How much should a UK small business spend on marketing?
Most UK small businesses spend 5–10% of revenue on marketing once established, and 10–20% when actively growing or newly launched, as a widely used planning guide rather than a fixed rule. In cash terms that is often £500–£2,000 a month for a single-location trade or local business, split across paid ads, SEO and a website that converts.
Ask ten business owners how much to spend on marketing and you will get ten different answers, most of them a guess. There is no single correct figure, but there is a sensible way to arrive at one — a percentage-of-revenue guide for businesses with trading history, and a backwards calculation from the leads you want for businesses that do not have one yet. Here is how to set a number you can actually defend.
The revenue percentage rule of thumb
A widely used planning guide, not a law of physics, is that established small businesses spend roughly 5–10% of revenue on marketing to maintain their position, and businesses that are actively growing — a new area, a new service, or simply trying to gain ground — spend closer to 10–20%. Treat these as a starting range to sense-check your own number against, not a figure to hit exactly.
| Business stage | Typical share of revenue | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Established, steady demand | 5–10% | Maintain visibility and replace natural customer churn |
| Actively growing — new area or service | 10–20% | Build awareness and rankings from a standing start |
| Pre-revenue or just launched | A fixed pound figure, not a percentage | No revenue yet to base a percentage on — budget from what you can afford to invest |
What that looks like in cash terms
Turn the percentage into pounds and a picture forms quickly. A trade business turning over £120,000 a year sits at £500–£1,000 a month on the maintain end, or £1,000–£2,000 a month if it is pushing into new areas. Below a certain floor, though, percentages stop being useful — there is a minimum spend most channels need just to gather enough data to work properly.
Whatever percentage guide you use, Scalepoint recommends a minimum ad budget of £500/month, paid directly to the platform. Below that, an account rarely gathers enough data to optimise, whatever the maths on paper says.
Or work backwards from the leads you want
If you do not have revenue history to apply a percentage to — a new business, or a new service line — work backwards instead. Decide how many extra jobs or customers you want each month, multiply by what you can afford to pay for each one, and that is your budget. It arrives at a similar range from the opposite direction.
| You want | × affordable cost per lead | = monthly marketing spend |
|---|---|---|
| 10 extra enquiries | £40 | £400 |
| 20 extra enquiries | £40 | £800 |
| 20 extra enquiries | £75 | £1,500 |
| 40 extra enquiries | £50 | £2,000 |
Splitting the budget across channels
A single-channel budget is fragile. Most local UK businesses do best spreading spend across a small number of channels that do different jobs — one for immediate demand, one that compounds for free over time, and a website that turns visits into enquiries whichever channel sent them.
| Channel | Typical share | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 35–45% | Immediate, high-intent enquiries from people ready to buy |
| SEO / content | 20–30% | Compounding organic visibility with no per-click cost |
| Meta Ads | 15–25% | Awareness, retargeting, and visual proof of finished work |
| Website / landing pages | One-off, or a small ongoing share | The asset every other channel sends traffic to |
| Google Business Profile | Free — time only | Often the single highest-return channel for a local business |
What changes the number
- Competition in your sector and area — a crowded market costs more per click and per lead to compete in.
- Whether you are maintaining or growing — holding position costs less than winning a new area or service from zero.
- Your close rate — the better you convert enquiries into booked work, the further the same budget stretches.
- Agency or management fees on top of media spend, if you are not running channels yourself.
Common budgeting mistakes
- Spending too little to let any channel gather the data it needs to optimise — a starved account never gets efficient.
- Spreading a small budget across too many channels at once, so none of them get enough spend to work.
- No conversion tracking, so nobody can say which pound actually produced a booked job.
- Treating marketing as a one-off cost rather than an ongoing one — most channels need months, not weeks, to prove themselves.
A realistic example
A single-area trade business testing the water might run £500/month in Google Ads spend plus a management fee, or bundle Google and Meta together. Scalepoint's Spark bundle is £750/month management for Google Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Facebook and Instagram combined — plus whatever ad budget you set, paid direct to the platforms at cost with no markup. A business ready to add SEO on top would budget from £550/month more for that. None of these figures include VAT, because there is none to add.
No VAT — the price you see is the price you pay. Scalepoint is under the £90k VAT threshold, so a quoted fee is the whole fee, with no "ex VAT" small print.
Review it, do not set it and forget it
A marketing budget is a starting hypothesis, not a fixed contract. Review cost per lead and cost per booked job every month, and revisit the overall budget every quarter. Scale up the channels producing profitable work, cut what is not, and adjust the total as revenue and goals move — the right number changes as the business does.