BUSINESSGuides for startups & scale-ups
Startup marketing budget: how much at each stage?
The short answer
There's no single percentage. Published orientation values range from about 5–10% of revenue for established companies to 15–25% of recurring revenue for growth-focused startups. It's more reliable to derive the budget from your goals and the cost per customer (CAC) you can afford.
By Manfred “Luigi” Lugmayr – 30+ years in marketing, seven years as CMO at burgerme. · Updated: October 27, 2026
Orientation values by stage
| Stage | Budget focus | Orientation (per sources) |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed/seed | learning: channel tests, interviews, tracking | small and experimental, often sized against runway rather than revenue |
| Series A | scaling one working channel | US sources: about 15–25% of ARR |
| Scale-up | several channels, team, brand | share tends to fall as you grow |
| Established mid-sized company | maintenance, digitization, new markets | often quoted: 5–10% of revenue |
The values come mainly from agency and consulting sources and vary widely. Use them only as a sanity check.
Derive the budget from the goal – worked example
- Goal: 20 new customers per quarter.
- Win rate: 1 in 4 qualified calls becomes a customer → 80 calls.
- Lead → call: 1 in 5 leads → 400 leads.
- Cost per lead (test): e.g. $50 → $20,000 media budget per quarter.
- Check: CAC = $20,000 / 20 = $1,000 media cost per customer – plus people and tool costs. Does that fit your margin and customer value?
All figures in the example are assumptions. Replace them with your real values after the first tests.
Three scenarios instead of one number
Plan conservative, realistic and optimistic cases – with different assumptions for cost per lead and win rate. That shows early at which point a channel stops paying off, so you can shift budget deliberately.