What a sensible marketing budget looks like under GBP500k turnover

For a business turning over under GBP500k a year, a sensible marketing budget is roughly 5 to 10 percent of turnover, and the exact figure matters less than the discipline of spending it consistently. On GBP300k that is somewhere around GBP15,000 to GBP30,000 a year, or GBP1,250 to GBP2,500 a month across everything. The mistake is not the size of the number. It is spending it in panicked bursts instead of a steady flow.

I run Clixoni, and I get asked about budget more than almost anything, usually phrased as "what should I be spending". The honest answer is a range and a principle, not a magic figure, because a fair budget for a plumber doing GBP200k looks different from a consultancy doing GBP450k. Let me give you a way to think about it that actually holds up.

How much should I actually spend?

Start with a percentage of turnover, not a gut feeling. For most established small businesses under GBP500k, 5 to 10 percent is the sensible band. Newer businesses, or ones trying to grow quickly, sit at the top of that range or a touch above. Steady businesses that just want to keep the enquiries coming sit lower. On GBP250k turnover, that is very roughly GBP1,000 to GBP2,000 a month, all in. Below about 5 percent and you tend to underfeed the thing and wonder why it does not work. Above 10 percent, for a business this size, you usually cannot spend it well enough to justify it.

Notice how modest that makes a done-for-you marketing system look. At £350 a month you are spending GBP4,200 a year. On GBP250k turnover that is under 2 percent, which leaves plenty of headroom for anything extra you choose to layer on. The point is not that cheaper is better. It is that the core system does not need to eat your whole budget to work.

What should the money go on?

Being found and being convincing, in that order. The foundations come first: a website that works and converts, content going up regularly, a live Google Business Profile, and someone answering the enquiries. Get those humming before you spend a penny on anything fancier. Most owners do it backwards, throwing money at ads or a flashy redesign while the basics sit neglected, and then wondering why the return is poor. Fix the plumbing first. I laid out what those foundations are in the five things that decide whether your website brings in enquiries.

Why does consistency matter more than the amount?

Because marketing rewards a steady rhythm and quietly wastes a spike. An owner who spends GBP2,000 in one desperate month and then nothing for three has spent more, and got less, than one who spends GBP500 a month every month. The stop-start pattern means you are forever restarting from cold, never letting the momentum build. Google, and your reputation, both reward showing up regularly. A smaller budget spent every month beats a bigger one spent in fits, which is the same lesson I covered in why part-time marketing gets part-time results.

What is the most common budgeting mistake?

Treating marketing as a cost to cut the moment things get tight, rather than the thing that fills the diary. When work slows, the instinct is to pull the marketing spend, which is exactly when you most need it, so you dig the hole deeper. The businesses that stay steady are the ones that hold their marketing budget through the quiet patches, because that spend is what ends the quiet patch. Cutting it feels prudent. It is usually the opposite.

A simple way to sanity-check your own number is to look at what one new customer is worth to you. If an average job or client brings in a few thousand pounds, then a marketing spend that reliably brings in even a handful of extra enquiries a year has paid for itself several times over. Framed that way, £350 a month stops looking like a cost and starts looking like a couple of extra jobs you would not otherwise have won. The businesses that get budgeting right are the ones that do this maths honestly, rather than judging the spend in isolation and flinching at the monthly figure without ever putting it against what it brings back.

The honest tradeoff

A percentage rule is a starting point, not gospel, and I would be lying if I pretended every business fits the band neatly. A brand-new business with no reputation may need to spend proportionally more for a while to get going. A well-established one with strong word of mouth might do fine spending less. And the return on marketing is genuinely harder to see than the return on, say, a new van, which is why it gets cut first and rebuilt last. You have to be willing to spend steadily through a period where the results are not yet obvious. That is the real cost, and it is not financial.

What should you do with this?

Work out 5 to 10 percent of your turnover, commit to spending it every month rather than in bursts, and put it on the foundations before anything clever. For a lot of businesses under GBP500k, a done-for-you system at £350 a month covers those foundations and leaves budget spare, which is a comfortable place to be. See exactly what that includes on the pricing page, or book a short call with Mark and I will help you sketch a sensible split for your numbers, no obligation.