Answers
How much should a small business spend on marketing?
As a rough floor, established businesses spend 5–10% of revenue on marketing and businesses chasing growth spend 10–20%. But the number that matters is what one customer is worth to you, and what you can afford to pay to get one.
Percentages are a sanity check, not a plan. Work it from the other end. Take the average value of a customer over a year, multiply by the share of enquiries you actually close, and you have what one enquiry is worth. If an enquiry is worth R4,000 to you, spending R800 to generate one is excellent business — regardless of what percentage of revenue that adds up to.
Split the budget deliberately. Production (making the content and assets), distribution (getting it in front of people), and infrastructure (website, booking, follow-up systems). Businesses that fund only distribution end up promoting something that does not convert; businesses that fund only production end up with beautiful work nobody sees.
Whatever the number, commit it for a minimum of three months to one direction. A budget spread thin across six experiments teaches you nothing you can act on.
If you are not sure what a customer is worth to you yet, that is the first thing to fix — and it is free. Everything else in marketing is downstream of that one figure.