How Much Should a Small Business Spend on Marketing in 2026?

Ask five sources how much a small business should spend on marketing and you'll get five different numbers — anywhere from 6% to 15%+ of revenue, depending on who's counting and whose customers they surveyed. The honest answer is that "how much should I spend" is the wrong first question. The right one is "what's typical for a business like mine, and where do I sit against that." This guide gives you the real 2026 benchmarks broken down by business type, so you can answer that second question with an actual number instead of a guess.

We've already covered what a lead should cost once you're spending. This post is about the number before that one — the total budget itself.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing budgets averaged 9.0% of company revenue in 2026 per The CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua/Deloitte/AMA), down from 9.4% the prior wave — the lowest level since 2021.¹
• A separate, enterprise-skewed survey — Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey — puts the average at 7.8% of revenue, essentially flat year-over-year and about 18% lower than four years ago.²
• The gap between those two numbers isn't a data error — it's sample composition: Gartner's respondents lean toward companies over $1B in revenue, while The CMO Survey includes a broader size mix, and smaller/B2C businesses spend a higher share of revenue on marketing.³
• By business type, B2B product companies average 6.4% of revenue, B2B services 9.0%, and B2C product companies 15.5% — more than double the B2B product figure.⁴
• Of the two, your business type and size tell you more than either survey's overall average — use the breakdown below to find your actual peer group before setting a number.

In this guide:

• Why marketing budget surveys disagree
• What the SBA and other benchmarks say
• B2B vs. B2C: the number that actually matters
• Where the budget actually goes
• How to set your own number
• FAQ

Why Marketing Budget Surveys Disagree

Marketing budget as a percentage of revenue is the standard way to benchmark spend, since it scales naturally with business size instead of forcing every business toward the same dollar figure. The problem is that the two most-cited annual surveys on this exact question currently disagree by more than a full percentage point, and neither is wrong.

The CMO Survey — run by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association — found marketing budgets averaged 9.0% of company revenue in its January 2026 wave, based on 308 marketing leaders at US for-profit companies, 97% of them VP-level or higher.¹ That's down from 9.4% the wave before, and the lowest reading since 2021.

Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published the same year from a separate sample of 401 senior marketing leaders across the US and Europe, found marketing budgets essentially flat at 7.8% of revenue — up only marginally from 7.7% in 2025, and roughly 18% lower than the average allocation four years earlier.²

Neither number is more "correct" than the other — they're measuring overlapping but different populations. Gartner's respondent base leans toward large enterprises, and larger companies typically spend a smaller share of revenue on marketing than smaller ones do, since a lot of marketing cost doesn't scale linearly with revenue.³ The CMO Survey's broader size mix pulls its average higher. The practical lesson: don't anchor to a single survey's topline number. Anchor to the survey (or business-type breakdown below) that most resembles your business.

What the SBA and Other Long-Standing Benchmarks Say

The U.S. Small Business Administration's own blog cites a cross-industry average of 7.9% of revenue spent on marketing, with a breakdown by business type: B2B product companies 6.3%, B2B services 6.9%, B2C product companies 9.6%, and B2C services 11.8%.⁵ That figure is older than the two 2026 surveys above — it's the SBA's write-up of 2018 industry data — but it's still a useful anchor precisely because it's stable: the same B2B-lower, B2C-higher pattern shows up again in the newer 2026 data below, which suggests the underlying relationship holds even as the exact numbers drift year to year.

You'll also see a specific rule of thumb repeated across dozens of marketing and small-business sites: "spend 7-8% of revenue if you're under $5 million in annual revenue, assuming 10-12% profit margins." That framing gets attributed to the SBA constantly, but no current SBA.gov page states it in those exact terms — treat it as a popularized simplification of the real SBA figure above, not a direct government guideline.

Outside the US, Canada's Business Development Bank (BDC) found small businesses with fewer than 20 employees spending $30,000+ a year on marketing on average, rising to roughly $60,000 for 20-49 employees and $100,000+ for businesses over 50 employees.⁶ That data is a few years old and dollar-denominated rather than percentage-based, so treat it as directional context for Canadian businesses rather than a current-year benchmark — the same caution worth applying to any older survey cited here.

B2B vs. B2C: The Number That Actually Matters

If you take one number away from every survey in this post, make it this one: business type predicts marketing spend more reliably than any single survey average does. The CMO Survey's most recent business-type breakdown found B2B product companies averaging 6.4% of revenue, B2B services 9.0%, and B2C product companies 15.5% — more than double the B2B product figure.⁴

The pattern makes sense once you think through why. B2B product companies often sell through a longer, relationship-driven sales cycle where marketing shares the load with a direct sales team — marketing doesn't have to do all the persuading alone. B2C product companies are usually competing for attention in a crowded, low-consideration purchase decision, where the marketing spend itself is a bigger share of what actually drives the sale. If you're a B2B services business — most agencies, consultancies, and professional-service SMBs fall here — 9.0% of revenue is your most relevant reference point, not the overall 7.8-9.0% headline averages above.

Unique insight: the real value of these surveys isn't the topline percentage — it's confirming that the B2B-lower, B2C-higher pattern holds consistently across multiple independent surveys, years apart, from different institutions. That consistency is more trustworthy than any single number in isolation. If your business type doesn't match your current spend level, that's a stronger signal than "am I above or below 9%."

Where the Marketing Budget Actually Goes

Once you've picked a target percentage, the next useful benchmark is how that budget typically splits across categories. Gartner's 2026 survey found paid media taking the largest single share at 31.4% of the marketing budget, followed by labor at 24.5% and martech at 19.4%.⁷ That's a shift from the prior year, when martech held a larger 22.4% share and labor was smaller at 21.9% — martech's share is now at a five-year low, down from 26.6% in 2021.⁷

That data comes from enterprise CMOs, so the exact split won't map cleanly onto a small business's simpler budget — most small businesses aren't running a large in-house martech stack. But the direction is still useful: paid media's growing share reflects businesses leaning back into direct-response spend they can measure, while martech's shrinking share suggests fewer companies are paying for tools that don't show a clear return. That's a reasonable instinct to apply at small-business scale too — before adding a new tool subscription, make sure it's replacing a real cost, not just adding one.

How to Set Your Own Marketing Budget

Benchmarks are a starting point, not an answer. Three things should move your actual number away from any survey average:

• Your business type. Use the B2B/B2C breakdown above before the overall average — it's a stronger predictor of what businesses like yours actually spend.
• Your growth stage. Newer businesses generally need to spend more heavily to build initial visibility, since they're starting from zero awareness; established businesses with existing customers, reviews, and rankings can typically sustain growth on a smaller share of revenue. Neither current major survey breaks this out by company age with a hard number, so treat it as directional guidance rather than a specific target.
• What a customer is actually worth to you. A business with a high average order value or long customer lifetime can justify spending well above any of the averages above, because the payback math still works. A thin-margin business needs to be more conservative regardless of what the benchmark says.

None of the averages above tell you whether your current spend is actually working — only whether it's typical. A business spending well below benchmark with a full pipeline isn't necessarily underspending, and a business spending above benchmark with weak results isn't necessarily overspending. The number that matters most is what you're getting back per dollar, which requires knowing your cost per lead and how fast your team follows up once a lead comes in — budget size means little if either of those is broken.

Get a Budget Number Built Around Your Business, Not a Survey Average

Every figure in this post is a category average across hundreds of companies that aren't yours. We build marketing budgets for clients from their actual numbers instead — customer value, current cost per lead, and growth stage — so you're not guessing between a 7.8% enterprise average and a 15.5% B2C average that may not fit your business at all. Talk to a growth strategist for a free, custom budget review built around your actual numbers instead of an industry benchmark.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

There's no single correct number, but the current benchmarks cluster between 7.8% and 9.0% of revenue overall, depending on the survey.^1,2 Your business type matters more than the overall average: B2B product companies average 6.4%, B2B services 9.0%, and B2C product companies 15.5%.⁴

Why do different sources give different marketing budget percentages?

Mostly sample composition. Gartner's CMO Spend Survey leans toward large enterprises and reports a lower average (7.8%); The CMO Survey includes a broader mix of company sizes and reports a higher average (9.0%).^1,2,3 Smaller and B2C businesses tend to spend a higher share of revenue than large B2B enterprises, which pulls broader-sample surveys higher.

Should a new business spend more on marketing than an established one?

Directionally, yes — newer businesses typically need to spend more heavily to build initial visibility and awareness from zero, while established businesses can often sustain growth on a smaller share of revenue once they have existing customers, reviews, and search rankings working for them. Neither major 2026 survey breaks this down with a specific percentage by company age, so treat it as a general pattern rather than a hard target.

Key Takeaways

There's no universal right answer to "how much should I spend on marketing" — but there is a real range, and your business type tells you more about where you fall in it than any single survey's overall average. Start with the B2B/B2C breakdown above, then adjust for your growth stage and what a customer is actually worth to you. For the next piece of this series, see what a lead should actually cost, or talk to a growth strategist for a free budget review built around your numbers instead of an average.

References (7)

1. 1.The CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua / Deloitte / AMA) — 35th edition, survey fielded January 7-29, 2026, published March 31, 2026, n=308 marketing leaders at US for-profit companies
2. 2.Gartner — 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published May 11, 2026, n=401 senior marketing leaders, US/Europe
3. 3.BusinessWire (Gartner 2025 methodology) — Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey release, May 2025
4. 4.The CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua / Deloitte / AMA) — Survey fielded January 21-February 12, 2025, published April 1, 2025, n=281 marketing leaders; business-type breakdown
5. 5.U.S. Small Business Administration — SBA blog, published July 9, 2019, citing 2018 industry survey data
6. 6.Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) — Survey of 1,400+ Canadian businesses, 2019, article updated August 2023
7. 7.Gartner — CMO Spend Survey 2026, budget allocation by category