The One-Minute Marketing Budget Benchmark

How much do companies like yours spend on marketing?

Five quick questions, built on 15 years of CMO Survey data. No email needed to see your number.

Your number
Your report
Your marketing decisions

A few more questions, then your benchmark. No email needed.

Question 1 of 5About 60 seconds

What kind of business are you?

Built with 15 years of data from

CMO Survey sponsored by

Here’s your marketing budget benchmark.

Companies like yours spend

0.0%of revenue on marketing

Data fromSponsored by

Freaking out a little? It's an average, not a bill.

Remember, marketing is more than running ads. Your team, website, content, events and agencies all count.

Rule of thumb: what you spend today, and how you spend it, is roughly what it takes to keep the revenue you have. To grow, one of those has to change.

It opens right here.

Inside your full report

How peers invest to growWhere companies like yours invest to growCurrent markets or new ones, current offers or new ones.
Their spend since 2012What companies like yours spent each year since 2012As a share of revenue, against all companies.
Your 3-year pathYour three-year pathWhat growth takes, in dollars, at your real revenue.
Your marketing decisionsWhich of the nine you’ve made, and the two to make next. 9 questions.
Plus your full budget report

Where your number comes from

Built with 15 years of data from

CMO Survey sponsored by

Your number
Your report
Your marketing decisions

Full report

Your full marketing budget benchmark

Your report is ready

· Your benchmark since 2012

Companies like yours
All companies

· Your budget in dollars

Your annual revenue

· Your three-year path

What you spend on marketing today, per year

Count all of it: your marketing team, ads, website, content, SEO and AI visibility, signage, events, agencies, software, research. A rough number is fine.

An illustrative path toward this reference budget, not a revenue forecast.

No number handy? Compared with this benchmark, you spend:

· How companies like yours split growth spending

Companies like yours
All companies

Share of growth spending in the prior 12 months, on the Ansoff growth matrix

Where will your growth come from? Tap a box.

· Where companies like yours add budget next

Companies like yours
All companies

Planned change in each area over the next 12 months

Where will you add budget? Optional. Tap any row.

What your numbers say

Before you spend it

Your benchmark tells you how much. Your sweet spot tells you where it goes.

AI assistants and your buyers are asking the same question: what does this company do better than its competitors, and for whom? When your website and content answer it clearly, AI names you. When they don’t, it describes your category and recommends someone else.

Before you spend another dollar, find your sweet spot.

Book a grown-up conversation (scan included)

30 minutes with Brad. He runs your scan before the call and walks you through what AI says about you, and which competitor it recommends instead.

Part 2

Your marketing decisions

Random spend burns out. A plan connects the dots.

Your 2027 plan

Ready to plan 2027? Here are the nine choices.

The peanut butter · the facts every plan stands on

PeopleWho is our buyer, and what problem do we solve for them?
BrandWhy buy from us instead of our competitors?
BudgetHow much money do we have to spend?

The ghost · the plan most companies skip

GoalWhere is the business going?
ObjectiveWhat must marketing move, and by when?
StrategyHow, and what first?
TacticsWhich channels, which tools?
TrackingHow will we know it’s working?
TeamWho owns each step?

With Brad B. McCormick · Instructor of Digital Marketing Strategy and Performance Management, Southern Methodist University

When profits fall short, marketing is the budget that gets cut 45.4% of the time (The CMO Survey, Spring 2026). A benchmark defends the number. A plan defends the budget.

How this number is built

The CMO Survey is run by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association as partners. Each edition asks marketing leaders what share of company revenue goes to marketing, and the Firm and Industry Breakout Report splits the answer by industry, business model, revenue, online sales and employee count.

Your benchmark averages five figures, one per answer: what companies in your industry spend, what companies with your business model spend, and the same for your revenue, online sales and headcount. Each figure pools eight surveys from February 2022 to Spring 2026, weighted by how many companies answered. It is an average of five comparisons, not a match on all five traits at once. The survey does not publish that, and if it did, most groups would hold a handful of companies.

What counts. The survey asks marketing leaders one question: "Marketing expenses account for what percent of your company's revenues?" It does not define marketing expenses. Count your marketing team plus everything you buy to win and keep customers. Gartner's CMO Spend Survey, for one, counts staff as part of the marketing budget. Signage and storefront count. Rent and other occupancy costs do not.

The yearly line uses all 27 surveys that asked this question (February 2012 to Spring 2026) and four of your answers, because headcount was only reported from 2020. Where a group did not exist yet, the closest broader group stands in and the dot is drawn hollow. If your industry is not listed, the industry figure uses the all-company average.

Fig. 3 uses two more questions from the same breakout reports: how companies split growth spending across the four strategies of the Ansoff matrix (asked in Spring 2023, Fall 2024 and Spring 2026), and how much they plan to change spending in each area over the next 12 months (all eight surveys from 2022 to 2026; customer experience in five). Here your five answers are not weighted equally. Each figure leans on the answers that separate companies most on that question, and a small group is pulled toward the all-company figure, more so the fewer companies it holds.

Sources

The CMO Survey, Firm and Industry Breakout Reports, February 2012 to Spring 2026, cmosurvey.org/results. Survey data used with permission. Analysis by 10Louder; not affiliated with Duke University, Deloitte or the AMA. Data version .

How much do companies like yours spend on marketing?

What kind of business are you?

Building your benchmark…

Here’s your marketing budget benchmark.

Which of your marketing decisions are made?

Your marketing decisions and full budget report are ready.

Here’s your score.

Your full marketing budget benchmark

Your benchmark tells you how much. Your sweet spot tells you where it goes.

Your marketing decisions