How Much Should You Spend on Digital Marketing in 2025?

Frankly, there isn’t a solid answer to this question. Every business is unique and has different goals.

A company’s budget depends on various factors like industry, annual revenue, and goals. But even if there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy, the good news is that we’ve dug up useful industry statistics to help you decide how much you should spend on digital marketing.

This guide covers the latest findings on marketing budgets and spending across revenues, industries, and channels. Use these tips to help you make smart decisions and grow in 2025.

Align Your Marketing Budget with Your Goals & Strategies

Putting together a marketing budget requires thinking through your business goals first. That way, you can productively identify the strategies and tools required to make your goals a reality.

When we asked Dan Posner, Big Leap’s EVP of Business Development, how much to spend on digital marketing, his response was this:

“I want to understand more about the business and some of the metrics in place. It’s different for an eCommerce business versus a local versus a B2B business. I ask:

Build Flexible and Adaptive Plans

Building flexible strategies is pivotal to safeguarding the long-term viability of your business. So take a more agile approach to your marketing strategies by considering:

• Activity/performance: Let’s say you’ve invested a large portion of your budget towards paid marketing initiatives. But months after your campaign launch, your team discovers organic efforts are bringing in the most growth. You want to be able to shift your priorities accordingly and move money into your most profitable resources.
• Unforeseen changes in the marketplace: Your team should quickly respond to these shifts. Say your competitor lowers their prices. You’ll either need to decrease your prices as well or shift your marketing messages and channels to stay competitive.
• Unexpected shifts in the digital economy: Today’s latest marketing trend can quickly become tomorrow’s standard. Is your business ready and willing to adapt? Do you have the tools you need to keep your company visible and relevant?

By meticulously planning out and prioritizing your marketing strategies, you can then put together an effective and goal-oriented budget.

Marketing Budget per Company Size/Annual Revenue

In 2023, U.S. marketing accounted for 10.2% of a company’s total budget. Of course, choosing the right percentage depends on what you’re looking to gain for the quarter or year.

If your business is looking to grow or gain greater market share, analyze the ways you’ve spent your money in the past. Maybe there are more efficient ways your team can utilize your marketing budget, or maybe you need to budget a higher or lower percentage than 10% (or even go beyond it if you already meet the threshold).

Small Businesses

One of the first steps in figuring out your marketing budget is looking into your company’s gross or estimated revenue. Let’s take a look at small businesses.

A small business is defined as a business making anywhere from 1 to 40 million dollars or having anywhere between 100 and 1,500 employees. The Spring 2024 CMO Spending Survey, broke down marketing budget percentages by revenues:

• Revenues of less than $10 million had marketing be 15.6% of their budget
• Revenues between $10–25 million had marketing be 12.2% of their budget
• Revenues between $26–99 million had marketing be 10.2% of their budget

We know that’s a rather heavy investment. But think about it—the world doesn’t know about your products/services yet. By generously investing in marketing initiatives, you can spread the word and spread it well so you’re targeting the right people and establishing your brand.

Of course, don’t sacrifice so much money that you’re jeopardizing your business. Once your company has gained solid traction in the industry, you can regroup with your team on possible ways to bring down your marketing budget.

Medium/Large Businesses

So what about medium- to large-sized companies?

The 2024 CMO Spend Survey broke down larger businesses’ marketing budgets like this:

• Revenues between $26–99 million had marketing be 10.2% of their budget
• Revenues between $100–499 million had marketing be 9.5% of their budget
• Revenues between $500–999 million had marketing be 7.3% of their budget
• Revenues between $1–9 billion had marketing be 7.2% of their budget
• Revenues between over $10 billion had marketing be 11.3 % of their budget

How All Businesses (Small to Large) Spend Their Marketing Budgets

Among all the businesses surveyed, their marketing budget broke down like this: Click here to read the full article >>