The SBA’s Small-Business Recommendation
Two independently published sources, Boomcycle and Crestmont Capital, both cite the same US Small Business Administration guidance: businesses with under $5 million in annual revenue should spend 7% to 8% of gross revenue on marketing, an assumption resting on profit margins in the 10% to 12% range. That two independent secondaries converge on the identical figure and margin assumption is a solid signal the underlying SBA recommendation is being reported accurately, even though the SBA’s original data year for that specific guidance is not stated on either page.
That 7% to 8% range is the figure most directly relevant to a small business budgeting its own marketing spend, and it is meaningfully lower than the broader company-wide averages below.
How That Compares to The CMO Survey and Gartner’s Enterprise Figure
The CMO Survey, run jointly by Deloitte and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, put marketing budgets at 9.4% of company revenue in its latest wave, per Boomcycle’s reporting, up from 7.7% the prior year, with marketing’s overall share of total company budget at 11.4%. Sakas & Company separately reports The CMO Survey’s 2026 figure as 9.6% of revenue, with B2B services firms specifically at 9.2%. The 9.4% and 9.6% figures are close enough, and both name the same underlying survey closely enough, to state the range as approximately 9.4% to 9.6% rather than resolve the small decimal gap without pulling the survey’s own topline report directly.
Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, a separate poll of 402 CMOs limited to companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue, put marketing budgets at 7.7% of company revenue, with a median of 6% or less. That 7.7% figure happens to match The CMO Survey’s own prior-year number exactly, but the two surveys measure different, unrelated company populations, so treat the matching digits as a coincidence rather than a second data point confirming the same underlying figure.
The Numbers
The US Small Business Administration recommends businesses under $5 million in annual revenue spend 7% to 8% of gross revenue on marketing, assuming profit margins in the 10% to 12% range.
Boomcycle, “Average Marketing Budget as a Percentage of Revenue,” citing the SBA
A second, independently published source reports the identical SBA recommendation of 7% to 8% of gross revenue for businesses under $5 million.
The CMO Survey (Deloitte and Duke Fuqua) put marketing budgets at 9.4% of company revenue in its latest wave, up from 7.7% the prior year, with marketing’s share of total company budget at 11.4%.
A second secondary reports The CMO Survey’s 2026 figure as 9.6% of revenue, with B2B services firms specifically at 9.2%, a small decimal discrepancy from the 9.4% figure above, both naming the same underlying survey.
Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey (402 CMOs, all at $1 billion-plus revenue companies) put marketing budgets at 7.7% of company revenue, with a median of 6% or less, a coincidentally identical headline number to The CMO Survey’s own prior-year figure from an unrelated survey.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Boomcycle, “Average Marketing Budget as a Percentage of Revenue”
- Crestmont Capital, “Marketing Spend Benchmarks for Small Businesses: What the 2026 Data Shows”
- Sakas & Company, “Agency Cost of Marketing”