The number you'll hear everywhere is five to ten percent of revenue. It's not wrong — but it's a average that ignores the three questions that actually set your number: what a customer is worth to you, whether your free foundation is done, and whether you're maintaining or growing. Answer those and the budget writes itself.
Marketing budgets make sense only against customer value. A customer worth $150 once supports a few dollars of acquisition cost; a customer worth $5,000 a year supports hundreds. Work it backwards: what you'd happily pay for one new customer, times the customers you want this year — that's your ceiling, and it's a better compass than any percentage. Owners who skip this math either starve a business that could grow or pour money into customers that cost more than they return.
Most small businesses buy ads while their free foundation sits half-built — and the free foundation is what converts the paid traffic anyway. Complete Google Business Profile, reviews asked for systematically, a site that answers the questions customers actually search, accurate listings everywhere. That work costs time, not money, and it compounds: it's also exactly what search engines and AI assistants read when they decide which business to recommend. A dollar of ads pointed at a weak foundation buys traffic that bounces; the same dollar after the foundation converts.
Once the foundation converts, the percentages become useful planning bands: established businesses maintaining position commonly run around five percent of revenue; businesses pushing growth or launching commonly run closer to ten, sometimes more in year one when nobody knows they exist. Whatever the number, track it to booked work — cost per customer, not clicks or impressions — and rebalance quarterly toward whatever's producing. The budget isn't a vow; it's a hypothesis you keep testing.
Common guidance: around five percent to maintain, closer to ten to grow, more at launch. But percentages are averages — the sharper tool is customer math: what a customer is worth, what you'll pay to get one, and whether your free foundation converts before you buy traffic.
More time than money at first: profile, reviews, site, and listings cost effort and convert everything else. Paid spend makes sense once something converts — then a launch push above the maintenance percentage buys the awareness a new name lacks.
The free foundation isn't just effective — it's the layer that decides whether paid works: profiles, reviews, and a readable site are what customers and AI assistants check before choosing. Most businesses have more room there than they think.
One metric: cost per customer, tracked by channel to actual booked work. If you can't tell which channel a customer came from, fix the tracking before raising the budget — an unmeasured budget only ever grows.