Last Updated on June 10, 2026
What UK Small Businesses Actually Spend, by Size, and What the Benchmarks Say They Should
Executive Summary
Ask what a business should spend on marketing and you will hear “5 to 10% of revenue” from almost everyone. Ask what UK small businesses actually spend and the answer is very different: in a 2025 survey by UK marketing consultants, 58% of SMEs spent less than £250 a month. For a business turning over £100,000, that is under 3%. For most, the gap between the benchmark and the bank statement is the real story.
This report sets out both sides: what the credible benchmarks say, what UK businesses actually do, and how to work out a sensible number for your own size and stage. Where data comes from large-company surveys or US panels, we say so, because most “average marketing budget” statistics quietly describe billion-dollar firms.
Key Takeaways
- The standard guidance is 5 to 10% of revenue. Large firms actually spend 7.7% (Gartner, 2025) to 9.4% (CMO Survey, spring 2025). Most UK small businesses spend a fraction of that.
- B2C businesses budget roughly two and a half times more than B2B as a share of revenue: 15.5% for B2C product firms against 6.4% for B2B product firms (CMO Survey, US data).
- The owner is usually the marketing department: 65% of UK SME marketing is done personally by the owner, 67% of SMEs have no marketing action plan and 46% have no strategy at all.
- UK budgets turned upwards in 2026. The IPA Bellwether for Q1 2026 recorded the strongest budget growth in almost two years, with a net balance of +7.3% of firms raising budgets.
- A third of UK businesses have no website, including 35% of the 4.3 million sole-trader businesses that make up three quarters of the UK business population.
- Percentages are guidance, not law. The right question is what a customer is worth to you and what it costs to win one, then whether your budget can buy enough customers to hit your growth target.
Contents
What the Benchmarks Say
Two long-running surveys anchor the global numbers, and both skew large. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, drawn mostly from firms with revenue above $1 billion, put marketing budgets at 7.7% of company revenue, flat on the year and well below the roughly 11% average before the pandemic. The CMO Survey (Duke University, spring 2025, US-centric) recorded a rebound to 9.4% of revenue, with sharp differences by business type.
The B2B versus B2C split is the most useful single benchmark in the data. If you sell to consumers, the going rate is roughly two and a half times higher as a share of revenue than if you sell to businesses, because consumer demand has to be created while business demand is often captured. Apply the wrong benchmark and you will either starve a consumer brand or drown a B2B one in wasted spend. No UK survey credibly measures an average percentage for small firms, which is why the next section uses what UK SMEs report in pounds instead.
What UK Small Businesses Actually Spend
The UK picture comes from practitioner and official surveys rather than CMO panels, and it describes a different world.
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| SMEs spending under £250/month on marketing | 58% | SME Marketing Report, UK consultants’ survey, 2025 |
| Marketing done personally by the owner | 65% | SME Marketing Report, 2025 |
| No marketing action plan | 67% | The Marketing Centre, survey of 1,988 UK SMEs, 2024 |
| No formal marketing strategy | 46% | SME Marketing Report, 2025 |
| Generating enough leads to hit growth targets | 28% | The Marketing Centre, 2024 |
| UK businesses with no website | 32% | UK Business Data Survey, GOV.UK, 2024 |
| Sole traders with no website | 35% | UK Business Data Survey, GOV.UK, 2024 |
Scale matters for reading these numbers. The UK had 5.69 million private sector businesses at the start of 2025: 4.27 million with no employees, 1.15 million micro employers with 1 to 9 staff, 220,000 small firms with 10 to 49, and only 38,000 medium firms (Business Population Estimates, October 2025). When a statistic says “a third of UK businesses”, it is mostly describing one-person operations, which is exactly the group most likely to be invisible online and spending nothing.
Benchmarks by Revenue: The Reference Table
The monthly figures below are straight arithmetic from the percentage benchmarks, not survey results: revenue multiplied by the percentage, divided by twelve. Use them as orientation, then adjust for your sector and stage using the next section.
| Annual Revenue | Typical Guidance | At 5% | At 10% |
|---|---|---|---|
| £30,000 (sole trader) | 2-5%, often time over money | £125/month | £250/month |
| £50,000 | 3-7% | £208/month | £417/month |
| £100,000 (micro) | 5-10% | £417/month | £833/month |
| £250,000 | 5-10% | £1,042/month | £2,083/month |
| £500,000 (small) | 5-8% | £2,083/month | £4,167/month |
| £1,000,000 | 5-8% | £4,167/month | £8,333/month |
| £5,000,000 (medium) | 4-8% | £20,833/month | £41,667/month |
Calculated estimates from rule-of-thumb percentages, not measured spend. New or growth-phase businesses commonly budget 10-20% of projected revenue; established businesses in maintenance mode commonly sit at 4-7%.
Which Way Budgets Are Moving in 2026
After a flat 2025, UK marketing budgets turned a corner. The IPA Bellwether Report for Q1 2026, the standard quarterly measure of UK marketing budget revisions, recorded a net balance of +7.3% of companies revising budgets upwards, the strongest reading in almost two years: 26.8% of firms raised budgets against 19.5% cutting. Events led the growth at +14.7%, with PR at a five-quarter high. UK ad spend is forecast to grow 2.5% in 2026.
The practical read for a small business: your competitors, on average, are spending more this year, not less. A budget that held position in 2025 is quietly losing share of voice in 2026.
Working Out Your Own Number
Percentage benchmarks are a starting grid, not an answer. Three adjustments matter more than the headline figure.
- Stage beats size. A new business has no customer base, no reviews and no search presence, which is why launch-phase guidance runs at 10 to 20% of projected revenue. An established business with strong repeat trade can maintain at 4 to 7%. Spending like a mature business while needing to grow like a new one is the most common budgeting mistake we see.
- B2B or B2C sets your gravity. Benchmarks put B2B product firms at 6.4% and B2C product firms at 15.5% of revenue. If you are a consumer-facing business budgeting like a B2B one, your plan is underpowered by design.
- Work backwards from customers, not forwards from percentages. Decide how many new customers you need this year, multiply by a realistic cost per customer for your sector, and compare that with the percentage guidance. Our UK cost per lead data gives you the per-sector figures to plug in.
Making a Small Budget Go Further
If you are in the 58% spending under £250 a month, the data is oddly encouraging, because the cheapest assets in UK marketing are also among the most effective and most neglected. A complete Google Business Profile is free and most small businesses do not have one. Asking for reviews is free and most businesses do not ask. A functioning one-page website costs less than three months of a typical directory subscription.
The order of operations we recommend at every budget level: fix what stops existing demand converting (website, profile, reviews), then fund one channel properly rather than four channels at £50 each, then scale what shows a measurable return. Spreading £200 across five channels is how budgets disappear without a trace. What each channel costs to do properly is set out in the UK Marketing Cost Index.
Methodology
Compiled June 2026 from: Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2025 (published May 2025, mostly $1bn+ firms across North America and Europe); The CMO Survey, Duke University, spring 2025 (US-centric); Department for Business and Trade, Business Population Estimates 2025 (October 2025); UK Business Data Survey 2024 (GOV.UK); SME Marketing Report 2025 (survey by UK marketing consultants; sample size not disclosed, attributed accordingly); The Marketing Centre, Marketing Maturity report (1,988 UK SME decision-makers, fieldwork December 2023); IPA Bellwether Report Q1 2026 (published April 2026). US and large-firm data is labelled as such throughout. Monthly pound figures in the reference table are calculated from percentage guidance, not measured spend. No reliable UK survey of average marketing spend as a percentage of revenue for small firms currently exists.
What to Do Next
Put your own numbers against the table above: last quarter’s marketing spend, divided by revenue, then ask whether that percentage matches your growth ambition. What individual services should cost is covered in our guide to UK marketing costs, channel-by-channel pricing sits in the UK Marketing Cost Index, and cost per lead benchmarks show what a customer should cost to acquire in your sector.
