Marketing is the
Wonder in your Bread Genie in the Bottle Classic in your Cola Devil in the Details Fruit in your Loops Spin in your Dreidel Dakine

Talk Story
Talk Story

Marketing is the Wonder in your Bread Genie in the Bottle Classic in your Cola Devil in the Details Fruit in your Loops Spin in your Dreidel Dakine

Talk Story

Marketing is the Wonder in your Bread Genie in the Bottle Classic in your Cola Devil in the Details Fruit in your Loops Spin in your Dreidel Dakine

Marketing Budget Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Google.

You want to spend less.

Google wants you to spend more.

What to do?

We always ask new clients: “What’s your marketing budget?”

Usually, the answer is some version of “I don’t know”.

We get it. Budgeting can get confusing when you’re juggling payroll, rent, inventory, a coffee addiction…

But here’s the thing: your budget, to a large extent, dictates your strategy. For instance, if you have a $1,000 per month advertising budget, we probably won’t be recommending a Superbowl commercial!

So let’s do this: Enter your best guess for gross annual revenue in the calculator below. For now, keep 2% for marketing unless you already have a percentage in mind.

Marketing Budget Calculator

Enter your gross revenue and select a percentage for marketing.

And there you go!

Man walking along a waterfront with boats in the background, representing the relaxed approach to setting a marketing budget.

You were probably expecting an “it depends” followed by a lot of caveats. Well then, here you go:

For small businesses under $5 million in annual revenue, common guidance (including the U.S. Small Business Administration) recommends allocating 7–8% of annual revenue to marketing. In practice, many Hawaii small businesses operate closer to 2–5%, while early-stage companies and startups often invest closer to 5–8% to build awareness and traction.

 

For larger businesses, data from the CMO Survey provides additional context. In recent surveys, companies reported:

  • Marketing budgets averaging ~8–10% of firm revenue
  • Marketing spend representing ~11–14% of total company budgets, with higher percentages common among firms under $100 million in annual sales
Horizontal bar chart titled "Marketing Budget Benchmarks" showing typical marketing spend as a percentage of revenue or total budget. Categories include Small Biz (HI) at 2–5%, Startups at 5–8%, SBA Guidance at 7–8%, Larger Biz at 8–10%, CMO Survey (Revenue %) at 8–10%, and CMO Survey (Budget %) at 11–14%. Each category is represented as a range bar to reflect budget variability across business types.

Of course there’s no single “right” number. Your optimal marketing budget depends on myriad factors like your industry, growth goals, competitive landscape, margins, lifecycle stage and internal resources.

Some things to consider:

🏝️ Hawaii’s market is a unique beast — smaller, more local, less cutthroat than a lot of mainland markets. You don’t always need mainland budget math to get results.

📊 If you don’t yet have historical data (because you haven’t fully tracked performance yet), starting too high is stressful and unnecessary.

📈 As we run campaigns and collect real data for you, we’ll refine your budget intelligently. No guesswork. No voodoo.

Ready to put your $ where the metrics are?

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