We target no more than 15% of gross rev, but if your gross margins are healthy overspend for growth while it makes sense to do so Answer from Strategic_Finance_ on reddit.com
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Transcend Digital
transcenddigital.com › home › what is a good marketing budget for a startup?
What is a Good Marketing Budget for a Startup? - Transcend Digital
July 15, 2025 - This approach is ideal for startups in their late growth stage (Series C,D+), as they understand their product and brand. You have access to subject matter experts in your industry who deeply understand your product, allowing them to create more effective marketing strategies. ... The more complex your marketing strategy is, the more staff you need to hire, which adds costs.
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Taylorscherseo
taylorscherseo.com › saas-marketing › startup-marketing-budgets
Startup Marketing Budgets: How Much Should a Startup Spend on ...
You can get people to sign up for a waitlist, but again, it will be expensive until you can start bringing in recurring revenue. Focus on product development first and then move to marketing once you have the right product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. As mentioned, 15-20% of total revenue ...
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uSERP
userp.io › organic-growth › startup-marketing-budget
Startup Marketing Budget: A Founder’s Perspective
October 17, 2025 - The first decision to make is how much to allocate for marketing. While no two startups are the same, you can use the average marketing budget of around 9% of your yearly revenue as a starting point and optimize your marketing spending from there.
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HubSpot
blog.hubspot.com › marketing › startup-marketing-budget
Startup Marketing Budget: How to Write an Incredible Budget
November 22, 2022 - The average marketing budget for startups should be 11.2% of overall revenue. This percentage gives marketers enough resources to build brand awareness and start attracting leads.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/startups › how much do u spend each month on marketing?
r/startups on Reddit: How much do u spend each month on marketing?
October 8, 2023 -

Hi all, I’m looking to get some benchmarks around how much each startup spends on marketing.

TLDR; we decided to bootstrap and forgo the VC route a few months back so this means our numbers need to make sense. I’m in charge of sales and on average, we do approx $30k usd each month at 40% margins.

Right now, we spend approx $1k a month on google ads which is working but most of the revenue is also coming from existing customers who expanded their work with us.

We are not profitable at the moment but on track to do so. Our business is saas+service.

I see many business or startup spending 8-30k a month just on marketing. How do you decide the budget? Is it revenue-based?

Note that we are bootstrapping at the moment so growth at all cost is not possible since we won’t have VC money.

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Digitalfirst
digitalfirst.ai › blog › start-up-marketing-budget
One Year, $500 Monthly Start-Up Marketing Budget: How Would You Spend It?
You can market your business effectively with $500 per month If you know what you're doing and have clear goals of what you need.
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Angelfish-marketing
info.angelfish-marketing.com › blog › how-much-should-marketing-costs-be-for-my-startup
Startup Marketing Costs: How Much Should You Budget?
As a startup, this will inevitably revolve around your financial situation and how much investment you have secured. For instance, if you need to reach a certain customer or user benchmark before qualifying for your next round of funding, then that should be your short-to-medium-term objective. While using more channels means higher marketing costs, it also means faster and more consistent results.
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Mesh Payments
meshpayments.com › home › how to best manage your startup’s marketing budget
Manage Your Startup's Marketing Budget | Mesh
January 15, 2025 - Individual campaign costs: Variable costs associated with launching and executing campaigns.. The last of these three is the big variable. A big summer or holiday marketing push will mean a big spike in expenditure versus a quieter month. But the first two are likely to remain relatively stable throughout the year, especially when dealing with figures like wages for full-time staff. You just need to make sure that you keep on top of them. In a busy startup environment, that’s easier said than done…
Find elsewhere
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SCORE
score.org › resource › article › how-create-a-marketing-budget-startups
How to Create a Marketing Budget for Startups | SCORE
Based on the key marketing channels below, the estimate for an initial marketing budget for a startup is $50 to $385 per month, plus a one-time cost for logo design.
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Agilie
agilie.com › blog › how much money do startups need for digital marketing?
How Much Money Do Startups Need for Digital Marketing?
August 7, 2025 - According to Gartner, these tools are the main source of startup expenses. But without them, the experts you hire won't be able to be as effective as possible, especially at the project start. Among these tools are all sorts of programs and applications aimed at helping marketers implement and facilitate the following activities: ... Of course, you can't ignore content marketing costs either. High-quality selling texts are a great promotional tool. So you have to fork ...
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Growth-division
growth-division.com › growth-marketing › how-much-startup-spend-marketing
How Much Should A Startup Budget for Marketing? | Growth Division
Calculate your loaded marketing budget - this is the cost to acquire customers in terms of channel spend, plus your other marketing costs like salaries. As a rule of thumb, we say double your CAC budget to get an idea of your loaded marketing budget. Calculate your monthly marketing budget - divide your loaded marketing budget by your timeframe - 24 months in our above example. With many different variables and approaches at play, setting a marketing budget is no easy task – especially for a startup without much data to fall back on.
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BDC
bdc.ca › home › articles and tools › marketing, sales and export › marketing › what is the average marketing budget for a small business?
What is an average marketing budget for a small business?
A 2019 BDC survey of more than 1,400 Canadian businesses found that Canadian small business marketing costs average just over $30,000 a year, while those with 20 to 49 employees spend twice that amount.
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Baremetrics
baremetrics.com › academy › how-to-create-a-marketing-budget-for-your-startup
How to create a marketing budget for your startup - Baremetrics
May 3, 2024 - While there is no set rule to establishing your marketing budget, founder and CEO of Elevate My Brand, Laurel Mintz, recommends that startups set their initial budget to 12 to 20 percent of gross or projected revenue.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/entrepreneur › what’s typical marketing budget for startups and small businesses? i was offered 500€ - is that even realistic??
r/Entrepreneur on Reddit: What’s typical marketing budget for startups and small businesses? I was offered 500€ - is that even realistic??
August 12, 2024 -

What’s typical marketing budget for companies like small businesses and startups? - I was offered 500€ only for marketing like doesn’t sound even realistic

Hey everyone

I would like to hear more about budgeting on marketing in companies like in your business or company how do you budget in marketing?

I Start up wants work with me just 500 on marketing and it feels incredibly low for marketing but understandable that its just starting from stratch but still … this seems incredibly low to be, specially considering the costs associated with digital advertising, content creation and other marketing strategies specially that company wants work with models..

For those of you with experience in startups or in small or big businesses:

  • what’s the typical marketing budget you have seen in these settings?

  • have you ever worked in budgets this small? If so how did you make it work??

  • what are some creative , low- cost marketing strategies that could stretch this 500€ ?

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated! Or any advice

Thank you

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Quora
quora.com › What-is-a-marketing-budget-for-a-small-startup
What is a marketing budget for a small startup? - Quora
Answer (1 of 20): Bob is definitely on the right track with what he said. I would go one further at least in your case - While I clearly don't know what you have done besides what you listed here, you are doing everything backwards and it could (not will) come back to bite you. First off, you d...
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Mxmoritz
mxmoritz.com › article › marketing-budgets-for-startups
Marketing Budgets for Startups
February 7, 2024 - If the startup and its investors have evolved from the search for "a scalable business model" (Blank and Dorf) and have come to believe they have achieved a first fit in the market, then investing in marketing is a no-brainer. And this leads us to the outlier problem that the concept of blitz scaling (Reid Hoffman) reveals: Even more so than in other organizations, there can be no "average marketing budget" for startups.
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Rasmal
rasmal.com › home › how much should a startup spend on marketing?
How Much Should a Startup Spend on Marketing? - Rasmal
January 15, 2025 - Leveraging digital marketing tools can streamline your campaigns and improve efficiency. According to a report by Gartner, the average marketing budget for companies in 2023 was 9.1% of their revenue.
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Spendesk
spendesk.com › blog › startup-marketing-budget
Startup marketing budget: How to allocate and manage your expenses | Spendesk
July 23, 2023 - Marketing agency WebStrategies puts the average at 11.4%, although it has B2C budgets considerably higher than for B2B businesses.
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Scratchdisk
scratchdisk.biz › post › marketing-startups-breaking-down-costs
Marketing for Startups 2025: Breaking Down the Costs | Scratchdisk Creative (SCr)
April 3, 2025 - Budget for tools that track website traffic, engagement metrics, and conversion rates. Include CRM systems and software that helps manage and analyse marketing performance. Most startups allocate 12-20% of gross revenue to marketing.
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TBDC
tbdc.com › home › setting a marketing budget for your startup
Setting a Marketing Budget for Your Startup - TBDC
April 3, 2025 - BDC: Marketing budget benchmark by the number of employees · In a 2019 survey of 1400 Canadian businesses, the Business Development Bank of Canada found that small business marketing costs average just over $30,000 annually.