How Much Should I Spend on Marketing? (% of Revenue Benchmarks 2026)

Short answer: UK businesses should budget 7–15% of revenue on marketing in 2026, with growth-stage companies pushing toward 20–30% to capture market share.

| Stage | Marketing as % of Revenue | |---|---| | Pre-revenue / launch | 25–40% (founder time + cash) | | Early growth (£100K–£1M) | 15–25% | | Established growth (£1M–£10M) | 10–15% | | Mature (£10M+) | 6–10% |

| Industry | Typical % | |---|---| | eCommerce | 12–20% | | SaaS | 15–25% | | Professional services | 5–10% | | Hospitality | 4–8% | | Healthcare | 3–6% | | Local services | 7–12% |

A modern AI-era marketing budget typically splits as:

40% paid media (Google, Meta, TikTok, programmatic) 20% content + SEO + GEO 15% creative production 15% tools, attribution, automation 10% strategic leadership (AI CMO or fractional CMO)

Launching a new product or category Defending share against an aggressive competitor Geographic expansion Recovering from a downturn (counter-cyclical investment historically wins)

Cash flow crunch (cut paid first, retain content) Pivoting positioning (don't scale broken messaging) Profit-extraction phase (mature business, owner taking dividends)

Use our Marketing Budget Calculator to model your specific situation.