The short answer: most B2B companies spend between 7% and 10% of revenue on marketing, counting people, agencies, software and paid media together. The 2026 CMO Survey puts B2B product companies at 7.0% of revenue and B2B services companies at 10.1%. Private B2B SaaS companies report a median of 8% of annual recurring revenue on marketing, with selling counted separately at 15% (SaaS Capital, 2026). Companies under $25 million report higher shares, but each of those figures rests on 15 to 20 answers. In Canada, BDC's rule of thumb for B2B is lower, at 2–5%. Use a benchmark to sanity-check your budget, and set the real number from the pipeline you need.
Every founder eventually asks how much they should be spending on marketing. The question is reasonable. The answers that rank for it mostly aren't, because they quote a percentage without saying who it came from.
A marketing budget, as the surveys below measure it, is everything a company spends on marketing in a year. That means the marketing team's salaries, agencies and contractors, software, and paid media. Benchmarks express it as a share of total company revenue. That definition matters more than any single number in this post.
What do the 2026 benchmarks actually say?
Four sources get quoted for this question. They measure different companies, and they count different things.
| Source | Who answered | Headline figure | What it says about smaller companies |
|---|---|---|---|
| The CMO Survey, 2026 (Duke, Deloitte, AMA) | 308 US marketing leaders, January 2026; 97% VP-level or above | 9.0% of revenue. B2B product 7.0%, B2B services 10.1% | Under $10M: 13.3% (20 answers). $10–25M: 17.4% (15 answers) |
| Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 2026 | 401 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe; the vast majority at companies over $1 billion in revenue | 7.8% of revenue, from 7.7% in 2025 | Nothing. It is a large-company number |
| SaaS Capital, 2026 | 1,000+ private B2B SaaS companies, surveyed by March 2026 | Median 8% of ARR on marketing, 15% on selling | At $3M–$5M ARR: 8% marketing, 12% selling |
| BDC (Canada) | A rule of thumb, plus a 2019 survey of 1,400+ Canadian businesses | B2B 2–5% of revenue; B2C 5–10% | Small businesses averaged just over $30,000 a year |
The picture is consistent in one way. Every source puts a typical B2B company at about 10% of revenue or below. The only higher figures come from the smallest samples.
It is also a cautious year. The CMO Survey found overall marketing spending grew only 1.7% in the 12 months before January 2026, the weakest growth since 2021. Digital spending grew 8.2% inside that, so money is moving between channels more than it is being added.
Why do the numbers disagree?
Three reasons, and they explain most of the confusion on the pages that rank for this question.
Different companies answered. Gartner's 7.8% comes mostly from companies with more than $1 billion in revenue. The CMO Survey hears from US companies with a senior marketing leader: 97% of its respondents are VP-level or above. A $4 million company where the founder runs marketing is in neither sample. That is a likely reason BDC's Canadian rule of thumb sits below every US average.
Different things are counted. Gartner's budget includes in-house labour, agencies, software and paid media. Paid media is its largest single line, at under a third of the total. SaaS Capital reports marketing and selling as separate lines. If you compare your ad spend alone with either benchmark, you will conclude you are underspending when you may not be.
Different questions get mixed up. The CMO Survey asks for marketing as a share of revenue and, separately, as a share of the company's overall budget. The two answers differ (9.0% versus 9.6% in 2026), and several ranking pages quote one as the other. One widely repeated line says the US Small Business Administration recommends 7–8% of revenue. The SBA's own article on the question says there is no hard and fast answer and quotes 2018 survey averages.
Do smaller companies spend a bigger share on marketing?
Yes, in the data that exists, but the data is thin.
The CMO Survey's 2026 breakout reports marketing as a share of revenue by company size:
- Under $10 million: 13.3%
- $10–25 million: 17.4%
- $26–99 million: 11.1%
- $100–499 million: 5.9%
- $1–9.9 billion: 5.7%
The under-$10 million figure comes from 20 answers, and the $10–25 million figure from 15. In both bands the standard deviation is 13 points or more. In other words, individual companies were spread from very little to well above the average. The $10–25 million band showing more than the band below it is the kind of wobble 15 answers produce.
Treat the small-company figures as a direction, not a target. Part of the pattern is plain arithmetic. A first marketing hire, a decent website and a CRM cost about the same whether revenue is $3 million or $30 million. They simply take a larger share of the smaller company's revenue.
The bands are in US dollars. A company with $10 million in Canadian revenue falls in the under-$10 million band.
What does that look like in dollars?
No ranking page does this conversion, and it is the one that makes the decision real.
| Annual revenue | BDC B2B rule of thumb (2–5%) | B2B product (7.0%) | SaaS, marketing only (8%) | B2B services (10.1%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1M | $20,000–$50,000 | $70,000 | $80,000 | $101,000 |
| $2M | $40,000–$100,000 | $140,000 | $160,000 | $202,000 |
| $5M | $100,000–$250,000 | $350,000 | $400,000 | $505,000 |
| $10M | $200,000–$500,000 | $700,000 | $800,000 | $1,010,000 |
| $20M | $400,000–$1,000,000 | $1,400,000 | $1,600,000 | $2,020,000 |
Now hold that against the definition. At $2 million in revenue, 7% is $140,000 a year. That has to cover any marketing salary, the agency or consultant, the software and the ad spend. Write down what your first marketing hire would cost fully loaded, subtract it, and look at what remains for everything else. That exercise ends more bad plans than any benchmark.
How should you set your marketing budget?
Benchmarks tell you whether a number is unusual. They can't tell you whether it is right for you. This is the method I use with founders.
- Write down what the budget includes. Decide whether salaries, agencies, software and ad spend are all inside it, and keep sales costs out. Then compare yourself with a benchmark that counts the same things.
- Pick the benchmark that matches your model. Use roughly 7% of revenue for a B2B product company, about 10% for B2B services, or about 8% of ARR for SaaS marketing. Treat the 2–5% Canadian rule of thumb as a floor, not a goal.
- Decide whether this year is for growth or profit. SaaS Capital found equity-backed SaaS companies spend twice the share of ARR on marketing that bootstrapped ones do. Bootstrapped companies between $3 million and $20 million in ARR still grew at a median of 15% a year in its 2026 survey. Spending at the bootstrapped level is a legitimate choice, not a failure.
- Build the number from the bottom up. Start with the new revenue you need and divide it by your average deal size. Then work back through your win rate to the qualified opportunities required. Price those opportunities using your own cost per opportunity from the last 12 months. For example (illustrative only), $1 million of new annual revenue at $50,000 a deal is 20 deals. At a one-in-four win rate, that is 80 qualified opportunities.
- Reconcile the two numbers. If the bottom-up figure is far above the benchmark, either the target is aggressive or conversion is leaking somewhere. Leaks are cheaper to fix than to fund. If it is far below, don't spend the difference just to match an average.
- Split it, then protect it. Divide the total into people, programmes and tools. Agree in advance which result would justify a cut, then review quarterly. The CMO Survey found that when profits miss and executives cut costs, marketing is cut ahead of other expense categories 45.4% of the time. A rule agreed in a calm month beats a reflex in a bad one.
Step four is where most companies discover they don't know their cost per opportunity. That is an attribution problem before it is a budget problem, and attribution without a data team covers the minimum setup that answers it.
One more allocation check. The same survey found acquisition budgets are now 26% larger than retention budgets. Over the same period, retention delivered the stronger performance results. If your existing customers expand, some of the budget belongs with them. Happy customers also do a second job now: their reviews are what buyers use to check an AI-built shortlist, covered in whether B2B software reviews still matter.
Two Canadian line items that change the maths
BC charges PST on the software line. In British Columbia, software and software-as-a-service carry 7% PST, wherever the server sits. Marketing, advertising and consulting services do not. A tool-heavy budget therefore costs more in BC than the same total spent on people, and the PST is not recoverable the way GST is. The BC PST rules for digital invoices explain where the line falls.
Google is crediting back the Canada DST fee. Google added a 2.5% digital services tax fee to Canadian Google Ads invoices from 1 October 2024 to 30 June 2025. Canada repealed the tax in March 2026, and Google is now issuing credits. Direct advertisers get an automatic account credit with no action needed. Agency-billed accounts receive credit memos to apply in the Payments Center. It is a one-off, but it belongs in this year's reconciliation.
Common questions
What percentage of revenue should a B2B company spend on marketing? Between 7% and 10% is typical. The 2026 CMO Survey puts B2B product companies at 7.0% of revenue and B2B services companies at 10.1%. Gartner's 2026 figure is 7.8%, but its sample is mostly companies over $1 billion. Set your own number from the pipeline you need, then check it against these.
Does a marketing budget include salaries? In the major benchmarks, yes. Gartner's budget includes in-house marketing labour alongside agencies, software and paid media. If you compare only your ad spend with a 7–10% benchmark, you are comparing different things. Add your marketing salaries, contractors and tools before deciding whether you are under- or overspending.
How much do SaaS companies spend on marketing? SaaS Capital surveyed more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies in 2026. The median company spent 8% of annual recurring revenue on marketing and 15% on selling. Companies between $3 million and $5 million in ARR reported 8% and 12%. Equity-backed companies spend twice the share of ARR on marketing that bootstrapped ones do.
How much do Canadian small businesses spend on marketing? The only published Canadian figures come from BDC. Its rule of thumb is 2–5% of revenue for B2B companies and 5–10% for B2C. Its 2019 survey of more than 1,400 businesses found small businesses averaged just over $30,000 a year, roughly double that at 20–49 employees.
Should I cut marketing when sales slow down? Most companies do. The 2026 CMO Survey found marketing is cut ahead of other costs 45.4% of the time when profits miss. Whether you should depends on whether the spend is producing qualified pipeline. Cut what you can't connect to opportunities, and protect what you can. Decide the rule before the slow quarter arrives.
Is 2–5% of revenue enough for a B2B company? It can be, for an established company growing slowly on referrals and repeat business. It is usually too little for a company trying to enter a new market or grow faster than its referral base allows. Treat 2–5% as a floor and justify anything higher with a bottom-up pipeline calculation.
The honest summary
The defensible range for a B2B company is 7% to 10% of revenue, counting people, agencies, software and paid media together. Small companies report spending more, but on so few answers that the figure is a direction, not a target. The Canadian rule of thumb is lower, and it is the right floor.
The number that matters is the one you build from the bottom up. Start from the revenue you need, then the opportunities that takes, then what those opportunities cost you to create. If you can't calculate that last figure, fix that first, because it decides whether more budget would help at all.
If the numbers don't reconcile and you can't see why, that is the problem marketing systems consulting is built for. The fixed-fee Diagnostic is the entry point. It finds where the money is leaking before anyone decides to spend more. If you are weighing outside help against a hire, what a marketing consultant costs sets out the numbers.
Sources: The CMO Survey — Firm and Industry Breakout Report, 2026 · Gartner — 2026 CMO Spend Survey release, 11 May 2026 · SaaS Capital — 2026 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies · BDC — What is an average marketing budget for a small business? · Google Payments Center — Canada DST FAQ
Written by Jagatjeet — Jagatjeet (jagatjeet.com) is a marketing systems and web architecture consultant based in Kamloops, British Columbia. Jagatjeet works with B2B founders between $1M and $20M in revenue. Published 1 October 2026. Last updated 1 October 2026. Benchmarks are survey averages, not targets, and the CMO Survey and Gartner figures describe US and large-company samples. This is not financial or tax advice.