The average U.S. company spends 8.96% of its revenue on marketing in 2026, but the typical company spends only 5%. Both numbers come from the same survey (The CMO Survey, Spring 2026 — 154 companies reporting). The four-point gap is the most useful fact in this article: a handful of heavy spenders drag the average up, and most businesses sit well below it. Before you set a budget by "the industry standard," it helps to know which standard you are actually looking at.
This is a reference. Every figure below carries its source, its sample size where it matters, and the honest caveats. If you are building next year's plan, keep a tab open on our business plan generator as you read — the numbers here belong in the "marketing" line of that plan.
The headline numbers (2026)
The CMO Survey is run once a year by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte and the American Marketing Association. The 2026 edition surveyed 2,111 marketing leaders at U.S. for-profit companies; 308 responded (14.6% response rate), 97% of them VP-level or above, in the field January 7–29, 2026 (The CMO Survey — Topline Report 2026).
- Marketing as a share of revenue: 8.96% mean, 5% median (The CMO Survey 2026 — 154 companies). The survey's own summary rounds this to 9.0%.
- Marketing as a share of the total company budget: 9.64% mean, 7% median (The CMO Survey 2026 — 146 companies), the lowest share since 2021 according to the survey's Highlights report.
- Marketing spend growth over the prior 12 months: +1.74% overall, the weakest growth since 2021 (The CMO Survey 2026).
- Digital marketing spend growth over the same period: +8.20% (The CMO Survey 2026). Money is still being spent, but it is shifting toward digital channels.
Read those four lines together and the picture is clear. Total budgets are flat, and inside them the mix is moving. If your own spend feels squeezed, you are not imagining it — the whole market is trimming marketing first when profits wobble, and the survey quantifies it: when profits miss expectations, marketing is the expense cut 45.4% of the time (The CMO Survey — Highlights and Insights 2026).
Marketing budget by industry
This is the question most people actually type. The table below is the survey's industry breakout of "marketing expenses as a percent of company revenues." I have kept the sample size (N) next to every number, because some sectors rest on a handful of companies — those rows are directional, not definitive.
| Industry | Marketing as % of revenue (mean) | Companies (N) |
|---|---|---|
| Education | 18.40% | 5 — thin sample |
| Communications / Media | 18.00% | 6 — thin sample |
| Real Estate | 12.55% | 4 — thin sample |
| Consumer Packaged Goods | 11.53% | 15 |
| Consumer Services | 11.00% | 3 — thin sample |
| Tech / Software / Platform | 10.56% | 33 |
| Retail / Wholesale | 8.80% | 10 |
| Banking / Finance / Insurance | 7.43% | 21 |
| Energy | 7.13% | 4 — thin sample |
| Professional Services | 6.84% | 12 |
| Pharma / Biotech | 6.80% | 5 — thin sample |
| Healthcare | 5.88% | 17 |
| Manufacturing | 5.64% | 13 |
| Transportation | 3.83% | 3 — thin sample |
| Mining / Construction | 0.35% | 3 — thin sample |
Source: The CMO Survey — Firm and Industry Breakout Report 2026, p. 125. U.S. for-profit companies. Means are sensitive to a few heavy spenders; rows with fewer than 10 companies should be read as signals, not standards.
The sectors with solid samples tell a consistent story. Industries that sell to consumers or compete on attention spend the most: consumer packaged goods at 11.53% (N=15) and software at 10.56% (N=33). Industries that sell through relationships, contracts or regulation spend the least: finance at 7.43% (N=21), professional services at 6.84% (N=12), healthcare at 5.88% (N=17) and manufacturing at 5.64% (N=13). The logic matches what we found when we benchmarked customer acquisition cost by industry: where a customer is won by a referral or a long sales cycle, the money goes into people, not media.
Marketing budget by business model (B2B vs B2C)
- B2C product: 11.99% of revenue (The CMO Survey 2026 — 34 companies). The highest of the four models.
- B2B services: 10.07% (The CMO Survey 2026 — 41 companies). Higher than many expect, because services have to build trust before anyone signs.
- B2C services: 7.24% (The CMO Survey 2026 — 18 companies).
- B2B product: 7.02% (The CMO Survey 2026 — 61 companies). The lowest, often because a sales team carries the load.
If you sell expertise to other businesses, note the B2B services figure. Ten percent is real money — and it is a reminder that marketing a service is mostly about making trust visible before the first call.
Same board, different settings. The right marketing level depends on what you sell and how you sell it.
Marketing budget by company size
Smaller companies spend a far bigger share of revenue on marketing than large ones. This is the breakout that matters most to founders and small business owners.
| Company size | Marketing as % of revenue (mean) | Companies (N) |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10M in revenue | 13.34% | 20 |
| $10–25M | 17.40% | 15 |
| $26–99M | 11.14% | 18 |
| $100–499M | 5.86% | 34 |
| $500–999M | 6.86% | 17 |
| $1–9.9B | 5.70% | 33 |
| $10B+ | 9.45% | 15 |
| Fewer than 50 employees | 16.26% | 23 |
Source: The CMO Survey — Firm and Industry Breakout Report 2026, p. 126.
Companies under $100M in revenue spend roughly 11–17% of revenue on marketing; companies between $100M and $10B spend under 7%. The reason is arithmetic, not ambition: a small company has to buy the awareness that a large one already owns. A big brand's name does part of the selling for free. A new one has to pay for every first impression — which is also why so many young businesses run out of cash before awareness pays back.
Insight
A high percentage at a small company is not necessarily waste. It is often the cost of being unknown. The question to ask is not "is 15% too much?" but "is this spend making us less unknown each month?"
Marketing budget by share of sales made online
- 0% online sales: 7.97% of revenue (The CMO Survey 2026 — 56 companies).
- 1–10% online: 6.59% (51 companies).
- 11–49% online: 10.61% (29 companies).
- 50–99% online: 18.64% (11 companies).
- 100% online: 18.75% (4 companies — thin sample).
Once more than half of sales happen online, the marketing share roughly doubles. Online businesses pay for traffic that a storefront or a sales rep would otherwise bring in. That is the hidden cost behind many subscription and e-commerce models, and it is why their margins are tighter than they look from outside.
Where the money is going inside the budget
- Digital marketing: +10.40% expected change over the next 12 months (The CMO Survey 2026 — 154 companies).
- Overall marketing: +7.61% expected (154 companies). The survey notes that forward projections tend to run ahead of what actually gets spent.
- Brand building: +5.87% expected (146 companies).
- Traditional advertising: −1.50% expected (144 companies), continuing a multi-year decline.
- Social media: 14.25% of the marketing budget today, projected at 17.06% in 12 months and 23.06% in five years (The CMO Survey 2026 — 163 companies). The survey warns that its 12-month social projections have historically exceeded reality by an average of 2.1 percentage points.
- Acquisition vs retention: acquisition budgets are 25.96% larger than retention budgets, up from 19.6% a year earlier; 66.1% of companies spend more on acquisition (The CMO Survey 2026 — 162 companies).
That last line deserves attention. Companies keep paying more to find new customers than to keep the ones they have, even though the same survey reports retention delivering stronger results. If you want a cheap advantage, it sits right there: retention and the unglamorous follow-up are where most of your competitors under-invest.
The honest caveats
- The average is not typical. The overall mean is 8.96%, the median 5%. If you hear "companies spend 9% on marketing," know that most spend less.
- Thin samples swing hard. Rows with fewer than 10 companies (education, media, real estate, transportation, construction) can move by several points from year to year.
- This is mostly a mid-to-large company survey. Only 23 of the respondents had fewer than 50 employees. Solopreneurs and micro-businesses are underrepresented.
- "Marketing" is defined by each respondent. Some count salaries and tools, others only media spend. Compare like with like.
- U.S. only. Canadian and international businesses may differ; treat these as a reference point, not a rule.
What this means for you
1. Pick the right benchmark, not the loudest one. Find your row in three tables — industry, model, size — and take the range they give you. A $3M B2B services firm and a $3B manufacturer should not be aiming at the same percentage.
2. If you are small, plan for 10–15% while you are unknown — and plan for it to fall. The size table shows marketing share dropping sharply once companies pass $100M. That decline is the payoff of being known. Track whether your brand is doing more of the selling every quarter; if it isn't, the money is buying clicks, not reputation.
3. Count the online premium. If most of your sales happen online, expect a marketing share closer to 18% than to 8%, and price your offer accordingly. Our profit margin benchmarks and break-even timelines make more sense once that line is in the plan.
4. Move one dollar from acquisition to retention. The market is over-weighted toward acquisition by about a quarter. Being the exception costs nothing extra — it is a reallocation. Start with your weakest customer relationship.
5. Spend where the attention is going. Digital keeps growing while traditional advertising shrinks, and a growing share of discovery now happens inside AI answers. Being recommended by AI rather than merely ranked is cheaper than buying ads — work through our GEO checklist, or test a page with the GEO Checker. Organic work like this compounds; paid media stops the day you stop paying.
6. Benchmark against output, not only input. Spending the "right" percentage tells you nothing about whether it works. Pair this table with revenue per employee and your own acquisition cost. And if you are still deciding what you are selling in the first place, Make It Pay can help you size the opportunity before you size the budget.
The number on the line matters less than the discipline behind it. Know your row, know the median, and make every marketing dollar either bring in a customer or keep one.
The evidence-based case for what marketing money actually buys — read it before you decide where your percentage goes.
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