two options, we have written an honest comparison of agency versus in-house costs , and the loaded numbers surprise most people.

Ad spend. The money that goes to Google, Meta or LinkedIn to buy distribution. At Maitland this is always paid by you directly to the platforms, never marked up through us, so you can see exactly what it is.

Tools and production. Analytics, email platforms, design software, video production, print. Individually small, collectively real.

Count all three, honestly, for last year. That number over last year's revenue is your true current percentage, and it is the baseline every decision should start from. Most businesses have never calculated it.

Set the budget from the goal, not from habit

The percentage bandings tell you whether you are in a sensible neighbourhood. They do not tell you your number. Your number comes from working backwards.

Start with the revenue you want in 12 months and subtract where you are now. That gap is the job. Divide the gap by your average customer value and you have the customers marketing needs to produce. Multiply by what a customer honestly costs you to acquire, and you have a budget derived from your own ambition rather than from a rule of thumb.

When the goal-backwards number and the percentage banding roughly agree, you can commit with confidence. When the goal implies a budget far beyond the banding, the honest conclusion is that the goal and the budget do not match, and one of them has to move. Better to find that out in a spreadsheet now than in a disappointing December.

A worked example makes it concrete. A £2m business aiming for £2.6m next year has a £600,000 gap. At an average customer value of £8,000, that is 75 new customers marketing must produce. If a customer honestly costs around £2,000 to acquire, the job costs £150,000, which is 7.5 per cent of current revenue and sits neatly inside the banding. Numbers like these turn a budget argument into a planning conversation.

This is exactly what our growth calculator is for. It shows what steady, compounding monthly growth turns into over a year or two at your own figures, so you can see the size of the prize before you decide what pursuing it is worth.

When spending less is genuinely right

An article like this is supposed to tell you to spend more. Here is when you should not.

If you have no tracking, fix that before you raise the spend. Pouring more budget through an unmeasured funnel just loses money faster, and knowing whether your marketing is working comes before scaling it. If your website converts poorly, fix the bucket before paying to fill it. And if cash is genuinely tight, do fewer things properly rather than everything thinly. A focused £2,000 per month beats a scattered £4,000 every time.

What we would not do is cut to zero and wait for better days. Visibility decays quietly, and rebuilding it costs more than maintaining it would have.

When holding back is the expensive choice

Now the other side, and it matters more often.

If your marketing already returns more than it costs, with the evidence to prove it, then underspending is not caution. It is a decision to grow slower than you could, made one held-back pound at a time. When £1 in reliably brings £3 back, every £1 you keep in the drawer costs you £2 you never see, which is why it never appears on any invoice and never gets challenged.

The same is true of stop-start budgets. Marketing compounds, and compounding needs continuity. A budget that gets cut every wobbly quarter and reinstated every good one never builds momentum, and the business pays full price for results it never quite receives. It is why our GROW partnerships run on a 13-month structure: month one is the Deep Dive that sets tracking, baseline and plan, and the next 12 exist so each win can stack on the last.

Funded properly and aimed properly, the results can change a business's trajectory entirely. When ONE Sports Warehouse committed to serious growth, revenue rose 1098 per cent at an 11 times return on investment, with traffic up 828 per cent. Across all our clients in the last 12 months, the average was 52 per cent growth. Ambition like that is never produced by a leftover budget.

Where Maitland fits, with the numbers attached

Because we publish our prices, we can make this concrete rather than coy.

Our GROW partnerships start at £2,000 per month on a 13-month agreement, and most tailored partnerships fall between £3,000 and £10,000 per month. For a business doing £1m to £5m in revenue, a partnership in that range plus your direct ad spend lands comfortably inside the 7 to 10 per cent banding this article recommends. The fee covers an integrated team across strategy, delivery and optimisation. Ad spend goes straight to the platforms and tools are passed through at cost, so the three buckets above stay visible instead of blurring into one invoice.

The full breakdown of what a marketing agency costs in the UK , including everyone else's ranges as well as ours, is already published, because we think you should know the market before you talk to anyone in it.

Before you set next year's number

See what it could be worth. Our growth calculator shows what steady, compounding growth does to your revenue over a year or two. Put your own figures in, and while you are there, our prices are published in full on the same page, so you can do the whole sum in one sitting.

If you would rather start with a second opinion on what your current spend is producing, book a free performance marketing review . We will show you what we see, what it could be worth, and what we would do about it. No pitch. No follow-up unless you want one. You still walk away with something useful.

Percentage bandings are indicative planning figures; the right number depends on sector, margins, sales cycle and goals. Client results are specific to the named client and are not a guarantee of future performance. The 52 per cent average growth figure is correct as of July 2025. Market cost ranges are indicative UK figures as of July 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of revenue should a small business spend on marketing in the UK?

For most UK businesses under £10m in revenue, 7 to 10 per cent of revenue is the competitive level. Business-to-business companies often run at 2 to 5 per cent, consumer businesses at 5 to 10 per cent, and businesses in a deliberate growth push at 10 to 15 per cent for a period. Treat these as bandings; the exact number should come from your growth goal worked backwards.

How much is a normal monthly marketing budget?

It follows revenue. At £1m revenue, the 7 to 10 per cent banding means roughly £5,800 to £8,300 per month across everything: people or agency, ad spend and tools. UK agency retainers typically run from about £1,250 to £3,500 per month for a single channel and £3,500 to £16,750 for multi-channel work, with ad spend on top.

Does the marketing percentage include ad spend?

Yes. The honest number covers all three buckets: people and partners, ad spend paid to the platforms, and tools and production. Counting only the agency fee or only the ad spend is how businesses convince themselves they are investing more, or less, than they really are.

What if I cannot afford 7 to 10 per cent?

Do fewer things properly rather than everything thinly, and fix tracking and conversion before scaling spend. A focused budget on one or two channels, measured honestly, beats a scattered one. What rarely works is cutting to zero: visibility decays quietly and costs more to rebuild than to maintain.

How do I know if the spend is working?

Three questions on any report: what was spent, what came back in pounds, and whether that is better or worse than last month. If your reporting cannot answer those inside a minute, fix visibility before judging performance.