Costs & pricing · 7 min read
What's a realistic marketing budget for a small business?
The order to spend your money in, and where it usually gets wasted.
The short answer
Most small businesses do well setting a marketing budget in the low single-digit percentage of revenue, then spending it on foundations first: a fast website and a complete Google Business Profile, followed by reviews and local SEO, then social content, and only then paid ads. Ads amplify whatever you already have, so fixing enquiry capture before spending on traffic matters more than the total budget figure.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Published · Updated · 7 min read
What's a realistic marketing budget?
There's no single right number, but small UK businesses typically land somewhere in the low single-digit percentage of revenue on marketing, sometimes more when actively trying to grow. What you spend it on matters far more than hitting a precise percentage, especially in the first year or two of a small business marketing budget.
Rather than starting from a percentage, it can help to start from what one customer is worth. If a roofing job is worth £2,000, one extra job a month makes almost any sensible marketing spend look cheap. If you can't currently measure where enquiries come from, fixing that measurement matters more than raising the budget figure.
Spend first
- — A website that captures enquiries
- — An accurate Google Business Profile
- — Asking for genuine reviews
Spend later
- — Paid ads
- — Wider content and video
- — Expanding to new channels
The order to spend it in
- Foundations. A website that loads fast, says clearly what you do, and makes contact obvious. This is a one-off cost with a permanent benefit.
- Google Business Profile and reviews. Free to maintain, and usually the fastest source of local enquiries once it's complete.
- Local SEO and service pages. Compounding work — what you do this quarter keeps paying off next year.
- Social content. Builds familiarity and trust locally, and gives you material to reuse everywhere else.
- Paid ads. Worth adding only once the four steps above are working, so the traffic you pay for actually converts.
This order isn't arbitrary. Each step makes the next one work harder — a good review profile makes a website more convincing, a fast website makes paid ads worth running, and so on. Spend out of order and you're often just paying to send traffic to a leak.
What a small business marketing budget could look like
| Priority | Typical cost | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Monthly plan, no upfront fee at Fixby | Everything else sends traffic here |
| Google Business Profile | Free (your time) | Fastest route to local enquiries |
| Reviews | Free (your time) | Builds trust and helps local ranking |
| Local SEO | Monthly, ongoing | Compounds over months and years |
| Social content | Monthly or DIY | Builds familiarity, feeds other channels |
| Paid ads | Flexible, scalable | Amplifies a setup that already converts |
“A realistic small business marketing budget is often a low single-digit percentage of revenue, spent in the right order.”
Where marketing money gets wasted
- Paying for ads that point at a slow, unclear website.
- Directory listings that nobody in Huddersfield, Halifax or Wakefield actually uses.
- Rebranding before fixing how enquiries are captured.
- Posting on five platforms badly instead of one or two properly.
- Increasing ad spend to compensate for a website or profile that isn't converting.
It's worth checking your own website against the common warning signs before you increase spend anywhere else. A slow site or a hidden contact form quietly wastes every pound you then spend sending traffic to it.
Building versus running costs
It helps to separate one-off spend from ongoing spend when you're budgeting. A website with Fixby Studios is available on a monthly plan with no upfront build fee, with hosting and maintenance included (see our monthly plans at /plans). SEO, social media management and ad spend are ongoing, because they're ongoing activities, not a single deliverable.
A sensible starting point
If you're setting a budget for the first time, start small and specific: cover the one-off cost of a proper website, put in the time to build up Google reviews, then decide month to month whether local SEO or social content deserves the next slice, based on what's actually bringing in enquiries. Add paid ads once you can see conversions happening reliably without them.
This applies whether you're a tradesperson covering Kirklees, a cafe in Huddersfield town centre, or a business serving customers further out towards Leeds or Bradford. The order of priorities barely changes; only the total amount you can sensibly spend does.
Get in touch
If you want help working out where a limited marketing budget is best spent, email info@fixbystudios.co.uk or call 07737 067552 and we'll talk through your business honestly, not just sell you the biggest package.
Reviewing the budget as you go
A marketing budget shouldn't be fixed once and forgotten. Revisit it every few months and ask a simple question: which pound spent brought in a job or a booking, and which pound didn't? Small businesses rarely have the luxury of wasted spend, so this kind of honest review matters more than it does for a larger company with money to burn.
It's also worth reviewing the budget whenever something in the business changes, such as taking on staff, adding a new service, or expanding the area you cover beyond Huddersfield into neighbouring parts of West Yorkshire. Growth usually means the order of priorities holds, but the amounts allocated to each stage need revisiting.
Your questions
- How much should a small business spend on marketing?
- There's no fixed figure, but many small UK businesses budget somewhere in the low single-digit percentage of revenue, spending more when actively trying to grow. What matters more than the exact percentage is spending it in the right order.
- Should I spend on ads or a website first?
- A website first. Ads amplify whatever you already have, so paying for traffic to a slow or unclear site usually just means losing money faster.
- Is a Google Business Profile really free marketing?
- Yes. Setting up and maintaining a Google Business Profile costs nothing but your time, and for most local businesses it's the fastest source of new enquiries.
- How do I know if my marketing budget is working?
- Track where enquiries actually come from, even roughly, by asking new customers how they found you. Without that, it's very hard to know which part of the budget is earning its keep.
- Should a small business budget for marketing monthly or as one-off spend?
- Both. A website is usually a one-off cost, while SEO, social media management and paid ads are ongoing activities that need a regular monthly budget to keep compounding.
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
Next step
Let's get your business seen.
A free plan for your social media, filming and ads in your area.
Fixby Studios builds websites, runs SEO and manages social media for small businesses across Huddersfield and West Yorkshire. Web design in Huddersfield
Prefer to talk it through? Contact Fixby Studios, email info@fixbystudios.co.uk or call 07737 067552.
