How much to spend
on marketing.

Almost every figure you'll find online traces back to a few surveys, and none of them is about Australian small businesses.

Gartner surveyed 401 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe early in 2026. Budgets averaged 7.8% of company revenue, up from 7.7%, and most respondents worked at companies with revenue over US$1 billion. The 2026 CMO Survey of 308 US marketing leaders put it at 9.0% of revenue.

Software is higher again. SaaS Capital's 2026 survey of more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies found a median of 8% of annual recurring revenue on marketing, and 15% on sales on top of that.

Then there's the rule of thumb small business owners hear most: 7% to 8%. It comes from a 2012 US Small Business Administration post, which said businesses under US$5 million should spend that much, and that it assumes margins of 10 to 12% after all costs. The SBA's own later post says plainly that there's no hard and fast answer.

I looked for a credible Australian benchmark for small business marketing spend and didn't find one. The closest public data is the ATO's small business benchmarks, which come from tax returns.

They cover five ratios: total expenses, cost of sales, labour, rent and motor vehicle. Marketing isn't one of them. What the total expenses figure does tell you is how much is left over, and in some industries it isn't much. The hospitality budget page and the salon budget page use those ATO figures to show how thin the slice is.

So the calculator uses the overseas figures as a starting point and is upfront about it. For SaaS and accounting it uses figures specific to those industries. For B2B it uses the two large-company surveys above, which aren't B2B-only. For everything else it uses the general range and says so in the result.

A percentage of revenue ignores what you keep. Gross margin is what's left after the direct cost of the product or the job, before rent, wages and profit. Marketing comes out of that slice, along with everything else.

That's why the same 7% means different things to different businesses. An online store on a 30% margin spending 7% of revenue is handing almost a quarter of its gross profit to marketing. A bookkeeper on a 70% margin spending 7% is using a tenth of it.

The calculator caps the range at a quarter of gross profit. That cap is my rule of thumb, not a survey figure: above it, there's usually too little left for wages, rent and a profit. If the cap kicks in, the result says so, and the better fix is often price or direct costs, not more marketing.

A business holding steady can spend less than one trying to grow, because most of its customers already know it. Growth means reaching people who have never heard of you, and that costs more per customer.

One public study that splits spend by growth found a clear gap. In the AAM's 2025-26 study of 87 accounting firms, high-growth firms spent 2.1% of revenue on marketing and the rest 1%, not counting staff. That shows the two go together, not that the spending caused the growth.

For a new business, a percentage of this year's revenue is close to meaningless. Switch the calculator to 'a revenue target' and it works from the revenue you're aiming for. Then fund the first three months from cash you can afford to lose, and keep only what brings customers in.

The calculator splits the middle of your range three ways. Get found is SEO, AI search and your Google profile. Get chosen is ads, landing pages and offers. Prove it worked is tracking, reporting and testing.

The split follows where your sales come from now. A Wyong electrician who gets most work from Google Maps leans on getting found. A Newcastle clothing label selling through Instagram leans on getting chosen. An accountant who lives on referrals still puts most into getting found, because referred clients look you up before they call.

The percentages are my judgement, so treat them as a first draft. The one I'd hold to is the last share. Without tracking, you can't tell which of the other two is working, and next year's budget is a guess again.

To turn the get chosen share into a Google Ads setting, divide the monthly figure by 30.4. Google can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a given day, but no more than 30.4 times it in a month.

A percentage tells you what similar businesses spend. It doesn't tell you what a customer is worth to you, which is the number that decides whether marketing pays.

The reverse method starts there. Work out a customer's gross profit, how many enquiries become customers, and how much of that profit you'll spend to win one. The lead value calculator does that sum. Multiply the result by the extra customers you want, and you have a budget built from your own numbers.

If the two methods agree, good. If the percentage is far higher than what customers are worth, believe the customer maths. Then grow the budget in steps, and stop where the extra spend stops paying for itself: that's the Spend Curve.