What Percent of Revenue Do Companies Spend on Marketing and Sales? [2025] [Breakdown by Industry]

Heads up: We refresh this post every year to make sure we include the most up-to-date information about marketing budget breakdowns.

You know you need to dedicate at least some of your budget and time to marketing. But what percentage of your revenue should you set aside? And what marketing tactics should you prioritize?

These are important questions! And we wanted answers. So, we did the research into companies and institutions across industries such as SaaS, higher education, manufacturing, and fintech to see how their marketing budgets break down and what ROI they typically see.

Key Takeaways for 2025

• Average marketing budget as a percentage of revenue is 7.7% in 2025.
• While marketing budgets have stabilized, marketing spending has stalled at a level that falls short for many CMOs.
• Budget shortfalls are holding back 59% of CMOs from fully executing their 2025 strategies.
• Leaders are boosting productivity by tapping into data insights to drive performance and using AI to streamline essential workflows.
• 99% of CMOs said GenAI investments are a priority.
• 64% of senior marketing leaders say the most pressing challenge in 2025 is demonstrating the impact of marketing actions on financial outcomes.

(Sources: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey; The CMO Survey 2025)

The ROI from a Healthy Marketing Budget

Businesses large and small understand the importance of prioritizing their marketing budgets.

Marketing budgets as a share of revenue dropped to a pandemic-era low of around 6.4% in 2021. They rebounded to about 9.1% in 2023 but remain below the long‑term industry average of ~12.1% seen in 2016.

As of 2025, Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey reports that the average marketing budget has plateaued at 7.7% of company revenue — the same level as 2024 — while The CMO Survey puts the figure closer to 9.4%

The long-standing rule of thumb is to allocate at least 10% of your revenue to marketing, adjusting based on factors such as company stage (startups often need to spend more) and brand awareness (the less known you are, the more you’ll need to invest). However, many companies are now facing a different reality and are trying to do more with leaner budgets.

If that’s you, here’s the good news.

By prioritizing high-return activities that move the needle, it’s possible to drive strong revenue growth on a smaller spend. Prove return on investment (ROI) this year, and you’ll be in a strong position to ask for a bigger marketing budget next year.

So, how much of your revenue should you allocate to marketing in 2025? And where should you invest it to maximize your ROI? Let’s break it down by industry.

Marketing Budget Examples by Industry

For years, 10% was the magic number you’d hear if you asked how much of your revenue you should spend on marketing. But is that true for everyone? What about a company in its growth phase versus a well-established brand such as Apple? What about companies in different industries? Should a consumer packaged goods brand spend the same percentage of revenue on marketing as a B2B manufacturing company?

In reality, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer — especially now. After a few years of steady cuts, marketing budgets have finally stopped shrinking, according to Gartner. But CMOs aren’t exactly breathing easy. With pressure still high, they’re betting big on paid media and getting creative about how to do more with less in 2025.

Figures vary dramatically when you drill down into each industry. Research by Statista found these marketing budget averages based on industry:

Marketing budgets also vary by company revenue, with the lowest-grossing companies spending a greater percentage of both their revenue and their overall budgets on marketing.

While the 10% guideline may be right for some businesses, it’s not a one-size-fits-all figure.

These averages help set the playing field, but we wanted to know what actual, individual companies and higher education institutions spend on marketing. So, we set out to do something that no writer ever wants to do: math.* Here’s what we discovered about marketing spend as a percentage of revenue by industry.

*We’re writers, not technophobes. This year, we had ChatGPT do our math for us. Welcome to 2025!

Software / SaaS Companies

Salesforce, Atlassian, and Asana are all in the business of keeping other businesses organized and efficient through software platforms. Let’s take a look under the hood at their revenues and marketing budgets.

Salesforce

Salesforce, a leading provider of marketing automation and CRM tools, has consistently been one of the heaviest hitters when it comes to marketing spend. In 2023, the company devoted about 43% of its $31.4 billion in revenue to sales and marketing.

That dropped to 37% in 2024 — still a massive investment, but part of a clear trend toward more efficient growth. While they’re spending more in absolute dollars each year, that spend is shrinking as a percentage of revenue.

Atlassian

Atlassian builds software that helps developers and teams get stuff done, withJira being their biggest star for project management and bug tracking.

In 2024, they pulled in $4.36 billion in revenue; that’s up 23% from the year before. They put about 21% of that into sales and marketing, which is way above the industry average of around 10.5%.

Sure, they posted a $197 million net loss in Q4, but don’t let that fool you. Atlassian beat revenue expectations with a 20% jump in Q4 alone. Plus, the number of customers spending over $1 million a year shot up by 48%. That tells you one thing: Their enterprise game is getting strong.

Asana

A provider of workplace management and productivity software tools, Asana was founded in 2008 and went public in 2020.

In FY2024, Asana reported revenue of $652.5 million, a 19% increase from the previous year. The company allocated approximately $392 million to sales and marketing, representing 60% of its revenue.

SaaS Comparison

Fintech Companies

The fintech world is shifting fast. From 2021 to 2024, average advertising spend jumped about 45% across the sector, boosting brand visibility as firms such as Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, and Klarna moved from niche to mainstream audiences.

Why the surge? These companies are preparing for growth, potential IPOs, and a broader audience beyond early adopters. Stripe even rolled out its first-ever brand marketing campaign in 2024 to reach a wider customer base. Brex also expanded its messaging to include all businesses — not just startups — and ramped up transit and out-of-home ads in major cities

PayPal

PayPal is, well, PayPal. Founded in 1998 in Palo Alto, CA, they’re in the business of online payment processing for large businesses (including Uber as a recent customer acquisition), small and medium-sized businesses, and peer-to-peer transactions via Venmo.

In 2022, the company posted $31.8 billion in revenue, and spent $2 billion on marketing, according to SEC filings and reports. That works out to approximately 6.3% of total revenue spent on sales and marketing in 2024, down from about 6.1% in 2023.

Venmo

This equally popular payment platform owned by PayPal made headlines early in 2025 for 20% revenue growth, doubling the pace of total payment volume growth in the first quarter of the year.

That kind of momentum doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of smart brand positioning, bolder marketing bets, and a sector that’s evolving from disruptor to default. As fintech companies push for market share (and mind share), they’re putting their dollars behind broader storytelling, not just performance ads. The takeaway? If you’re in fintech and thinking small, you’re already behind. The big players are treating marketing like a growth engine, not a line item.

Fintech Comparison

Manufacturing Companies

Manufacturing is a broad category, and marketing budgets in this space are anything but one-size-fits-all. A small regional shop might stick to local trade shows and email campaigns, while a global operation could be pouring serious dollars into digital transformation and brand-building across continents.

The length of the sales cycle, the complexity of the product, and how many decision-makers are involved all play a role in how manufacturers spend their marketing budgets.

That’s why benchmarking matters. When you know what others in your industry are doing, you can gut-check your own spend and make sure your dollars are working just as hard as your team is.

Procter & Gamble

This American manufacturer has the honor of being among world’s biggest spenders on advertising — not surprising considering its hefty portfolio of giant consumer brands, including Gillette, Ivory, Pampers, Bounty, and dozens more. The company reported fiscal year 2025 net sales of $84.3 billion, unchanged versus the prior year.

Manufacturing Comparison

Higher Education

In the face of declining enrollment, colleges and universities are spending a significant amount of money marketing their programs.

So, what was the state of higher education marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue in recent years? We looked at a handful of private universities for answers.

New York University

NYU is the largest private university in the United States, with a total enrollment of about 61,890 undergraduates and graduate students as of 2023. They spend big money on marketing to attract all those students, but it amounts to only a fraction of their operating revenues. (Less than 1%.)

Johns Hopkins

For the class of 2028, Johns Hopkins received 45,134 applicants and enrolled 1,288 new students. They’re one of the biggest marketing spenders in private higher education but, like NYU, their marketing budget doesn’t approach one percent of their revenue.

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private university with 13,000+ undergrads and an acceptance rate of about 18% for fall 2025 applicants. They’re on trend with the other private universities we looked at, spending a tiny fraction of their operating revenues on marketing.

Higher Education Marketing Budget Comparison

According to a 2019 survey of higher education CMOs, here’s a quick look at average marketing budgets by degree type.

(Interestingly enough, that same survey found that between 15% and 21% of higher education CMOs “don’t know or can’t estimate” their department’s budget.)

The CMO study also took a look at higher education’s marketing budgets as a percentage of institutional budgets. Participating schools spend an average of only a few percentage points of their overall budgets on marketing, but there are some outliers that spend up to 15%.

Marketing Budget Breakdowns

Let’s take a look at how companies allocate their marketing budgets.

Digital Marketing

Marketing budgets are still growing but not as fast as they were, according to the latest CMO survey. Over the past year, overall marketing spend rose 3.3%, while digital marketing saw a 7.3% bump. That’s a noticeable slowdown from fall 2024, when those growth rates hit 5.8% and 11.1%.

The study also found that B2C companies doing higher online sales have the largest marketing budgets as a percent of revenues and overall budgets.

• As of 2025, 16.5% of all sales are happening online. That’s down from the spike we saw at the start of COVID in mid-2020, but still well above pre-pandemic levels.
• The highest revenue growth in the largest market for industry sectors is energy (46.8%).
• The only industry sector to experience a decrease in revenue is communications and media (-3.8%).

While digital growth is leveling out, it’s still where the momentum and the money is. For most industries, especially B2C, digital remains the core driver of marketing investment and revenue potential.

How to Plan Your Marketing Budget

You can see from the different budgets across various industries that there is no universal solution to breaking down your marketing budget.

To calculate how much your business should spend, you need to first identify your marketing goals. Does your website need an update? Are you looking to improve the quality of your online leads? We recommend writing a marketing plan to help zero in on what you need to accomplish and how you’re going to go about it. From there, you can evaluate your company’s marketing budget needs and constraints.

Need help defining your budget and establishing a marketing strategy that delivers measurable return on investment (ROI)? Give us a shout!