The standard answer is 5 to 10 percent of revenue, and for most small businesses that number is useless without one condition attached: the spend only works if the strategy underneath it is solid.

A $2M business spending $100K a year on marketing with an unclear offer will lose to a competitor spending $40K with a sharp one. Every time. The budget question is really a sequencing question.

Spend in this order

First: clarity. Positioning, offer, message. This is mostly thinking, not spending. It's also where most businesses skip ahead, which is why their spend underperforms.

Second: the conversion system. Website, landing pages, follow-up. This is fixed-cost work. If this layer is broken, every ad dollar leaks through it.

Third: fuel. Ads, content, campaigns. Variable spend that only makes sense once the first two layers hold weight.

Most businesses run this backwards. They buy fuel first, watch it burn, and conclude marketing doesn't work.

How to know if your current spend is worth it

Boards and owners ask me a version of this question a lot: we're spending five, six, seven thousand a month, how do we know it's working? Fair question. Here's the test. Can you trace the spend to a number that matters? Leads, booked calls, customers, revenue. If the answer is impressions and engagement, you're funding activity, not outcomes.

And one more honest note: if you can't connect your marketing to results, the problem usually isn't the reporting. It's that the foundation was never clear enough to produce results worth reporting.

Figure out what you're selling and who it's for. Then the budget conversation gets easy.