Your board, your partner or your CFO asks the same question every planning season. Are we spending too much on marketing, or too little? Many founders answer with last year’s number plus a gut feel, and that answer rarely survives the second follow-up question.
A percent of revenue gives you a starting line you can defend in one sentence. Pair it with a quick check on what a new customer costs you, and you have a budget the board can test and still sign.
The benchmark, and who it measures
The most cited number comes from Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, which Gartner published on 12 May 2025. Gartner surveyed 402 CMOs and marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe between December 2024 and March 2025.
- The average marketing budget came to 7.7% of company revenue, flat against 2024.
- Half of CMOs reported a budget of 6% of revenue or less.
- Gartner’s “budget-conscious” CMOs sit at 4% or less.
- Its “big spenders” sit above 10.5%.
- 59% of CMOs said they lack the budget to carry out their strategy.
- Paid media takes 30.6% of the average marketing budget.
Read the sample before you quote the average. Most of the companies in Gartner’s survey earn more than $1 billion a year. A $1B company has brand recognition, repeat buyers and a sales team that already knows its market. A $15M company usually has less of all three, so each new customer costs it more in marketing.
For most companies between $5M and $100M, treat 7.7% as a floor. If a $1B company with a known name spends 7.7% just to hold steady, a smaller company that wants to grow 20% a year will often need to match it or go higher.
Six in ten marketing leaders at large companies say their budget falls short of their plan. If you run a smaller company and feel the same squeeze, you’re in the majority.
Three ranges you can defend
The Gartner groups give you three clean ranges. Each one maps to a different plan for the next 12 months.
| Range | Share of revenue | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Hold | 4% to 6% | You want to keep market share and protect margin. Revenue growth under 10%. Strong referral or repeat business. |
| Grow | 6% to 7.7% | You want 10% to 25% revenue growth from channels you already run. |
| Push | 7.7% to 10.5% | You want more than 25% growth, a new market, a new product line or a new region. |
Hold: 4% to 6%
Hold fits a company that already wins most of its new business from referrals, renewals and repeat orders. It keeps you visible, holds your search rankings and keeps the sales team fed without adding risk. The bottom of this range matches Gartner’s budget-conscious group. The top matches the median CMO.
Hold also fits a year when cash runs tight or the business needs to fix margin first. Pick it on purpose, and tell the board why you picked it.
Grow: 6% to 7.7%
Grow runs from the median (6%) to the survey average (7.7%). Most growing companies in the $5M to $100M band land here. It funds the channels that already work, plus room to test one or two new ones.
If you don’t know which range you sit in, start with Grow. It matches what large companies spend on average, and you can defend it to a board in one sentence.
Push: 7.7% to 10.5%
Push fits a year when you want a step change. That might mean entering a new state, launching a product, adding a new buyer type or making up ground on a competitor. The top of the range stops at the line where Gartner’s big spenders start.
A Push budget needs tighter tracking than the other two. You spend ahead of revenue, so you need monthly proof that each channel brings in pipeline.
Industry moves the number
Your industry shifts the right range as much as your growth target does. B2B services firms with long sales cycles and large contracts usually spend a smaller share of revenue on marketing than direct-to-consumer brands. They put more of their money into sales people and less into media.
DTC brands and software companies in a growth year usually spend well above the average. Mature industrial and distribution companies usually spend below it. Use the three ranges as a frame, then adjust for how your buyers find and choose you.
What the ranges look like in dollars
These worked examples use the Grow range, 6% to 7.7% of revenue. Monthly figures divide the annual number by 12 and round to the nearest thousand.
| Annual revenue | Grow budget per year | Grow budget per month |
|---|---|---|
| $5M | $300k to $385k | $25k to $32k |
| $20M | $1.2M to $1.54M | $100k to $128k |
| $50M | $3M to $3.85M | $250k to $321k |
| $100M | $6M to $7.7M | $500k to $642k |
At $5M, a Grow budget of $25k to $32k a month has to cover any in-house marketing salary, outside help, ad spend, software and content. One full-time marketing hire can take a third or more of that budget before a single ad runs. At this size, one in-house marketer plus an outside growth company often covers more channels than a full in-house team could.
At $20M, the budget reaches $100k to $128k a month. That supports a small in-house team, paid media across two or three platforms, and steady SEO and content work. It also gives you room to run real tests and kill the ones that fail.
At $50M and $100M, the budget supports a full team and several channels at once. The risk changes at this size. Smaller companies usually spend too little to get traction. Larger ones often spread the money across too many channels and can’t tell which ones work.
Run your own numbers
The marketing budget calculator does this math for your revenue in a few seconds. Enter your annual revenue, pick Hold, Grow or Push, and add what you spend today if you want a gap check. It shows the annual range, the monthly range, the paid media share at 30.6% and how far your current spend sits from the low end.
It runs in your browser, needs no signup and stores nothing. You can copy the result as plain text and paste it into a board memo or a planning doc. We made it, along with our other free tools, for founders who want a number to start from before the planning meeting.
What percent of revenue does not tell you
A percent of revenue tells you what companies like yours tend to spend. It can’t tell you whether that money will buy the growth you want. For that, you need two numbers you probably already have.
- How many new customers the growth target needs. Take the new revenue you want and divide it by what an average new customer brings in during the first year.
- What a new customer costs you today. Take last year’s total marketing spend and divide it by the number of new customers you won.
Multiply the two. If the result fits inside your budget range, the plan holds. If it doesn’t, you change the target, the budget or the cost per customer.
A worked example
Take a $20M company that wants 20% growth next year. That means $4M in new revenue.
- Say an average new customer brings in $40k in the first year. The company needs 100 new customers.
- Say last year’s marketing spend of $1.3M won 90 new customers. That puts the cost at about $14.4k per customer.
- 100 customers at $14.4k each comes to about $1.44M.
The Grow range for this company runs from $1.2M to $1.54M. The plan fits, near the top of the range.
Now change one input. Say a new customer costs $20k instead. The same 100 customers now need $2M. That sits above the Grow range and just inside Push. The founder can fund a Push budget. Or cut the growth target to what $1.54M can buy, which comes to 77 customers and about $3.1M in new revenue. Or bring the cost per customer down before scaling spend.
This check takes about ten minutes with numbers you already track.
Where cost per customer comes from
Cost per customer moves for reasons a percent of revenue never shows. Rising ad prices on Google and Meta push it up. A slow website that loses buyers between the ad click and the form pushes it up. Organic search traffic that drops because Google now answers the question at the top of the page pushes it up too.
If organic search brings you a big share of new customers, check how much of that traffic AI answers now take. Our AI Overview traffic loss calculator estimates the clicks you lose when Google shows an AI summary above your listing. To replace lost organic clicks, many companies spend more on paid ads, and that shows up later as a higher cost per customer.
Where the money goes
Gartner found that paid media takes 30.6% of the average marketing budget, the largest single line. For a $20M company on a Grow budget of $1.2M to $1.54M, the paid media share at 30.6% comes to about $367k to $471k a year.
At $5M the same math gives a much smaller pot. A Grow budget of $300k to $385k puts about $92k to $118k a year into paid media, or roughly $7.7k to $9.8k a month. That amount can fund one or two ad platforms with enough budget to learn from. Split it across four platforms and each one gets too little spend to produce clear results. The team then spends its time managing accounts instead of improving them.
The rest of the budget pays for four other lines.
- People: in-house marketing staff, salaries and benefits.
- Outside help: growth companies, freelancers and specialists.
- Technology: CRM, email, analytics, SEO tools, ad tools and the website itself.
- Content: blogs, video, design, case studies and sales material.
Gartner’s public release does not split the remaining 69.4% across these lines, so we won’t put numbers on them. In our work with brands in this revenue band, the mix depends heavily on how the company sells. A company with a two-person marketing team and an outside growth company has a different split from one with a ten-person in-house team.
Count everything when you compare. In the budgets we review, founders often quote only ad spend when they talk about their marketing budget. The Gartner 7.7% covers the whole budget, people included, so compare your full spend against it.
How to reset the budget in a quarter
You don’t need a full year to fix a budget. One quarter gives you enough data to cut what doesn’t work and fund what does.
- Baseline what each channel returns. List every channel you pay for: paid search, paid social, SEO, email, events, outbound, partners. Next to each, write last quarter’s spend and the pipeline or revenue it produced. Use your CRM instead of the ad platform’s own reports. Ad platforms count conversions generously.
- Cut what cannot show pipeline. Pause any channel that cannot point to qualified leads, booked calls or closed revenue after a full quarter. Brand awareness work can stay, but give it a cap and a clear check, such as growth in branded search.
- Fund the two channels with proof. Move the freed money into the two channels with the lowest cost per customer and room to grow. Running two channels well beats running six thin. Raise spend in steps of 20% to 30% a month so you can see where returns start to drop.
- Review monthly. Put spend, pipeline and cost per customer on one page and review it every month with the person who signs the budget. When a channel’s cost per customer rises two months in a row, find the cause before you add more money.
After one quarter you have real numbers for the cost-per-customer check above, and you can bring them to the next board meeting.
Get a second look at where the money goes
If you want an outside view of what your current spend returns, start with a free audit. We review your SEO, paid ads, website or analytics and show where the budget leaks and what to cut or add first. You get it within 24 hours, and you don’t need a call to start. Pair it with the marketing budget calculator and you walk into the planning meeting with a range, a gap and a fix list.
FAQ
What percent of revenue should a $10M company spend on marketing?
Across the three ranges, a $10M company lands between $400k and $1.05M a year. Hold runs $400k to $600k, Grow runs $600k to $770k, and Push runs $770k to $1.05M. Most growing companies at this size fit the Grow band, about $50k to $64k a month.
How much should a company spend on marketing?
Start with a percent of revenue: 4% to 6% to hold position, 6% to 7.7% to grow 10% to 25%, and 7.7% to 10.5% to push harder. Then check that number against how many new customers your growth target needs and what each one costs you today. If the two don’t match, change the target or the cost per customer.
Does the marketing budget include salaries?
Yes. The Gartner 7.7% covers the whole marketing budget, including in-house staff, outside help, paid media, technology and content. If you only want the ad spend figure, use the paid media share of about 30.6%.
Is 7.7% of revenue a lot or a little for marketing?
It is the average across mostly large companies in North America, the UK and Europe, flat from 2024. For a company between $5M and $100M, treat it as a floor in a growth year. Your industry and growth target matter more than the average.
Should a B2B company spend less on marketing than a B2C company?
Usually, yes. B2B companies with long sales cycles and large contracts put more money into sales and less into media. The budget still has to fund the channels that build pipeline, such as search, content, events and outbound, so check it against pipeline targets.
