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How Much Should You Spend on Marketing in 2027? Start With Your Sales Goal

Writer: Tereza Palaonta
Tereza Palaonta
5 days ago
4 min read

Short answer: Most small businesses spend 2–5% of revenue on marketing in B2B and 5–10% in B2C. Use that as a sanity check, not a plan: calculate your 2027 budget from your sales goal and what you can afford to pay for a new customer, then compare the result with the benchmark.


That's nice – but what's the right number for your business? It's the question most founders ask every Q4. Is it last year plus 10%? Somewhere within your industry benchmark? Neither. It's hidden in your own sales data.


"How much should we spend on marketing?" I hear this every single time a client is thinking about launching ads. And my answer is always a question: how much do you make in sales – and how much of it is profit?


This article is part of my guide on how to plan your 2027 marketing budget.


What percentage of revenue should a small business spend on marketing?


The most quoted rule of thumb is 2–5% of revenue for B2B and 5–10% for B2C (BDC, Canada). Large companies in Europe and North America average 7.8% (Gartner, May 2026). But there's no reliable benchmark for European SMEs – and they spend very differently from each other.


Only about a third of EU companies (32.6%) paid for online advertising in 2024, from 49.4% in Cyprus to 22.8% in Romania. Small companies use targeted online ads far less than large ones: 23.9% vs 40.6% (Eurostat).


I think there are two reasons. One is budget. The other is knowledge: a large company always has someone responsible for digital marketing, while in an SME it often depends on how comfortable the owner is with trying something new – because there's no budget for an in-house specialist. That's exactly where a fractional marketing director helps: set things up properly, then check in every quarter.


Meanwhile, European digital ad spend grew 10.5% to €131bn in 2025 (IAB Europe). Attention keeps getting more expensive – and a borrowed percentage tells you very little.


How do you calculate your own marketing budget from your sales goal?


Work backwards in four steps:


  1. How much new revenue do you want from new customers in 2027?

  2. How many new customers is that? Revenue goal ÷ what an average customer spends per year.

  3. How much can you afford to pay for one new customer? Average customer value × your gross margin is the maximum – the point where you break even. Aim lower to keep a profit.

  4. Your media budget = new customers × the cost per customer you're aiming for.


In B2B, add one step between 2 and 3: how many leads you need (new customers ÷ the share of leads that become customers).


Example (fictional): a premium cava brand makes €400,000 a year and wants €60,000 more from new customers in 2027. An average customer spends €300 a year, so the brand needs 200 new customers. With a 50% gross margin, each customer brings €150 of profit in the first year – that's the most it can pay to win one without losing money. Aiming for €75 per new customer, the media budget is 200 × €75 = €15,000.


That's about 3.3% of the new total revenue – below the 5–10% B2C benchmark, before tools, content and salaries. And customers who order again are worth more than €300 – which is why retention matters.



What changes how much you can reinvest?

  • Launches – a new product usually needs more budget before it earns anything back.

  • Peak seasons – around Black Friday, Christmas or Valentine's Day, advertising gets more expensive and discounts cut your margin. Plan for a higher cost per customer.

  • Capacity – there's nothing worse than creating huge demand and then taking ages to ship, or running out of stock.

  • Minimum spend – €50 a month is rarely enough to test Google Ads. At €1 per click, that's 50 visits; if 2 in 100 visitors buy, you get one sale – too little to learn anything. (Illustrative numbers.)


What if you don't know your cost per customer yet?

Then you can't calculate your budget yet – and that's the real finding. Use the lower end of the benchmark as a temporary budget, and make tracking its first line.


Run the first 90 days as a test: set up conversion tracking, measure what a lead or customer costs per channel, then recalculate your budget for the rest of the year. What you cut from your stop list can pay for the tracking.


What should a marketing budget include?

More than ad spend. A realistic budget covers:

  • Media and ad spend

  • Tools and software

  • Agency, freelancer or fractional marketing director fees

  • Content production – photo, video, design, copywriting

  • Events and sponsorships, if they earn their place

  • Influencers – part of your profit margin goes to them


What about in-house marketing salaries? I count them in. At the end of the day, they're paid from sales too. Calculate both versions – with and without salaries – so you see the full cost of marketing and can still compare like for like.


For the full planning process, go back to my 2027 marketing budget guide.


FAQ

What percentage of revenue should a small business spend on marketing?

Commonly 2–5% for B2B and 5–10% for B2C. Use it as a sanity check, not a plan.

Not if you're launching, entering a new market or scaling a channel with proven results. Yes, if you can't measure what it brings.

Start from your sales goal: new customers needed × what you can afford to pay for one, plus tools, fees and content.

Yes – they're paid from sales like any other marketing cost. Calculate your budget with and without them to see the full picture.

Don't know what a new customer costs you, or which channel brings them? That's the gap a marketing audit closes – so your 2027 budget is based on your numbers, not someone else's percentage. Book a discovery call and we'll work it out together.



I'm Tereza – I help founders stop being the marketing department and start having one.



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