How Much Should a Startup Spend on Marketing?

Most people who want to launch a startup start out broke.

There’s a lot of ways to be broke. Maybe you’re holding down a full-time job and working on your business on weekends and evenings. Maybe you’ve quit your job and are going all-in, but living off of savings while that happens. Maybe you do have capital from Angel Investors or have been given money, but that runway is going to be tight until you can prove that your idea can bring money in all on its own.

Regardless of your starting situation, you probably need to start off with a budget, and it might be very tight.

Marketing your startup with no money is completely possible. But whether you’ve got $50 or $50k to invest, you’ll still need to lay out your marketing expenses and act accordingly. Nobody gives you instructions for doing that, but there is a process to it, and I’m giving all the details away for free.

Ok, but how would you know?

What's up, I'm Halden.

I started doing content marketing in 2016 and the combined efforts of the state, the law, and good taste haven’t stopped me yet. My clients have mainly been small, B2B SaaS startups. I helped household names like Airtable and Ashby get their starts, and now I’m bringing those skills to you.

That’s me, hiking in 2017. Not pictured: the bags and bags of bribe money that convinced me to go hiking. I'm an indoor cat.

Even better, I spent time in-house at both On Deck and Indie Hackers: two places that were all about teaching, training, and connecting new startup founders to one another. I didn’t just pick up on what was in the air there, I had to learn it inside and out.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I think it’s silly to keep all this knowledge out of the hands of the clever people who want to create the tools that will change the world.

So how much should my startup budget for marketing?

Here’s the process for figuring it out:

1. Figure out where you stand

2. Determine “investments” vs “costs”

3. Look at normal spend in your area

4. Set good goals

5. Track your spend

Here’s the guide, math included. If you’ve got a calculator and some guesstimates, you can figure this out - pinkie promise.

How to Set a Realistic Startup Marketing Budget

Big companies have spreadsheets on spreadsheets for this kind of thing. They have large teams where some people’s entire jobs are just determining budgets for others teams. They have fancy apps with fancy dashboards (which you can definitely set up for yourself, too, by the way) that track all kinds of analytics.

Grab my free $1k Startup Marketing Budget Template - all I ask is to know who's reading!

You don’t have that and that’s ok. If you’re just getting started, you don’t need all that yet. Just have a strong foundation and fill in the rest as you scale. You need the answer to one question:

How much money do you expect to make in a year?

Your marketing budget should start at  5–10% of your total anticipated revenue.

Think you’ll make $100K this year? Your marketing budget is $5-10k. That’s enough for some great tools and early tester ads, maybe a freelancer to help you out. Think you’ll make $600 this year? Your marketing budget is $30-60. That’s enough for an SEO keyword tool and a website subscription.

💡 Pro Tip: If you’re not sure what you could actually stand to make, bias lower. You’d rather be surprised by success than horrified by an experiment gone over-budget.

If you’re pre-revenue, think about what you can safely spend over the next three to six months without stressing your runway.

Regardless, don’t let the numbers scare you right now. The important part isn’t actually the money, it’s what you can learn during this time.

Marketing Budget Investments vs Cost

Early-stage marketing is actually a research opportunity.

It isn’t about outspending competitors, it’s about testing. Use this time to try a few low-cost, high-impact tactics like organic social media, email outreach, partnerships, and SEO-friendly blog content. See where you get traction.

Kinda' giving "Research" kinda' giving "vintage ISpy cover" and I'm not mad about either.

A few small wins will show you which channels are worth investing more in later.

If you’ve only ever seen it as “people see ads then they buy my product” it’s really worth shifting how you think about marketing. Your marketing budget isn’t money gone, it’s money working. Even if you’re working with limited funds, the goal is to use them in a way that brings a return: new customers, email subscribers, or more qualified leads.

This is why understanding your product and your audience is so critical. If you’re a direct-to-consumer brand, investing a few hundred dollars a month into product photography and social ads might be your best move. If you’re B2B, that’s probably a terrible idea. Your money goes further building a strong website with great SEO landing pages or paying for a targeted email tool.

Know what you want to learn or achieve with every dollar. A small but focused budget can outperform a big one if you’re intentional and track the results. And if a marketing effort starts consistently earning you $2 or $3 for every $1 you spend, that's when it’s time to scale.

What’s a Normal Startup Ad Spend?

Every startup is different, but there are a few general ranges that can help you set expectations.

Pre-Launch

If you haven’t launched yet, it’s totally normal to spend nothing or next to nothing. Maybe just a few hundred dollars for branding or a simple website.

I know you’re excited, I know you believe in your business, but please don’t get crazy here. If you’ve ever gotten really into a new hobby, spent a bunch of money on new toys for it, then six months later realized you barely touched them? Yeah that’s what we want to avoid.

Early Traction

Once you’re in the early traction stage, where you have a product and you’re looking for customers, I’d say that a budget of around $1,000 to $5,000 per month is common. That might cover a mix of small paid ads, content creation, email tools, and basic analytics.

First Scaling

When you start scaling, that first estimate of 5-10% changes. (See, aren’t you glad you kept reading?) Once you know what works, aim to invest around 10–20% of your revenue back into the functional marketing channels. This is when you cut out things that aren’t seeing return and layer in paid campaigns, influencers (if that’s a good fit for your area), or more advanced tools to automate your outreach.

And ain't we all just dreamin' of being out from underwater?

Regardless of stage, what’s “normal” doesn’t matter as much as what’s effective. A $500 Facebook ad campaign that converts new customers is better than a $5,000 campaign that does jack.

Setting Realistic Marketing Goals (and Budgets to Match)

The biggest mistake you could possibly make is saying “we need marketing” and flinging money into the aether without defining success.

What do you want your marketing to do for you? Do you want more traffic? More leads? Early adopters? Investor visibility? Each of those goals requires a very different kind of effort and a very different level of investment.

If your goal is awareness, you can start shockingly lean. Content marketing, organic social posts, and partnerships can build steady visibility for a few hundred dollars a month (or even free). You’ll be spending mostly your time, not your cash. Scaling in this area looks like hiring more people to help, not just generating more campaigns. Just know that it famously take a while to get off the ground. Sometimes months.

If your goal is lead generation or sales, that’s where you’ll likely need to invest more. Paid ads, email tools, and conversion-focused landing pages can add up, but they also give you faster feedback on what works. You can see on a neat, tidy dashboard how many people saw your ads and who clicked through to buy your product; most blogs can’t give you data that obvious. But on the other hand, it ends when it ends, unlike organic materials which can stay “evergreen” and keep doing work for you. If a paid route is what you choose, expect to budget anywhere from $500 to $2,000 per month once you’re testing paid campaigns seriously.

You have to be honest about the balance you need: how ambitious your goals are, and how much you’re realistically able to spend to get there. There’s no shame in starting small. The founders who win long-term are the ones who stay focused on learning and improving, not just hitting “buy now” and hoping for the best.

Why Tracking Your Marketing Spend Matters

Oh look, my favorite soapbox. I love this thing. It’s got my footprints worn into it and everything.

You would not believe how hard it is to get good soapbox stock photos.

Your efforts are meaningless unless you track them.

I just know I’m going to say it every post. I can feel it.

Marketing is throwing spaghetti at the wall and taking meticulous notes about what’s sticking. If you don’t track your spend, you won’t know what worked and you won’t know what you can do next time.

You don’t need fancy software to start. A simple spreadsheet or free tools like Google Analytics, Meta Ads Manager, or your email platform’s built-in stats will tell you plenty. Watch things like:

• Where your website traffic comes from

• What content people engage with

• What actually leads to a sale or sign-up

Tracking lets you make smarter choices as you grow because it lets you spot what’s working. Maybe your newsletter gets more clicks than your Instagram posts so you should invest more in email and divest more from Instagram. Maybe one blog post in particular drives steady organic traffic and you should put more CTAs on it. (I cannot tell you how often that happens. Almost everywhere I’ve worked we had to control for one post when looking at data.)

Once you can see what’s working for you, you can shift your spending towards that spot. Over time, this habit compounds: your decisions get sharper, your money goes further, and your marketing starts to feel less like a guessing game and more like a system.

What Is a Good Marketing Budget for a Startup?

A good startup marketing budget is one that you can sustain for the long haul. Even $200 a month, spent wisely and consistently, will take you further than a big viral splash you couldn’t repeat if you tried.

💡 Pro Tip: “Go viral” is not a marketing strategy.

The goal is to find your balance between spending and learning. Start small, test things, and build on what brings results.

Even if you’re broke, you have something to spend because time is part of your budget, too. Writing content and engaging on social costs effort even if it’s “free.” So give yourself credit for that investment as well. Over time, as you learn which activities bring real results, you’ll have a clear sense of where to put your money when you’re ready to scale up.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to how much a startup should spend on marketing. I know, annoying, right? But there is a right approach: be strategic and consistent, track everything, and reinvest into what works.

That's a lot of words... too bad I'm not reading them.

I summarized this for you myself so you don't need ChatGPT to do it.

A smart marketing budget is one you can sustain, learn from, and scale over time. While there are ratios you can keep in mind (like 5-10% of revenue initial or 20% at scale), those aren’t solid numbers. Normal is a range, and it only works if it’s working for you.

Top 4 Takeaways:

1. Start with 5–10% of your projected revenue... or whatever amount you can comfortably spend over the next few months without endangering your runway.

2. Treat marketing as an investment, not a cost. Early marketing is about testing and learning what channels work for your product and audience.

3. Set clear goals before you spend. Awareness, leads, and sales each require different levels of effort and budget.

4. Track everything. Even the smallest campaigns yield valuable data; knowing what works lets you spend smarter and grow faster.

If this article was helpful for free, imagine how great I am when you pay me! Reach out and we can chat more.