Trade Marketing Budget: What Should You Spend Per Month?

Most trades businesses do one of two things with marketing. They spend too little to get a proper result, or they spend money in too many places without knowing what is working. A useful marketing budget is not just a number. It should match your turnover, margins, capacity and growth goals. This guide gives you practical monthly budget ranges, worked examples and a simple way to judge whether your marketing spend is actually paying you back.

The quick answer: sensible budget ranges

There is no single right figure, but most trades businesses land in one of these bands depending on where they are:

• Ticking over and happy. A few hundred pounds a month keeps your presence live and the diary steady.
• Ready to grow. Roughly £1,000 to £2,500 a month, plus ad spend, funds a proper joined-up push.
• Pushing hard for growth. £2,500 a month and up, plus a larger ad budget, when you have the capacity and margin to back it.

The right band is the one that matches your capacity to take on work and your appetite for growth, not the one your competitor down the road happens to use.

The rule of thumb: percentage of turnover

A common way to sense-check your budget is as a percentage of turnover. Treat these as rough guides, not rules, because margin and goals move the number:

• Maintenance budget: around 3 to 5 percent of turnover. Enough to stay visible and keep steady work coming in.
• Growth budget: around 5 to 8 percent. Enough to build momentum and win more of the right work.
• Aggressive growth budget: around 8 to 12 percent or more, for a set period, when you are deliberately scaling.

Higher margins justify spending more. A business making good profit on every job can reinvest harder than one running on thin margins.

Budget by turnover

Here is how those percentages tend to play out by turnover. The monthly ranges below cover management and ad spend combined, and they vary with your margin and goals.

Annual turnover	Typical monthly marketing range	Main focus
£250k	£500 to £1,500	Local search, reviews, a website that converts
£500k	£1,500 to £3,000	SEO, Google Ads and follow-up, joined up
£1m	£3,000 to £6,000	A full system across search, ads and reputation
£2m+	£6,000 and up	Multi-channel growth, brand and capacity to match

Use this as a starting point, then adjust for how fast you want to grow and how much profit each job leaves you.

Budget by monthly spend band

Another way to look at it is by what each level of spend should buy you:

• Under £500 a month. One focused channel or a freelancer’s time. Fine for a single job, not a full system.
• £500 to £1,500 a month. A decent website plus one or two lead channels, managed and reported.
• £1,500 to £3,000 a month. A joined-up system: local SEO, Google Ads, follow-up and reviews, run as a partnership. Our own Booked Solid System sits here at £1,500 + VAT a month for trades.
• £3,000 a month and up. Broader growth, more channels and more ambition. The Preferred Contractor Programme sits here at £2,500 + VAT a month for civils and construction.

What your budget should cover

Whatever you spend, it should pay for a joined-up set of work, not one channel in isolation:

• A website that converts, so visitors actually call or enquire. See website essentials that convert.
• Local SEO and Google Maps, because most trades work is won locally.
• Google Ads that book jobs, managed properly. See Google Ads costs for plumbers.
• Reviews and reputation, which feed both rankings and trust.
• Follow-up, so enquiries get chased fast and fewer leads go cold.

What not to spend on too early

Some spending only pays off once the foundations are in place. Hold back on these until the basics work:

• Expensive brand video and photography before you have a website that converts.
• Multiple ad channels at once before one is proven and profitable.
• Vanity sponsorships and print that are hard to trace to booked work.
• Chasing every new platform rather than getting the essentials right first.

Marketing amplifies what you already have. Fix pricing, follow-up and your website first, then spend behind them. Our 2026 marketing plan for trades walks through the right order.

How to judge payback

The point of a budget is not to spend it, it is to make it pay. Three simple numbers tell you whether it is working:

• Cost per lead. Total spend divided by real enquiries. It shows how efficiently you are buying interest.
• Cost per booked job. Total spend divided by jobs won. This is the number that matters most.
• Return. Compare cost per job against the profit on an average job. If a job earns far more than it costs to win, you can spend more.

If you cannot see these numbers, that is the first thing to fix. A good partner reports on booked jobs and cost per lead, not just clicks. For how the fees compare, see our guide to marketing agency costs for construction companies, and to choose a partner, the best marketing agencies for tradesmen.

Worked examples by trade

A few rough examples to show how this looks in practice. Figures are illustrative and will vary with your area and margins:

• A local plumber on £300k turnover. Around £700 a month covers a solid website, local SEO and a modest Google Ads budget. At roughly £40 to £60 per lead, that funds a steady stream of enquiries to keep one or two vans busy.
• An electrician on £600k turnover, wanting to grow. Around £2,000 a month funds a joined-up system with managed ads and follow-up. If it wins jobs worth several hundred pounds profit each, a handful a month more than covers the spend.
• A building firm on £1.5m turnover. Around £5,000 a month across search, ads, content and reputation supports larger, higher-value jobs. Here one won project can pay for months of marketing, so the focus is lead quality over volume.

Setting your own number

Start with a percentage of turnover, sense-check it against your margin and capacity, then hold it to account on cost per booked job. Spend enough to get a proper result, keep it in the places you can measure, and let the work that pays compound over time. If you want a straightforward view of what the right budget looks like for where you are now, that is a conversation worth having.