Deciding how much to invest in marketing is one of the most important decisions for a company looking to grow. Yet many business owners reach this point without clear benchmarks: some choose an amount that feels comfortable, others follow a competitor’s budget, and some simply allocate whatever money is left over at the end of the month.
The problem is that none of these approaches necessarily considers what the company actually needs to achieve. A budget may seem high and still be insufficient for a specific goal. Likewise, a relatively small investment can produce strong results when there is strategic clarity.
The question should not simply be how much marketing costs, but how much the company needs to invest to achieve its goals in a financially sustainable way.
Is There an Ideal Percentage of Revenue to Invest in Marketing?
There is no universal percentage that works for every company. Using a portion of revenue as a benchmark can help with planning, but that number needs to be interpreted in the context of the industry, profit margins, stage of the business, and growth objectives.
To put this discussion into perspective, a Gartner survey published in 2025 found that marketing budgets represented, on average, 7.7% of the revenue of the companies surveyed. The survey included 402 marketing leaders in North America and Europe, predominantly from organizations with annual revenue exceeding US$1 billion. Gartner
This figure is useful as a market benchmark, but it does not mean that a small or medium-sized Brazilian company should invest exactly 7.7% of its revenue in marketing. The organizations surveyed have structures, resources, and challenges that are very different from those of smaller businesses.
Imagine two companies that each generate R$200,000 in monthly revenue. The first has an established customer base, strong repeat business, and plans to grow at a moderate pace. The second is entering a competitive market, needs to build brand awareness, and wants to acquire customers quickly. Although they generate the same revenue, they would hardly need the same marketing budget.
The percentage is a benchmark. Strategy is what determines whether it makes sense.
What Really Determines How Much Your Company Should Invest?
Before setting a budget, it is important to understand four factors that directly influence how much investment is needed.
1. Growth Objectives
A company that intends to maintain its position in the market has different needs from one that wants to open new locations, launch products, or expand into a new region. The more ambitious the objectives, the greater the investment required may be, although increasing the budget does not guarantee proportional growth.
2. Profit Margin and Financial Capacity
Revenue is not profit. A company with tight margins needs to carefully assess how much it can invest without compromising its operations. The budget should take into account costs, expenses, cash flow, and the expected financial return from each initiative.
3. Marketing Maturity
Companies that already have clear positioning, established channels, and structured sales processes can focus their resources on optimization and expansion. Those that have not yet built this foundation may need to invest first in diagnostics, strategy, brand identity, digital presence, or sales organization.
4. Market and Consumer Behavior
The cost of acquiring customers varies significantly across industries. A company selling high-value contracts operates under a very different sales dynamic from a restaurant, clinic, or online store. The time required to convert an opportunity into a sale also affects both the budget and the expected timeframe for returns.
These factors need to be analyzed together. Defining a percentage without understanding these conditions is like calculating the cost of a trip before knowing the destination.
How to Calculate a Marketing Budget in Practice
A more consistent way to plan your investment is to start with the desired outcome and work backward. Instead of choosing an arbitrary amount, the company estimates what needs to happen commercially to achieve its goal.
Consider a hypothetical example: a company wants to acquire 20 new customers per month. Its historical data shows that approximately 20% of qualified sales opportunities convert into customers.
In this scenario, the company would need to generate approximately 100 qualified opportunities per month. If the estimated average cost to generate each opportunity is R$ 80, the investment required at this stage would be approximately R$ 8,000 per month.
However, this amount represents only the cost of acquiring those opportunities. It does not necessarily include planning, content production, campaign development, tools, team costs, suppliers, or other necessary activities.
In addition, the calculation depends on assumptions that need to be validated. If the conversion rate decreases or the cost per opportunity increases, the budget will also need to be revised.
This example illustrates an important principle: investment should be built around business objectives and performance indicators, not simply around a predetermined percentage.
For companies that do not yet have reliable historical data, the best approach may be to start with a test budget, establish performance indicators, and adjust investment as results begin to emerge.
Investing in Marketing Doesn't Just Mean Paying for Ads
A common mistake is to treat the marketing budget as synonymous with advertising spend. While ads can play an important role, they represent only one part of the activities needed to attract customers and strengthen a business.
Depending on the needs of the business, the budget may include brand positioning, strategy, content creation, website development, search engine optimization, campaigns, tools, specialized professionals, and performance analysis.
This does not mean that every company needs to invest in all these areas at the same time. On the contrary: good planning identifies which initiatives should be prioritized and which can wait.
A company with a website that does not clearly communicate its value proposition, for example, may waste resources by increasing paid traffic before addressing its communication and conversion issues. Likewise, a business that already has a strong digital presence but cannot respond quickly to incoming leads may need to improve its sales process before expanding its campaigns.
The goal is not to spread money across as many activities as possible. It is to direct resources toward what can have the greatest impact on results.
How to Know If Your Company Is Investing Too Little or Too Much in Marketing
The absolute size of the budget is not enough to determine whether the investment is appropriate. One company may spend R$ 3,000 per month and achieve consistent results, while another may invest R$ 30,000 without being able to clearly identify the return.
To evaluate efficiency, spending needs to be connected to objectives and measured against indicators that are relevant to the business model. These include customer acquisition cost (CAC), the quantity and quality of sales opportunities, conversion rate, revenue generated, and profit margin.
It is also important to consider time. Some initiatives, such as demand generation campaigns, can show signs of results within relatively short periods. Others, such as brand building, positioning, and SEO, tend to require longer evaluation horizons.
Investing too little can limit growth. Investing too much without a strategy may simply increase waste.
Before increasing or reducing the budget, it is worth investigating whether the problem lies in the level of investment, the choice of initiatives, the quality of execution, or the company's sales capabilities.
This reflection connects directly to another important decision: does your company need a marketing agency or a strategy? Choosing who will execute the marketing only makes sense when there is clarity about the problem that needs to be solved.
The Best Budget Is One Your Company Can Justify
A well-structured marketing budget does not need to be set in stone. It should function as an investment hypothesis based on objectives, priorities, and realistic expectations, and be reviewed as the company learns from its results.
In practice, this means defining what the company wants to achieve, identifying the initiatives required, estimating their costs, and establishing metrics to monitor performance. It also means recognizing that not every result can be immediately attributed to a campaign or measured exclusively by monthly sales.
For companies that do not yet have an organized structure, the first investment may not need to be a campaign, but rather the development of a marketing strategy capable of guiding the decisions that follow.
Ultimately, the goal is not to find out how much other companies spend on marketing. It is to understand how much your business needs to invest, where to allocate those resources, and how to evaluate whether that investment is contributing to growth.
Does Your Company Know How Much It Should Invest in Marketing?
A strategic analysis can help identify priorities, structure your budget, and direct investments toward your business objectives.
