"How much should I be spending on marketing?" is one of the most common questions a small business owner asks, and the honest answer is that there's no single figure that's right for everyone. There are, however, sensible ranges, a split that works for most local service businesses, and some clear signs of where money gets wasted.
The percentage-of-revenue rule, and its limits
That's a useful starting point, but it breaks down in two situations. A brand-new business with little or no revenue yet can't sensibly work from a percentage of nothing — it needs a baseline spend to get moving at all. And a business with very high revenue but thin margins (some trades, some retail) can end up "correctly" budgeting a figure that's simply more than the business can spare that month.
Treat the percentage as a sanity check once you're established, not as the way you build the budget from scratch.
A realistic monthly breakdown for a local service business
- Website and hosting: £80-£150/month. This covers a managed plan with hosting, SSL, backups and monitoring — our own managed plans start at £80/month with no upfront cost.
- SEO groundwork: £150-£500/month. Ongoing content, technical fixes and local optimisation. Lower for a simple local business, higher if you're competing across a wider area or several services.
- Paid ads: £150-£600/month (management plus ad spend). This varies hugely by trade and competition — see our guide to paid advertising for what's realistic.
- Reviews and content: £0-£100/month. Often just time rather than cash — asking happy customers for reviews, taking a few decent photos, writing the occasional update.
- Tools: £20-£60/month. Email marketing, call tracking, a booking system — small line items that add up.
Add it up and £300-£1,000 a month is a common, workable range for a small business that wants a website which actually earns its keep alongside some ongoing SEO and a modest ad budget.
How the split changes with the stage of the business
A steady, established business with a decent flow of repeat and referral work can often afford to lean the budget towards SEO and content, because the compounding value matters more than an immediate spike in enquiries. Ads become more of a top-up for quiet periods.
A business actively trying to grow — opening in a new area, adding a service, hiring — usually needs to run both properly at once, which is why the percentage often climbs towards 10-15% during a growth phase rather than staying flat. Our guide on whether to start with Google Ads or SEO goes into this trade-off in more detail.
Why the website is the foundation, not a line item
We've written separately about what a website actually costs to build in the UK in our guide to small business website costs. This article is about the ongoing spend that keeps a business visible and busy — but the two are connected. A cheap website that converts poorly makes every other line in this budget less effective.
Measuring payback properly
Paid advertising gives you the fastest, clearest numbers — cost per click, cost per enquiry, and (if you track it) cost per job won. SEO is slower to measure because rankings and traffic move gradually, but tracking enquiries against organic traffic over a few months will tell you whether it's working.
A simple monthly habit — noting where each new enquiry came from — is worth more than any dashboard. Most small businesses can do this in a spreadsheet in under five minutes a week.
Where the money is most often wasted
- Paying for SEO on a website that's too slow or unclear to convert the traffic it eventually attracts.
- Running ads with no landing page tailored to the search — sending clicks to a generic homepage rather than the specific service people searched for.
- Chasing every new platform and channel at a token spend each, rather than doing two or three things properly.
- Paying twice for the same job — a builder site and separate SEO retainer that don't talk to each other, duplicating effort.
- No tracking at all, so a budget survives or dies based on gut feeling rather than results.
The fix for most of these isn't more budget — it's fewer, better-connected pieces spending the same money more deliberately.
Building your own number
A marketing budget that's reviewed and adjusted every quarter based on actual enquiries will always outperform a bigger budget set once and left untouched.
Common questions
What percentage of revenue should go on marketing?
Established small businesses commonly spend 5-10% of revenue on marketing; businesses actively trying to grow or entering a new area often push towards 10-15%. Those are guides, not rules.
What's a realistic monthly marketing budget for a small UK business?
For a local trade or service business, £300-£1,000 a month covering website, hosting, SEO groundwork and a modest ad budget is a common and workable range.
Should I spend on ads or SEO first?
If you need enquiries this month, ads. If you're building something that compounds over a year, SEO. Most businesses that can afford it run a small amount of both.
How long before marketing spend pays back?
Paid ads can produce enquiries within days but stop the moment you stop paying. SEO and content typically take three to six months to show meaningful movement and keep working afterwards.
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Written by Adam, A9 Web Design
Adam builds hand-coded websites for small businesses across Cambridgeshire and looks after their hosting, SEO and advertising day to day. Everything here comes from work on real client sites — no theory, no filler.